by Max Manning
Placing the bottle carefully on the concrete beside his makeshift bed, he rolled onto his side and curled up in a ball. The bottle top slipped from his fingers and rolled slowly out of the archway. He swore under his breath but decided it could stay where it was. The cider was going to be finished off soon. There was no danger of it going flat.
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and listened to the soundtrack of the city at night. The constant drone of traffic over the bridge was underlined by the hum of the structure vibrating. Car horns sounded intermittently, and somewhere in the distance, a police siren wailed. There was always a siren wailing somewhere.
Twelve
The sound of footsteps surprises him, because there is no reason for anyone to visit his rat hole. Lying still, he holds his breath and listens. His heart flutters like a trapped bird. He feels a sudden urge to piss and squeezes his thighs together. Maybe, he thinks, it’s Bonehead or Jezzer, looking for him after his no-show at the soup vans.
The bottle of cider flies over his head and smashes against the back wall. The liquid runs down the brickwork and pools under one of the bins. He twists up onto his knees. “What the fuck are you doing?” he yells. “That stuff costs money.” A face peers down at him. Big Ted looks into the eyes and shudders. “I asked you a question, mate,” he babbles. He raises his voice, hoping to attract someone’s attention. “That’s my last bottle. I need it to sleep. Bet you’ve got a bed to go back to.”
He breathes a sigh of relief when the man dips his hand into the pocket of his coat. The fool accidentally kicked over his cider and is ready to hand out some cash. When the man lifts his hand, a warm trickle runs down Big Ted’s right leg and drips onto his sneaker.
The knife flashes like molten silver. Big Ted tries to shout, but the only sound that comes out of his mouth is a wet gurgle. He crumples to the ground, gasping for breath. Strong hands roll him onto his back. Fingers grasp a handful of hair, yanking his head back. A thick wetness spurts onto his shoulders and chest.
The pain kicks in, blurring his vision, but he sees the man pull something else from his pocket and hold it in front of his face.
“Let them see,” the man says.
Thirteen
Blake rarely watched television. He preferred to switch on the treadmill and run. He particularly avoided news programs. They reminded him of too many things he was trying to blank out.
After falling out with Leah over the funeral, he’d been surprised when she had phoned to let him know she’d been asked by the police to make an appeal for information about Lauren’s murder at a live press conference. She sounded nervous, and Blake suspected she’d been hoping he would offer to attend the event with her. He didn’t. Over the years, he’d taken part in hundreds of press conferences. He didn’t want anything to do with that world anymore.
Wearing baggy shorts and a running shirt, Blake perched on the sofa and fiddled with the remote control. It took him a few seconds to find the right channel. Leah Bishop sat in the center at a long table, her shoulders hunched, her face pale. The sight of her, so vulnerable but at the same time resolute, twisted his insides.
Sitting on Leah’s left, an overweight, gray-haired detective pulled a tissue from his pocket and wiped beads of sweat from his brow.
Journalists who arrived too late to get a seat pressed against the side and back walls. To the far right of the table, a dark-haired man in a suit whispered into the ear of a woman in a police uniform.
A barrage of camera flashes signaled the start of the conference. In unison, Leah Bishop and the detective raised their hands to shield their eyes.
Clearing his throat, the detective lowered his head to his microphone. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “My name is Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Bell. This press conference has been arranged to assist the investigation into the murder of Lauren Bishop, who was stabbed to death in Victoria Park, Hackney. We will start with the victim’s sister. She will be making a simple appeal for witnesses, not answering questions. Any questions you have should be directed to me. Of course, there will be some operational details that I cannot disclose.”
He waved toward the younger man in the suit. “When we have finished, additional material and assistance will be provided by our press officer, Ray Partington.” Clearing his throat again, Bell wiped his top lip with his sleeve and turned with a nod to Leah.
Blake knew well the pressure of being in the spotlight and couldn’t help but admire her courage.
She glanced down at her script. “My sister, Lauren, was murdered as she walked in Victoria Park on the evening of September 28. She was a kind and gentle person who didn’t have a bad bone in her body. The police are working hard to find her killer, and I am making this appeal today in the hope that someone out there can help.”
She paused for a moment and, her eyes brimming with tears, raised her head to look, as instructed, straight down the lens of the television camera. “If you saw anyone or anything strange in the park that evening or if you know anything or have suspicions about who might have killed Lauren, please, please, please, contact the police. We need to catch the person who killed my sister. My innocent sister. Even the smallest, seemingly insignificant piece of information could prove crucial, so please, please, don’t be afraid about coming forward if you think you can help.”
The end of her statement brought another barrage of camera flashes, followed by a flurry of questions. Flustered, she turned to the detective for help. He raised a hand to try to bring order to the room but ended up having to shout over the clamor.
“As I said earlier, all questions must be directed to me. I’ll answer them if I can. As usual, please give your name and the media organization you are working for. Who wants to go first?”
Every journalist in the room stuck up a hand. Bell pointed at a woman in the third row.
