Tooth and Claw

by Nigel McCrery

  Lapslie sighed, and looked away from the three faces that were turned towards him. He supposed he had to tell them some time. ‘Look, grateful as I am for all this, it’s DI Morritt you need to be talking to, not me. I’m off the case. Chief Superintendent Rouse has removed me.’

  ‘Nobody’s told me yet,’ Emma said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, officially you’re still in charge.’

  ‘Your mobile’s rung five times since you arrived,’ Sean Burrows pointed out softly. ‘And I can see three unread messages from here.’

  ‘Bugger the man,’ Jane snapped. ‘He’s barely making progress on one case, as far as I can see, whereas you’ve linked up two cases. And possibly more.’

  ‘More?’ Lapslie frowned.

  ‘We’ve got to locate some more evidence, yes? I want you to come back with me to the mortuary. In fact, I want you to give me a lift back to the mortuary, given that I got a taxi here at police expense. I’ve got an entire room full of cold cases waiting for me, and this time I want your expert opinion on them.’

  Lapslie shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It’s not like I have anything else to do at the moment. And the longer I stay out of Rouse’s way, the better. Emma, you follow us. Mr Burrows – keep up the good work.’

  The drive back to Braintree took half an hour. Lapslie spent the time in a daze. In the space of a few hours he’d gone from the depths of despair to the heights of excitement. He wasn’t mad! The cases were connected!

  Lapslie’s car got to the mortuary before Emma’s, surprisingly. His phone rang as he pushed the car door shut. Probably Rouse, knowing his luck. He switched it off, unanswered. Rather than wait for Emma, he and Jane went straight in. She led him into a room that Lapslie had been in before, the one where she had shown him the stun gun marks on Catherine Charnaud’s shoulder. His breath gusted in front of his face in the chill. The far wall of the room consisted almost entirely of drawers, each one containing a body.

  ‘Now, pull this drawer out.’ She indicated the extreme left hand body drawer on the lowest level. ‘Come on, man; strike while the iron is hot!’

  Moving to the door that she had indicated, Lapslie pulled it out. The body inside was that of an elderly man; bald, with a massive and bloodless injury to the side of his head.

  ‘Stop gawping. Can you hear anything?’ Jane asked impatiently.

  ‘Nothing more than I did before. I can smell plenty, though.’

  ‘Stop complaining. Push that drawer in and pull the next one out.’

  Lapslie returned the old man to his place of rest and tugged the next drawer out. The body inside was that of a middle-aged woman with dyed brown hair. There were no marks of violence or injury on her.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Next one.’

  The next body was a child, badly burned. The one after that was a girl slightly older than Catherine Charnaud. The next two drawers were empty. The seventh drawer contained a body whose badly bruised and battered head was missing its entire left side. It looked like the flesh and the bone had been rubbed off with sandpaper.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jane said. ‘Car crash. The poor chap was leaning out of the window when the car tipped over. Any drumming?’

  ‘No,’ Lapslie said, choking back his nausea.

  She shrugged. ‘On with the motley.’

  In the end it was the third drawer along on the second level, ironically the one next to the drawer containing Catherine Charnaud’s body, that caused the level of the drumming in his mind to suddenly escalate to a level where it competed with Jane’s voice for attention. ‘There,’ he said, trying not to shout over the sound. ‘It’s there.’

  The body inside was that of a man in his seventies. The body was far from fresh, but Lapslie could see purple ligature marks around the neck.

  ‘Strangling,’ Jane said from behind him. ‘The poor man was found in an isolated farmhouse. He had hanged himself of his own volition or been forced to do it. It’s an unsolved case.’

  The drumming was so loud that Lapslie almost expected the room to be shaking.

  He gazed down at the body. His heart was pounding at the same rate as the drumming in his ears. ‘And then there were three,’ he said.

  The door to the room opened and Emma burst in. She was holding her BlackBerry out. ‘Boss, you need to hear this.’

  ‘If it’s Rouse,’ he hissed, ‘I really don’t want him to know I’m still working the case!’

