Baby's Got Blue Eyes: Introducing DI Ted Darling

by L M Krier

  'Any idea why anyone would do that?' Ted asked.

  'Optography, dear boy!' Hard G replied. 'It was once believed that the eye was capable of capturing and retaining the last image it saw prior to death. It was tried on at least one of the Jack the Ripper victims, I believe. Your killer was worried his image would be imprinted on her eyes and could identify him, so he took them out to protect his identity.'

  Then he threw back his head and laughed aloud. 'Ted, you are so easy to wind up! Optography itself existed but unless your killer is simple, he is very unlikely to believe that it works, so I have no other explanation.'

  Ted ground his teeth on yet more menthol sweets, in an attempt to contain the remarks he felt like addressing to the Professor. He may have been the country's leading forensic pathologist but Ted considered him a Grade A arsehole and constantly had to contain himself to avoid saying so.

  'Of course I was teasing you, because it amuses me, but had I not been, that theory would fall down on a couple of factors,' Hard G continued. 'The first is that there is always the possibility that the victim never actually saw the face of her killer. The scalpel stroke was from behind. There is just a chance that our killer slit her throat whilst he was busy rogering her from behind, pun intended, and that death was during the act of sex, which is allegedly an extreme turn-on for some.

  'The second is that the scalpel work of making the incision to remove the reproductive organs was quite neat. It suggests someone one who knew how to handle a scalpel with some degree of skill. This implies that they had at least been admitted to medical school, which hopefully implies in turn that they were not simple. Although I do sometimes have my doubts when I see some of the bright young things in medicine these days.

  'With the amount of information available nowadays on the internet, almost anyone could bring their knowledge of anatomy up to the required level. But the actual physical manipulation of a scalpel, without leaving tell-tale mistakes, requires a certain degree of practice.

  'Apart from the wound to the throat, the other incisions are made right-handedly so it seems that your killer maybe ambidextrous. As there has now been vaginal and anal penetration of the bodies, perhaps he is also ambisextrous too,' he smirked at his own sense of humour.

  'So what kind of person does the scalpel use indicate?' Ted asked him, ignoring the rest of his lewd comments. 'Back to your theory of a doctor?'

  'A doctor would be boringly obvious,' Hard G replied. 'But yes, a doctor, a surgeon, perhaps even a vet who had studied human anatomy to some degree. Although almost anyone could arm themselves with a scalpel and start practising on rats and mice, perhaps. Or cats,' he said, with an evil smirk, knowing how attached Ted was to his family of cats. 'It's not hard to get scalpel skills up to a particular level, enough for something like this.'

  Ted was not entirely sure if he felt more inclined to throw up or to punch the Professor’s lights out. He struggled hard to suppress both urges.

  'As for who else, well, perhaps a medical student, further on into training? I certainly wouldn't dismiss a vet out of hand. There was an interesting case of horses being sexually mutilated in their fields in the south of England some years ago and the police theory was that it was a rogue vet with a serious issue or two.

  'Again I have no helpful theory for you as to why your killer might wish to carry out a full radical hysterectomy on this poor young woman, except presumably for his own amusement. And it was a radical one. That means that absolutely all the female reproductive organs were removed, womb, fallopian tubes, ovaries, even a part of the vagina.

  'It was done abdominally, of course, hence the cut in the lower abdomen, which was left open for all to see. Equally, I have no theory as to why said organs were missing, unless your killer decided to eat them with some fava beans and a nice chianti,' he added, making revolting Hannibal Lecter slurping noises, so that Ted had to swallow hard, repeatedly, to ensure his breakfast stayed where it was.

  'One of the initial thoughts we've been kicking round,' Ted told him, when he had regained control, 'is that this killer might be a woman hater. DC Bailey suggested that the removal of the hair, cutting off the breasts and now this, of course, could be a way of de-feminising the victims, taking away their femininity.'

  'That's a very intriguing theory,' the Professor said. 'I must say that young DC is very interesting in herself, I've always thought. Not my usual type at all, of course. So very, how shall I put it, androgynous, but she would present an amusing challenge, I would think.

