by Tim Ellis
Richards stared at Parish with wide eyes. ‘Did you hear what she said, Sir?’
‘Take no notice of her, Richards – she’s only joking.’
‘I’m not so sure. I mean, what do we really know about DI Blake?’
‘Not a lot, I suppose.’
‘What do you think about a black rose being left on that dead girl’s headstone?’
‘Do you want your eyes gouging out with rusty scissors?’
‘I thought you said she was only joking.’
‘You start lusting after a Detective Inspector’s cases and you deserve everything you get.’
Richards glanced over her shoulder at Blake. ‘What’s our case about again?’
‘I can tell you it’s not about a black rose.’
***
‘I wish he wouldn’t do that.’ Stick said, as he and Xena climbed the stairs to Forensics.
Xena pulled a face. ‘You wish who wouldn’t do what?’
‘I wish the Chief wouldn’t sit on my desk.’
‘Why? Desks are for sitting on.’
‘No, they’re not.’
‘Okay, go on, numpty. What’s wrong with him sitting on your desk?’
‘Well, I have to work, drink my coffee and eat my sandwiches there afterwards.’
‘And?’
‘I don’t know anything about his toilet habits.’
‘You have a strange mind, Stickynuts.’
‘Would you want him sitting on your desk?’
‘He’s not going to sit on a woman’s desk, is he?’
‘But if he did?’
‘It wouldn’t bother me. Unlike Richards – she bothers me.’
‘She just likes interesting cases.’
‘Don’t we all? Well, she’d better look the other way if my interesting case walks by if she knows what’s good for her.’
‘Our interesting case, you mean?’
‘Possession is eleven-twelfths of the law. The Chief gave the case to me – not you. I’m the Senior Investigating Officer. If I choose to share my case with you then that’s my prerogative, but don’t get too attached to it because when the cows all go home to make milk, it’ll still be my case.’
‘I’m sure it’s nine-tenths of the law.’
‘Are you Albert Einstein’s assistant now?’
‘No.’
‘Well stop trying to pass yourself off as him.’
‘Sorry.’
The young woman behind the counter in Forensics was probably just about twenty years old. She had long brown hair, an oval face, clear skin and was wearing a blue and white striped top that somehow seemed out of place.
‘Is Pecker here?’ Xena asked.
‘I won’t be a moment.’
The woman’s head was bent forward and she was smiling.
Xena’s forehead creased up as she craned her neck over the counter and saw the woman texting on a mobile phone. ‘Hey?’
‘Just one moment.’
Xena went round the counter, snatched the mobile phone out of the woman’s hands and threw it against the far wall as if she were pitching for the New York Yankees. The phone disintegrated, the bits plummeted to the marble floor and scattered every which way.
‘What the hell have you done, lady? That was my phone. I was in the middle of a very important text.’
‘Be careful who you’re calling a lady, bitch. I’m DI Blake.’
The woman wrinkled up her nose. ‘I don’t care who you are. You’ll be paying to replace my phone, and I’ll expect compensation for mental anguish as well.’
‘Mental anguish, my arse. Where’s Peter Pecker?’
‘Why should I tell you?’
‘Because that’s what you’re paid to do, not piss around sending texts to your boyfriend or whoever. If you want to keep your job I suggest you tell me where Pecker is now.’
‘He’s in his laboratory, and his name isn’t Pecker it’s Peckham.’
‘His name is whatever I want to call him.’
‘It’ll cost you six hundred pounds to replace my iPhone, and another thousand pounds to stop me from submitting a written complaint about you. I take cash, cheques or credit cards.’
Xena laughed. ‘That’s about as likely as you keeping your job.’ She turned to Stick. ‘Come on. I’ve wasted enough time on this stupid bitch.’
They followed the corridor down to Pecker’s laboratory.
‘I thought you were going to be nice to people?’ Stick said.
‘How can you even think that I wasn’t nice to her. I had great difficulty in restraining myself. What I really wanted to do was throw her against the wall.’
Stick went to knock on the laboratory door, but Xena barged straight in.
‘Well Pecker, what have you got for us?’
Peter Peckham was in his early fifties. He had a good head of thick grey hair, grey eyes, strange pointed ears, and a chin that seemed to disappear into his neck.
‘In respect of?’
‘The black rose.’
‘Ah!’
‘Oh! And before we get into that, you can sack that stupid bitch on reception.’
‘I can’t sack anybody. That unpleasant task falls within Dr Toadstone’s remit, not mine.’
‘You can tell him to sack her though, can’t you?’
‘I could, but as I understand employment law sacking somebody is a complicated process. Why would you want Kimberly to lose her job anyway?’
‘She was texting someone on her mobile phone when Stick and I arrived in reception, instead of catering to my simple needs. So I took the phone off her, threw it against the wall and it smashed into a thousand pieces.’
‘Oh dear!’
‘What?’
‘I don’t think you’re allowed to destroy employees’ property.’
‘Never mind what I’m not allowed to do. She was texting instead of doing her job – is that allowed?’