  ‘It’s not a phone call; it’s the radio,’ she said. ‘I heard it in the car. That’s why I got delayed – I was trying to work out how to record the thing using the BlackBerry. Listen!’ She pressed a key, and a voice underpinned by static filled the room, covering Lapslie’s tongue with the tingling flavour of chorizo sausage.

  ‘… Can somehow smell a murderer. Detective Chief Inspector Lapslie was discharged from hospital this morning, and is unavailable for comment, but his superior, Chief Superintendent Alan Rouse, released a statement saying that DCI Lapslie was no longer heading up any investigations within Essex Constabulary and was currently on sick leave. Lapslie was, crucially, heading up the investigations into the murder of TV presenter Catherine Charnaud and the bombing of Braintree Parkway station, and it is unclear where his removal leaves these investigations …’

  Lapslie felt like someone had doused him in freezing water. That was exactly the conversation he’d had with Rouse. But only he and Rouse knew about it.

  He, Rouse and Inspector Dain Morritt.

  ‘Bloody Dain Morritt,’ he growled. ‘Not content with grabbing the Wildish case back from me, he’s also doing everything he can to undermine me. I’ll bloody have him for this! He doesn’t want to share the investigation with anyone, so he’s spreading rumours about my mental state in order to discredit me. I’ll tell him to wind his neck in. If he doesn’t, I’ll wind it in for him.’

  ‘And prove that you’re unstable?’ Jane rested a hand on his arm. ‘Mark, you’ll lose your job, your pension and your self-respect. And if that’s not enough, the murderer will go free. Don’t you realise – you’re the only person with the capability to catch him!’

  ‘And the last person in the world with the resources,’ Lapslie growled.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  There had been a time when Carl Whittley would have spent hours poring over an Ordnance Survey map of a section of English countryside, painstakingly translating the contour lines into a three-dimensional picture in his mind. Which was the best route to walk? Which way was uphill and which way was flat? Was that slope too steep to climb? Where was the best place to position himself in order to see a badger’s sett or a bevy of roe deer? Now, sitting in the outbuilding in the back garden where he kept his computer, all he had to do was to type the name of the place he wanted to look at into Google Earth and within seconds he was looking at a photograph – not a map, not a representation, but an actual photograph – of the place he was interested in. Actually, not a single photograph but a mosaic, a jigsaw of tens, hundreds, thousands of images from satellites in orbit around the Earth, all painstakingly pieced together into an image of the entire world’s surface in perpetual daylight. Two clicks of his mouse and the image would zoom in to a point where he could make out cars on roads. Another click on a particular box on the screen and the image would tilt sideways until he was looking across the landscape rather than down onto it, and thanks to the miracle of cheap personal computing the photographs that made up the image would be distorted to account for the shape of the underlying terrain, so that if there was a hill or a mountainside present the photographs would bend up and then down again. It wasn’t perfect, but the images were getting better all the time and it was good enough that he could get an impression of any place he might be going.

  What with Google Earth and the MultiMap site, which could pinpoint a particular street or postcode anywhere in the UK for him, he located Emma Bradbury’s flat in less than ten minutes. It was part of a block in Shenfield, on the outsk
irts of Brentford in Essex – a convenient driving distance away from the police HQ in Chelmsford. A quick trawl around Brentford estate agents’ internet sites threw up three who were selling flats in that block. That got Carl a set of photographs of different elevations of the block, allowing him to pinpoint Emma’s living room, bathroom and bedroom windows with a fair degree of accuracy. Even better, he found another, taller block within a few hundred metres of the block containing Emma’s flat. It was the same height, but the roof looked down onto the side of Emma’s block, and her flat was about halfway up. From that roof, or from an empty flat on the top floor if he could locate one and break in, Carl would be able to take his time in lining up the shot.