“Yvonne Dixon, BBC London. How exactly was Lauren Bishop killed?”
“She was killed with a knife. I can’t give you more detail than that.”
“It’s true that the killer slashed her throat, isn’t it? Everybody has seen the pictures on the internet.”
Bell ignored her and jabbed a finger at a reporter in the front row.
“David Jackman, Evening Standard. The killer must be lapping up all the attention and laughing at the police investigation. He’s committed murder and put it on the internet for everyone to see.”
Bell shook his head. “We’re on top of this case. Let’s get back to the appeal for information.”
Without waiting to be invited, a female reporter in the front row jumped in. “Jo Forlong, Daily Express. Instagram says the pictures of Lauren Bishop were viewed by more than eight thousand people and given close to twelve hundred likes before the account was shut down. This killer is making the police look incompetent and, at the same time, seems to be building a fan base.”
Bell wiped his brow again. “We’re working to try to solve the murder of Lauren Bishop, and that’s why we called this conference today. The gentleman in the red tie.”
The Daily Express reporter ignored the brush-off. “What about urging the public to boycott these pictures and any new ones the killer might post?”
The detective chief superintendent squirmed in his seat and pointed again at the journalist wearing a red tie.
“Nick Gordon, Press Association. Any fool can see that—” He stopped midsentence to pull his phone from his pocket. At the same time, a chorus of email alerts pinged, dinged, and chimed around the room. The journalists reached for their cell phones. The Press Association reporter had to shout to make himself heard over the growing babble of excitement. “My news editor says I, Killer is trending on Twitter. Pictures of a new victim posted.”
Bell threw his hands up. “That’s it. We’re done, conference over,” he said.
The camera zoomed out, but Blake kept his eyes on Lea
h. She bowed her head to hide her face, but he could see her body trembling. The camera immediately zoomed back in for a close-up of her grief.
At that moment, the press officer walked over to Leah and knelt beside her. Blake leaned closer to the screen as Partington offered her a tissue. She took it and dabbed at her eyes. Partington gently touched her elbow, helped her to her feet, and led her away.
Blake snatched up the TV remote and pressed the Off button. He felt a strange mixture of relief and stabbing envy that someone had realized how distressing the event had been for Leah. He stepped on the treadmill and started to run hard and think even harder. What kind of person kills for pleasure? Would you have to be insane or simply evil?
Evil existed. He knew that for a fact. He’d sensed it, stared it in the eye. He pressed the Stop button and went in search of his laptop. He found it on the kitchen table and powered it up. Fenton’s words “Don’t look” rang in his ears, but he blocked them out. He found Google and typed in Lauren Bishop I, Killer.
The first half-dozen results were news reports on the police investigation, but the seventh was what he’d been looking for. Someone had shared the original Instagram post with a Reddit forum discussion “Why People Kill.”
Blake’s forefinger hovered over the mouse, his heart racing. Why did he want to see Lauren’s final moments? He had no answer to that question. The sensible thing would be not to look, but he needed to. He took a long, deep breath and clicked.
Fourteen
Fenton let Ince drive so he could check out the I, Killer tweet. Reading on the screen of his cell phone while in a car always made him nauseated, and the photographs only made matters worse.
The account had been set up with the handle @ErikLil, and a single tweet was posted.
Look into these eyes and know what it’s like to play God. #IKiller
In the photograph, Edward Deere’s mouth was twisted into a grotesque smile, the tip of his tongue resting on his lower lip. His eyes were open, the pupils dilated. Fenton had seen enough dead bodies to know that Deere had still been alive when the picture had been taken. Just.
The scent of the tree-shaped air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror reminded Fenton of the smell of a hospital ward, the smell of grief. No agony can match the final agony of death, he told himself.
Deere’s body had turned up within an hour of the tweet, found behind a pair of garbage cans by a drunken Canadian tourist looking for a dark corner to throw up in.
Fenton read the tweet again, this time out loud.
Ince glanced his way and smiled. “Sounds pretty crazy to me, Boss. Why Erik Lil?”
Fenton responded with a noncommittal grunt. Daly had seen it straightaway, but he was going to have to give Ince a helping hand. “It’s an anagram.”
Ince kept his eyes on the road, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the steering wheel. “Right, got it,” he said. “Makes sense. I, Killer has probably been put on Twitter’s list of banned usernames.”
The same thought had occurred to Fenton. The killer couldn’t resist playing to his growing army of admirers.
One thing Fenton felt sure about was that his team would find no connection between the homeless Edward Deere and Lauren Bishop. He’d been selected to die for no other reason than to excite morbid curiosity. Fenton still had his eyes on the screen of his cell phone when the car pulled up sharply, jolting him forward in his seat.
“This is it,” Ince announced, his tone overly cheerful for a man about to attend a postmortem examination.
• • •
Fenton looked down at Edward Deere’s feeble body, stretched out naked on a steel table, a wasted life cut short. The torso had been sliced down the middle, from sternum to belly, the flesh clamped back, exposing the organs.