‘Two wrongs don’t make a right.’
‘If you’re not responsible for hiring and firing, why am I even talking to you about it, Pecker?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So, tell me about the black rose. That falls within your remit, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ He walked over to a worktop by the window, picked up a file and returned to where Xena and Stick were standing. ‘These were taken by one of our people who was on duty yesterday,’ he said, spreading a series of photographs out on the Formica top.
Some were of the black rose, but others were of a gravestone that had an angel weeping on top. Its wings were hanging down as if enveloping the stone. The inscription read:
Libby
Beautiful daughter of
Marion and Aaron Stone
Born January 7, 1984
Taken from us on February, 21 1992
Where there is great love there are always miracles
Pecker pointed to the black rose that had been placed in the crook of the angel’s bent arm.
‘You think I’m blind?’ Xena said.
‘No.’
‘Well, you’ve obviously done some research on the black rose – what does it mean?’
‘Usually – death, hatred, farewell or tragic romance.’
‘Nothing new there then.’
‘No. However, the number XIII card from a set of Tarot cards – the Death card – suggests that a black rose signifies impurity; immorality; revenge or ugliness. It can also mean: No return; no hope; resistance; mourning; evil; mystery; rebirth and rejuvenation – so take your pick.’
‘That’s not very helpful,’ Stick said.
Pecker shrugged. ‘It’s all I’ve got.’
‘Any DNA on it?’
‘No, but we did find something else.’
‘Go on?’
‘Carbendazim.’
‘Is that a make of car?’
‘It’s a banned fungicide since 2010. It was found to disrupt hormone systems, cause infertility and destroy the testicles. Nobody uses it now.’
/> ‘Except the person who grew the black rose?’
‘Of course. So, we’re checking on recent purchases, but it might not help us because . . .’
‘. . . It’s a banned fungicide and you can’t buy it now?’
‘Yes and no. You can still buy it, but only for specific reasons. I was thinking that the killer – like a lot of people and companies – might have a stockpile from before the ban was introduced.’
‘You’re forewarning me of failure on your part in case I get my hopes up?’
‘I’ll try my best.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘You do know that the rose is not really black, don’t you?’
‘I’m shocked – a chimera! If it’s not black, what colour is it?’
‘Deep red. It’s been blackened by putting it in water, which has been coloured using black ink.’
‘Why?’ Stick asked.
‘I presume it was to produce a black rose, but you’d have to ask the person who blackened the rose that question, DS Gilbert. I’m merely a simple forensic scientist.’
Xena grunted. ‘Simple is right, Pecker. So, you can’t tell us anything useful about the black rose. What about the note?’
‘The envelope was a recent purchase that is readily available from any number of stationery outlets. It was postmarked in Roydon on Friday, which could suggest the person who posted it lives there.’
‘Or not. What else?’
‘Exact age dating of paper is not possible, but we can determine an age range. We analysed the wood fibres that made up the paper, the pulping chemicals used to bind the elements together, the additives added and the surface treatments applied, which serve as dating markers. I can tell you that the paper falls within the period 1985 to 1995. The same thing can’t be said for the ink though. We used the Sequential Extraction Technique to measure its chemical properties, which decrease as ink ages on the paper, and found no noticeable difference. This suggests that the ink and the writing are more recent.’
Neither Stick nor Xena said anything for a handful of seconds as the impact of what Pecker had said registered in their brains.
Eventually, Xena said, ‘So, the paper probably dates from 1992, but the writing on it could have been done in the last couple of days?’
Peckham nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘But you don’t know whether the paper or the writing belongs to the person who abducted and murdered Libby Stone in 1992, do you?’
‘No,’ Peckham said, shaking his head.
‘Any fingerprints or DNA?’ Stick asked.
‘Sorry.’
‘All in all,’ Xena said. ‘You’ve been less than helpful, haven’t you, Pecker?’
‘I think I’ve clarified a few issues.’
‘That were academically interesting, but of no practical use in providing us with any leads?’
‘Well no, but . . .’
‘The next time you feel that we’d be burning valuable calories unnecessarily by traipsing up here searching for fool’s gold, call down to the squad room first and warn us.’ She turned on her heel. ‘Come on, Stick. I’m sure there are better things we could be doing.’
Stick scooped up the photographs of the black rose and the headstone and mouthed a thank you.’
‘I hope you’re not thanking him for giving us less than nothing, numpty?’
‘Absolutely not.’
As they walked back along the corridor to reception Stick said, ‘I thought you were a bit hard on him.’
‘That was the whole point.’
‘It was?’
‘I have to be cruel to be kind. As I’ve said to you on numerous occasions, if you’re easy on them they think they can give you pork scratchings and lemonade when what you really want is fillet steak with peppercorn sauce and a decent pint of lager.’
Stick’s brow furrowed. ‘Okay.’
‘So the next time he’s analysing something for us, he’ll think twice about what he produces. Hefferbitch isn’t here anymore, but she knew how to keep me happy. Pecker’s new. I’m training him, moulding him after my own image, into the ideal forensic scientist. He’ll thank me profusely later.’