  'As for the killer being a woman hater, I would say that the violence of the sex suggests to me a man who had been dominated by women. Bear in mind that I am a forensic pathologist, not a forensic psychologist, but I would think a domineering mother, a hen-pecking wife.

  'A lot of us like rough sex, but this was a bit beyond that,' he continued. 'I don't know what your personal preferences are, Ted …'

  'Nor will you ever, Roger,' the DI interrupted dryly.

  'This was certainly on the brutally dominant side. That fits with a woman hater theory, I would imagine. But again, it is not really my specialist area - of forensics,' he added with a lewd wink.

  Just for a moment, Ted allowed himself to fantasise on just which of the bare-handed killing techniques in which he was trained he would use to silence the odious man in front of him.

  'There's something else you need to consider, Ted,' the Professor continued.' These would have been very messy killings. A lot of blood. It would take a lot of cleaning up. Then the bodies have been thoroughly cleaned of any DNA, no traces at all to give us a lead. They've been kept at a cold enough temperature to delay decomposition. Almost as if they've been stored in a mortuary after death.'

  'Are you telling me we are looking for someone with access to a mortuary?' Ted asked him, somewhat alarmed. 'Someone is doing this stuff in, what, a hospital mortuary, for example, and nobody notices? How can that be? Surely there are security checks on places like a hospital morgue?'

  'Ah, when you think of what Jimmy Savile was apparently getting up to in the bowels of hospitals and seemingly getting away with it .. ' the Professor left the statement hanging.

  'One thing that's been puzzling me a lot,' Ted went on, 'is how the killer managed to carry each body some distance and dump it without anyone noticing. Down on the river bank, fair enough, but he would still have had to carry it across fields. But behind my house, he would have had to carry this victim some distance, in full view of houses. Anyone happening to look out could have easily seen him, even in the dark, because of the surrounding street lights.'

  'Oh, now that I can help you with, my boy,' the Professor said. 'You would be amazed at the British propensity to avert the eye. Sometimes if we go dogging to fairly inaccessible sites with a lot of people attending, the blonde job and I might have to walk some way from where we park. And if the blonde job has had slightly too much to drink, I may well have to half carry her at the very least. Nobody bats an eye if they see us.'

  Ted thought he had heard pretty much everything in his line of work. He was seldom at a loss for words. He was now. He took another Fisherman's Friend to help him retain his composure.

  'Of course, there is one potential prime suspect profile you should certainly not overlook,' the Professor continued. 'A forensic pathologist! Everyone knows we're all very strange and suspect, playing about with dead bodies all day long. We have medical training to a high level, access to scalpels and surgical implements, unrestricted access to mortuaries and of course, all the skills necessary to disguise DNA on a body. I wouldn't trust any of us an inch!' He threw back his head and laughed loudly at his own joke.

  'So, Ted,' he continued. 'I'll look forward to seeing you and the gorgeous Trev on Saturday. I'll let you know what time of day I can get us a court, although they are usually very accommodating to me.'

  Ted could imagine that the club would be. Hard G had a lot of money and he spent it lavishly and quite generously.

  'Looking
forward to it, Roger,' Ted replied. 'Does Willow play?'

  'Oh, she loves to play,' the Professor smirked, 'but I have no idea if she is any good at badminton.'

  Chapter Fourteen

  'Sir!' it was Sal who took the call and shouted across to Ted as he was discussing things with Mike Hallam. 'Uniform just rang, they're brought a bloke in from the hospital. He works there, a porter or something. Someone called the police because he was spending a lot of time in the mortuary and acting weird.'

  'Weird?' Ted queried. 'Acting weird is not a legal term known to me. Define weird.'

  Sal shrugged. 'Don't know, sir, Uniform are just saying the hospital were worried because of his behaviour and when one of their managers asked him to leave the morgue, he got a bit weird, sir. They've got him down in interview room No 1 and they want to know if you'll go down and talk to him. He fits the profile, right, sir?'

  Ted and Mike exchanged loaded looks. 'Let's not get too hung up on profiles,' Ted said. 'I'll take this one. Mike, you're with me. Sal, let the DCI know we have a possible suspect in.'

  As they headed for the stairs, Mike asked, 'So is it good cop, bad cop, sir? Which am I?'