  He could even work out what time of day he wanted to do it. The line from the roof of the block he would be firing from to Emma’s bedroom window was roughly east. That meant in the morning the sun would be shining into Carl’s eyes, and Emma’s side of the block would be in shadow. Not ideal. Evening would be better, with the sun behind Carl and with Emma’s flat illuminated by orange light, but there was always the chance of the sun’s glare reflecting off windows and into his eyes and perspective could be thrown off by that particular kind of sunlight. That meant midday and night were the best options. At midday the sun would be shining directly down onto the roof from which he would be firing, if he couldn’t find a flat on the top floor to break into, leaving him potentially vulnerable to being seen, and he would be restricted to weekends, when Emma was not at work, which would mean more people would be about. That might increase the likelihood that he would be seen when he left the area. And with the sun in that position there was likely to be significant shadowing of the block’s elevation from balconies and ledges. At night, however, Emma’s flat would be illuminated, at least while she was cooking, or watching TV, or preparing for bed, guaranteeing a good shot. So, evening it would be.

  He would have to come up with some explanation for his dad. Perhaps he could say that he’d met a girl and was taking her out for dinner. His dad would be pleased for him. So long as he left a meal on a tray and made sure Nicholas had access to a phone, he should be all right.

  His eye was caught by the latest glass-fronted wooden box on the shelves. This one was a scrawny cat that he’d trapped inside a plastic box and then gassed with fumes from the exhaust of his car. The carbon monoxide had turned the skin of its paws and nose bright pink, but Carl had used a blowtorch to burn and scorch the cat’s face back to the skull, and he’d pinned the paws to the wood so that the cat’s body was lying backwards with its ruined face staring upwards, just like the commuter on Braintree Parkway Station. He’d spent hours on it the night before, after he’d got back from Chelmsford. Placing it on the shelf, at the end of a long line of his trophies, gave him a thrill of accomplishment and the sense of a job that was, if not well done, then going well.

  Carl knew he would have to leave rapidly after he had fired the shot. Even if he had managed to break into a flat on the top floor of his preferred location, it wouldn’t take the police long to work out where the shot had come from – once they had got over the initial disbelief that someone had shot one of their own people in the first place. Carl estimated that he probably had twenty minutes after the shot had been fired before the police identified the ten or so windows it could have come from. That was, of course, assuming that the shot was heard and reported, but the rifle Carl had wouldn’t take a silencer, and he wouldn’t know where to get one from even if it would. He had to assume that someone would call the police. After all, the locals couldn’t be used to that much gunfire. Not even in Brentford.

  Using the estate agents’ sites again, Carl located a flat on the top floor of his preferred firing location that was currently for sale. It might be empty; it might not: he would probably have to conduct a reconnaissance in person to find out. If it was empty, and assuming it wasn’t under offer and didn’t sell between now and the fifth day, then it would make a good location. He wouldn’t make the mistake of approaching the estate agents for a viewing and then somehow copying the keys – he would be remembered, and the last thing he wanted to do was leave a trail. No, as long as the flat wasn’t actually boarded up then he would be able to break in.

  He printed out the various maps and images, just to be sure, and then bookmarked the sites so that he could revisit them later. He’d paid someone to install security software on the computer. It wasn’t just password protected, but if anyone tried to bypass the password control then the software would activate and wipe the hard disc. The person who fitted it for him had obviously assumed that he wanted to download hard-core porn from the internet without his parents finding out. He’d done that as well, but with his mother moved out of the house he felt he was pretty safe. His father used to be an architect. He had no idea how to get into computers.

  Closing the system down, Carl leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. He could feel the muscles in his back protesting at the strain they had been under. He needed a bath. No, he needed a cup of tea and then a bath.

  Carl left the computer room and headed up the garden path to the kitchen. The house had a faint musty smell that he only ever noticed when he returned after a while away. He knew what it meant; it was the sign of a house built on marshy, waterlogged ground where dampness had seeped into the foundations and up through the walls. It was the smell of a house where rot was almost inevitable in brick or wood or plaster or anything that wasn’t solid stone.

  His father was sitting in the lounge, reading.

  ‘Carl!’ he said, looking up eagerly. ‘I thought you’d gone out again.’

  ‘I was down in the shed. Just doing some work.’

  ‘Oh.’ He paused. ‘I thought I’d spend some time downstairs. Is that okay?’

  Carl forced a smile. ‘That’s fine. Of course that’s fine. I was just about to put the kettle on. Do you fancy a cuppa?’

  ‘Please.’