‘I’m sure.’
They reached reception and headed for the exit doors.
A female voice shouted, ‘Hey, you!’
Xena didn’t turn round.
‘I think she’s talking to you.’
‘She’d better not be. If I thought for one minute she was talking to me I might have to drag her over that counter by her tongue and tear her limb from limb.’
‘I reported you to Human Resources,’ Kimberley said. ‘The woman up there said she’d never heard anything like it, and that she hoped you could do the high jump. She also said that you’d have to pay to replace my phone and that there’d be no problem in getting compensation for injured feelings and mental anguish.
Xena blew a raspberry as she left through the swing doors.
Chapter Three
They parked up at the end of Admirals Walk on the Meadway Estate, replaced their shoes with wellies from the boot of Parish’s new second-hand Nissan Qashqai, which had a bit more bite than the Mazda 3 and hopefully – a sturdier roof.
The press were already in attendance, and Parish could see that some of the residents had pulled up chairs and made themselves comfortable in upstairs windows with tea, toast and binoculars. They had a birds-eye view should anything interesting happen.
‘Inspector Parish! What can you tell us?’
‘Is it true there’s another serial killer on the loose?’
‘There’s a rumour that a monster has escaped from the lake, similar to what they’ve found in Loch Ness.’
People laughed.
‘Nobody has found anything in Loch Ness.’
‘I’m sure they have.’
They ducked under the crime scene tape.
It was a bit of a hike to the place where the body had been found. On the right was the railway track and they could hear the trains pulling in and out of Broxbourne Station; on the left was the housing estate; and beyond the crime scene was Admiral’s Walk Lake.
They came upon Toadstone directing his people to carry out a wheel search pattern beginning at the tent and moving towards the outer edges of the designated area.
‘Good morning,’ Toadstone said, when people began to move off. He was already dressed in a forensic suit with the mask pulled down so that it was round his neck.
Parish and Richards began wriggling into the forensic suits and other paraphernalia before entering the tent.
‘The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague, Toadstone,’ Parish said as he zipped up the suit. ‘Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?’
Toadstone smiled. ‘Edgar Allan Poe from The Premature Burial dated 1844.’
Richards stared at him. ‘He’s right, isn’t he?’
‘Barely. He could easily have guessed, because it sounds like something Poe might have said.’
Richards rolled her eyes. ‘You’re such a bad loser.’
‘What have you got for us, Toadstone?’
‘Something that’s not very nice at all, Sir.’
He led them into the tent.
A digital recorder on a tripod had already been set up in the corner of the tent to document the initial forensic examination by the pathologist.
Doc Riley was hunched over the body and her assistant was taking photographs as she directed him. She looked up. ‘Hello, you two.’
‘Hi, Doc,’ Parish said, his brow wrinkling. ‘Are you sure that’s human?’
‘It’s human all right. A female, aged between twenty and thirty. And I’d say she was really attractive before someone decided to use her as a side of beef.’
The corpse lay on its front. Long black hair had been scooped back to reveal a battered and bruised face. Most noticeable were the hundreds of cuts, stab wounds and missing pieces of skin on her back, buttocks and legs. There we
re also obvious signs that she’d been bound by her wrists and ankles.
‘The woman was tortured,’ Doc Riley said. ‘But this goes beyond what we think of as torture. As you can see, she was restrained . . .’ The Doc pointed to the damage on the left wrist. ‘The bones are visible, which suggests she was awake while her torturer went about his despicable work.’ She pointed to a line of dark bruising on the face that ran from the mouth to below the left ear. ‘She was gagged to prevent her from screaming. And this . . .’ She pointed to another line at the top of the corpse’s left leg. ‘I’d say she was bent over a table or something similar, tied to the legs, gagged, and then the killer spent many hours torturing her for his own pleasure.’
‘Was she sexually assaulted?’
Doc Riley shook her head. ‘There’s no evidence of any sexual penetration, which is strange because the woman would have been in the ideal position for sexual intercourse. I’m no expert on the human psyche – dealing with the dead as I do – but I’d say whoever did this enjoyed doing it. There’s a condition called paraphilic psychosexual disorder, which prevents a person from achieving sexual release unless they’re causing pain to someone else. Usually, these people are sadists who find willing masochistic partners, but this transcends sadism and masochism. The woman might have started out as a willing partner, but at some point she became a murder victim. So, that’s my take on what might have happened, for what it’s worth.’
‘Thanks, Doc,’ Parish said. ‘Time of death?’
‘Sorry. She was washed before being left here . . . probably in the early hours of this morning. The weather hasn’t helped, because now she’s frozen. If I had to guess, based on the condition of the body, I’d say she was killed late last night, washed to remove any forensic evidence, and then brought here.’
‘Any tattoos, piercings or identifying marks?’
‘None that I’ve seen so far, but I’ll be able to examine her more closely when I get her back to the mortuary.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘To be confirmed, but I’d say strangulation at this point.’ She pointed to the bruising around the neck.