  Ted gave him one of his long looks and said, 'There are no bad cops on my team, Mike, only good ones.'

  Seeing Mike look crestfallen at getting it wrong, again, he decided to cut him some slack and added, 'As you're new to me and my funny ways, I'd like you just to sit in and observe closely on this one without saying anything. I'll let you in on a little secret though. I don't actually need a bad cop as most people are usually quite happy to talk to me. I mean, how dangerous can an old queen who's knee-high to a grasshopper be to them?' and he gave Mike his broadest wink.

  When the two of them entered the interview room, an officer from the Uniform branch was standing by the door and the suspect was sitting at the table. Ted dismissed the PC, did the preliminaries and set the tape running.

  'For the purpose of the tape, can you please state your name,' he said.

  The man sitting opposite him said simply, 'People just call me Jimmy.'

  Ted could see why. The man was thin, tall and slightly stooped, but the hair was stunning. Shoulder-length and sparse, with a bit of a comb-over from the side to conceal a touch of thinning on the crown, it was on the whiter shade of silver and looked like natural premature greying. Jimmy Savile's hair, to a T.

  'Could you state your correct real name please, sir, for the purpose of the tape.'

  The man seemed to hesitate, then said, 'It's Oliver. Oliver Burdon. With a D, not a T.'

  'And what would you prefer me to call you, Mr Burdon?' Ted asked patiently.

  An even longer pause. Ted strongly suspected that very few people ever asked the man his views or preferences on anything. Then, 'Could I please be called Oliver?'

  'Yes of course, Oliver, thank you,' Ted replied. 'Now, you don't currently have a solicitor and you are entitled to have one present. Would you like to have a solicitor before you answer any questions?'

  Washed out blue eyes looked at him with a puzzled expression. 'I don't understand. I haven't done anything wrong. I thought solicitors were for when you had done something wrong?'

  'Not necessarily, Oliver, but if you are happy to continue you can. Just tell me if at any point you would like me to stop asking you questions and allow you to contact a solicitor. Are you happy to answer my questions?'

  'Yes. I like you,' he said, but the pale eyes were looking towards DS Hallam and telling another story.

  Ted read the look and said, 'I'm sorry, Oliver, has anyone offered you a drink? That was rude of me not to ask. Would you like something to drink?'

  Again, the look of surprise. 'Can I have a coffee, please? With two sugars? And milk?'

  'Of course you can. Mike, could you oblige, please? For the purpose of the tape, DS Hallam is leaving the room to bring refreshments.' Turning back to the suspect he continued, 'Are you happy to answer my questions, Oliver?'

  'Yes,' he said again, 'I like you.'

  'Can you remember what you were doing on Tuesday evening?'

  'Tuesday? Yes, that's easy, watching Holby City. I like that. I like Serena.'

  'Can you remember what happened last Tuesday?' Ted asked.

  'Oh, yes. Serena was sad so Raf gave her some wine and she got drunk. Some She-razz, he said it was. I would like to try some of that, but I don't know where to get it.'

  Ted said helpfully, 'I think you can get it in almost any supermarket, Oliver.'

  The suspect shook his head vigorously. 'I don't go in supermarkets. I don't know where to find anything. I get confused. I go in the corner shop. I know where to find everything in there.'

  'What sort of things do you buy?' Ted asked, more for his own curiosity than for the tape.

  'Weetabix,' came the swift response. ''And brown bread, cheese, butter. Sometimes baked beans.'

  'Anything else?'

  Oliver smiled guiltily. 'Sometimes some chocolate. I like white chocolate.'

  'Oliver, do you know why you've been brought here?'

  The man frowned. 'They said I was doing something wrong in the mortuary. But I wasn't.'

  'Can you tell me what you were doing in the mortuary, Oliver?'

  'Yes, I was trying to send a message to my mother,' came the simple reply.

  It was Ted's turn to look puzzled. 'I'm sorry, I don't understand. Can you explain, please?'

  The man nodded and leaned forward, with an earnest expression on his face. 'My mother died when I was quite young. They wouldn't let me see her. They took her away and I never saw her again. I wanted to talk to the people in the mortuary, the dead people, on their way to heaven, to ask them if they could contact her for me, to tell her I never stopped thinking about her.'