He regularly attended postmortems, and the smell always got to him—a stomach-churning mixture of decaying flesh and antiseptic fluid. The whitewashed walls, harsh lighting, and air-conditioning made the Westminster Public Mortuary feel like the inside of a giant fridge. In the center of the room stood an examination table and beside it, a steel desk on which sat two computer screens.
Instinctively, Fenton raised a hand to cover his nose and mouth but dropped it to his side when Ince caught his eye and grinned. He looked down at the body again and wondered why the killer had singled out Deere. The homeless man’s friends had admitted constantly teasing him about his lack of height. On the day of his murder, he’d stormed off in a sulk, threatening to never come back, something he’d done many times before.
They said Deere had claimed that he’d come down to London from the northwest, but so far, his family, if he had any, hadn’t been traced. Fenton wondered if there was any point trying to find them. Would they give a damn? Probably not. All the checks had been done, and nobody had been worried enough to report him missing.
Deere’s limbs and torso were thin and lacking muscle tissue. Fenton studied his face, the light-brown eyes fixed open, the nose small and slightly curved. Cleaned up and in his prime, Deere would have been good-looking in a boyish way. A strip of crisp white linen spanned the width of his shoulders, crossing under his chin, covering his neck. Both detectives turned toward the door as the pathologist, wearing white disposable overalls, entered the room, walked quickly to the desk, and powered up one of the computers.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. I know you probably want to get out of here as quickly as possible.”
Alice Drury, in her midthirties, was one of the city’s top forensic pathologists, with a tongue as sharp as her scalpel. She slipped on a pair of white latex gloves and positioned herself close to the cadaver, facing both Fenton and Ince. “As you might expect, this is not very complicated,” she said, lifting the linen cloth covering the neck.
Fenton turned away for a second but forced himself to look back. Ince stepped closer to get a better view of the wound.
The pathologist gave Fenton a sympathetic look before turning her attention back to the body. “I know that, unlike your young colleague here, you’re a bit squeamish, so I’ll be gentle with you. Cause of death, of course, is this traumatic wound to the neck. Both carotid arteries were severed. The trachea was sliced. It’s a toss-up whether he bled to death or suffocated. Likely a combination of the two.”
Fenton suppressed a shudder. “How does the wound compare to Lauren Bishop’s?”
“I’d say the initial cut, the killing cut, is more or less identical. The blade was dragged from right to left both times, suggesting the killer is left-handed. The big difference is that this time, the killer sawed at the neck after the initial cut, right through to the cervical vertebrae. The muscle tissue and ligaments in the neck are pretty tough. Sawing through them takes a lot of force and effort.”
Fenton paused a moment to think. “Does this suggest anger?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. Just giving you the facts. The murder of Lauren Bishop seemed more clinical. One clean cut.”
“How long would he have taken to die?”
“I’d estimate thirty seconds to a minute, no longer.”
Long enough to take a photograph, to capture the last agonies of a dying man, Fenton thought. He lifted his gaze from the body and stared out of the room’s single window. The day had turned gray, and fat drops of rain ran down the glass like tears.
“Anything else?” he asked. “Any other wounds or traces of the killer’s DNA? You said the head must have been held to allow the killer to saw through the neck tissue.”
The pathologist moved closer to the computer to scroll through her report. “It’s the same as the Lauren Bishop murder. The killer left no DNA behind. Probably wearing gloves. There were no defensive wounds on the victim’s hands or arms. Nothing under his fingernails except dirt.”
Fenton noticed his colleague trying to catch his eye. He nodded, and Ince stepped closer to the body and peered at the
mutilation.
“Are you able to say anything about the knife that was used?” Ince asked.
“Good question,” the pathologist said, raising her eyebrows at Fenton. “I was waiting for your boss to ask that one.”
Ince looked up and smiled. Fenton didn’t smile back.
“We can tell from the span of the initial cut, before any sawing action, that it was a long blade, at least nine inches. A close examination of the skin and muscle tissue that was sawn through shows the blade was definitely serrated. That would have made the sawing action easier. I’d say the length of the blade and the cutting edge used in both killings would have been close to identical.”
Ince nodded and moved back. He glanced at his boss as if expecting a follow-up question. Fenton said nothing.
The pathologist took the chance to press on. “As far as the victim’s general health goes, he was surprisingly well considering he was living on the streets. A little undernourished, yes, but all his organs were in good working order, even his liver, and his arteries are pretty clear of plaque.”
She paused for a moment and gave Fenton an appraising look. “You know, a couple of months living rough on a frugal diet would probably do your cardiovascular system a world of good.”
Fenton had known Drury for almost ten years. They were not quite old friends, but he was fond of her. He put on his best hurt face. He always kept himself in good shape.
“One last thing,” he said. “If you had to put your house on it, would you say Lauren Bishop and Edward Deere were killed by the same person?”
The pathologist stretched out a hand and tapped the computer’s keyboard, closing the report file and shutting down the computer. She pulled the thin latex gloves off her hands, dropped them into a surgical waste bin under the desk, and crossed her arms.