  Carl switched on the radio while the kettle boiled. BBC Essex would occasionally run a news item or a feature on the Catherine Charnaud murder or the bombing at Braintree Parkway, just as they had on Carl’s previous murders, and he liked to keep abreast of what was going on. It wasn’t anything vainglorious, like craving the excitement and attention that being referred to, even in passing, on TV or radio could create. It was more that he wanted to check on whether his mother was having any impact on the case, or whether she’d been brought in to consult on any others.

  ‘Actually, dad …’ he called out.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was wondering … You’ve been so much better recently. Would it be okay if … if I went out for an evening?’

  A longer pause this time. ‘That’s fine. You go ahead. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘If it’s a problem then I can put it off.’

  ‘No.’ Warmer. ‘You’re a good boy, Carl, looking after me. I know how much hanging around the house winds you up. You always preferred to be out in the countryside, watching the birds and the animals, to being stuck inside. It’s been difficult for you since Eleanor left. You deserve some time to yourself. Go and have fun.’

  ‘It’s just …’

  ‘It’s a girl, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Carl tried to inject a little awkwardness into his voice. ‘We met … at the supermarket. I said I’d take her to a film. We haven’t arranged a date yet.’

  ‘I’m glad. You go and enjoy yourself.’

  The local news came on just as Carl was pouring out his dad’s cup of tea, The lead story was still the Braintree bomb, but this time there was a twist, a new piece of the puzzle. Carl concentrated, turning the volume up so that he could hear more clearly through the static.

  ‘… While Essex Police have stated that Detective Chief Inspector Mark Lapslie, the man who had until now been leading the investigation, has been removed from the case. Anonymous sources within the police have told the BBC that DCI Lapslie was removed because he apparently believes he can literally sniff out a cri
minal by the odour they leave behind at a crime scene. Essex Police have declined to comment on these claims, or on the suggestion that a serial killer is at work …’

  Carl dropped the cup. It seemed to fall for ever, liquid glinting as it turned before smashing on the kitchen floor, sending the tea spilling in a steaming brown wave across the tiles. Hot water spattered against his legs, but he barely noticed. He felt sick.

  ‘Carl? What happened?’

  ‘Sorry. The cup was hotter than I thought. I’ll … I’ll clear it up and pour another one.’

  Lapslie. Mark Lapslie. The police officer he had seen conducting the press conference about the bombing. Emma Bradbury’s boss. Despite the barely veiled scorn of the newsreader, and the suggestion that Lapslie had been removed from the case because he was delusional, he somehow knew that the two deaths were connected. Either he had worked it out, or he actually could smell Carl’s involvement.

  Carl thought, feverishly, as he mopped up the spilled tea. He had spent long enough working on Catherine Charnaud, stripping the flesh relentlessly from her bones, that his perspiration had almost certainly fallen onto the girl’s skin. He’d also used the toilet in the house. Could Lapslie have smelled that? The bombing confused him for a moment – he had been hundreds of yards away from the site of the explosion – but then he remembered urinating on the roof of the shopping centre, squatting out of sight and relieving himself after several hours of waiting for the right moment to arrive. Had he left a scent there, a spoor that Lapslie had somehow been able to pick up?

  Carl picked up the shards of pottery and put them in the bin. The thought was insane, but it kept on circling around his mind like a bloated fly lazily circling a light bulb as he continued clearing the smashed mug and the spilled tea away. Animals had incredibly acute senses, he knew. Dogs could apparently detect early-stage breast and lung cancer with amazing accuracy just by sniffing the breath of someone who has that diagnosis. People could sometimes develop their own senses to match. He’d once heard in hushed tones about a hunter up in the wilds of Scotland whose night vision was better than a cat’s. He lived in the dark; sleeping during the day in a bedroom lined with thick black cloth to keep out the light. Nobody was allowed to smoke near him because the glow of their cigarette would disrupt his finely honed vision. To him, a starlit sky was like the noonday sun, and on a cloudy, moonless night he could see for miles when everyone else around him couldn’t see their own hand in front of their face. No, Carl believed that people could sense things, if they put their mind to it, especially if they were compensating for something else. How else could blind people read the Braille signs inside lifts, which felt no more distinct than raised scar tissue to Carl? Their fingertips must be incredibly sensitive.