  Ted cleared his throat, hard, to try to get rid of the lump which had suddenly appeared. He just about trusted himself enough to speak when the DS came back into the room, minus the coffees. He bent in low behind the DI and said, 'The team gave his locker at work a quick once-over, sir, and they've found a scalpel.'

  'Shit,' Ted said quietly, for the DS's ears only then, aloud, 'Mike, can you delegate those coffees then sit in on this please?' Then, to the suspect, 'Oliver, my men had a little look in your locker and they found a scalpel. Can you explain to me what you use that for?'

  Again the guilty look, and this time a mumbled response. 'I only used it once. It was for the chicken.'

  Of all the replies Ted expected, that was not one of them. 'The chicken?' he queried.

  'I'm sorry if it was wrong. My mother used to make me a nice chicken meal. I wanted to try to do it but it wasn't right. It was a piece with a bone in and there shouldn't have been a bone. I didn't know how to take it out. They throw those scalpels away and burn them at the hospital sometimes so I thought it wouldn't matter if I took one. But I couldn't manage it very well.' He looked forlorn. 'I'm sorry if it was wrong. I took it back to work; I was going to put it where I found it.'

  This time Ted had to clear his throat several times. Then he said, 'It sounds as if you got a leg joint, Oliver. You'd be better with a breast fillet, there's no bone in that.'

  Burdon looked visibly shocked. 'I couldn't ask for that,' he said, in hushed tones.

  'You'll probably find it on the shelves, without having to ask,' he said, then saw the look on the other man's face and suddenly understood. He asked gently, 'Oliver, do you have trouble reading some words?'

  Burdon nodded slowly. 'Sometimes. Big words. Words I don't know. I'm not very good at reading.'

  Ted thought for a moment then said, 'Oliver, here's what I'm going to do. We've taken up enough of your time. When you've had your coffee, DS Hallam here is going to get you a takeaway chicken dinner. And some chocolate. Some white chocolate.' He got his wallet out and handed Hallam some money. 'Then he's going to get someone to drive you back to your flat so you can enjoy your meal in peace.'

  The DS opened his mouth to speak then, seeing the colour changing in Ted'
s eyes, said hastily, 'Of course I will, sir, no problem at all.'

  'Here's my card, Oliver, there's my telephone number. If you ever need any help, any at all, you call me. And in the meantime, I'm going to see if I can find someone to help you a bit. Thank you for your time, and goodbye,' with which he swept out of the office and took the stairs three at a time.

  After the briefest of knocks, he burst into the DCI's office where, even without the kick-trick, the force of his slamming the door shook walls throughout the station.

  'It's not him,' he said emphatically. 'It's not sodding well him, I'd stake Trev's bike on it.'

  The DCI eyed him warily. 'Ted, is this going to be one of those conversations where you kick things round my office and break things? Because I have to say, you are a little bit scary when you do that.'

  'This is Timothy Evans all over again. The man is innocent, just not very bright. Far too simple for some of the stuff this killer has done. He was trying to talk to his dead mother in the morgue, for God's sake. He needs help; he needs a social worker. If the press get wind that we've had him in, it will be Christopher Jefferies all over again, despite Leveson. It's not him. So if it's not him, then who the hell is it?'

  Chapter Fifteen

  'I'm really looking forward to this,' Trev said, as Ted parked his modest Renault in front of the club amongst the Bentleys, BMWs and Roger's E-type.

  'You are?' Ted asked in surprise.

  Trev leaned closer, a hand on his partner's thigh, blue eyes twinkling wickedly. 'Oh, yes. All the time we're playing, I'm going to be thinking up ways you're going to have to repay me for this.'

  The club was exclusive. Had they not been guests of Roger, Ted doubted they would ever have set foot on its expensive carpets, let alone played matches in their hallowed courts. As it was, they had been a few times with Roger to play badminton, squash or tennis in the summer, or to use the pool, jacuzzi, hammam and saunas.

  Roger and the tall, elegant blonde were waiting for them in the bar. Willow was sipping a slimline tonic with a slice of lemon. Roger's drink looked more like a gin and tonic, served as it was in a crystal spirit glass.