Day of the Dead: A gripping serial killer thriller (Eve Clay)

by Mark Roberts

  The officers, one in his twenties and the other in his fifties, looked cold and their breaths mingled in the chilly air as white mist. The younger officer looked at Clay with a mixture of what looked like awe and disbelief. She smiled at him and said, ‘Close your mouth, please, it’s rude to stare.’

  ‘I – I’m sorry, I’ve heard such a lot about you...’

  ‘It’s not just the two of you surely,’ said Clay.

  ‘We’ve got a team following,’ said the older officer. As he spoke, his name and context came into place.

  ‘Colin. You ran the log for me on the Baptist’s final murder scene.’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory, DCI Clay.’ He sounded flattered.

  ‘It wasn’t a good memory but you did a good job, Colin. I’m sorry, guys, but you’re going to have to wait outside until Terry’s ready.’

  The younger officer had his phone out and he looked at Clay eagerly. ‘Can I get a selfie with you?’

  ‘Not here, not now. Sorry.’ She pointed to the removals lorry and, as they headed off, she chuckled as the older man said, ‘You’re a fucking A-one lemon, Tony.’

  ‘Eve?’ said Michael Harper, the head APT, limping towards the gate of 699 Mather Avenue.

  ‘What’s up with you, Harper?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Sciatica. My back’s killing me. We heard it’s the same killer as David Wilson’s. Is the victim a paedophile?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Got what was coming to him,’ said Harper’s colleague.

  ‘We’re here to sort out a murder,’ said Clay, leading them to the front door. ‘I’ll take you to the body. We’re not here to judge,’ she added to Harper’s new assistant as she took them upstairs, regretting the hollowness of her tone, and hoping they didn’t notice.

  16

  9.02 pm

  As Detective Sergeant Karl Stone walked up to Samantha Wilson’s second-floor flat, he noticed her perfume as she followed behind him. It had a fragrance that put him in mind of summer flowers, sunshine and aromatic spices.

  Stepping on to the second floor, he turned the key to Flat 5 in his hand and noticed that, in spite of the cold night air, his palms were moist and his throat and mouth were dry.

  At the door of Flat 5, he said, ‘Wait out here, Sammy. I’ll turn on all the lights and check the rooms.’ He turned the key in her lock.

  ‘I’m sorry to put you to all this trouble,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the first and most important part of my job, to protect members of the public.’

  He opened the door and stepped inside the well-maintained and tidy flat. He’d visited twice before when he’d called to speak to Samantha about her father and the past and he knew the layout well. In the narrow hallway, he turned on the wall switch and light fell into the doorway of the galley kitchen and the wide living room overlooking Percy Street.

  Kitchen, light on. Living room, light on. No one and nothing to fear in either space.

  He opened the bathroom door wide, flicked on the switch and winced at his reflection in the mirror. Prematurely grey hair slicked back, his face a map of lines, Mr Car Crash, as he often mocked himself. Each time he caught his reflection, he was shocked and disappointed, which was why he only had one mirror – for shaving – in his flat.

  He turned his eyes away and headed off to the bedroom at the back of the flat, the one room he hadn’t been in.

  When he turned the bedroom light on, he saw a simple but feminine space with a large bed in the left-hand corner and a modern white dressing table, matching the bed, at the window to catch the light. The wardrobe against the opposite wall coordinated with the other two pieces of furniture.

  He thought of his own untidy though clean flat, around the corner and five minutes away on Princes Avenue. I could do with her coming around and sorting my place out. A thought he dismissed as soon as it formed in his mind.

  It was in her bedroom that the smell of summer flowers was at its strongest and Stone realised, as he gazed at the bed, that it wasn’t a manufactured scent, it was a body odour that was personal to her.

  Stone imagined her asleep in the bed on a warm’s summer’s night, naked beneath the thin sheet draped over the curves of her body, and he heard himself give the deepest sigh.

  ‘Sammy!’ He stepped away from the bedroom and called to the landing outside her front door.

  ‘Yes, Karl?’

  ‘I’ve checked all the rooms: there’s absolutely nothing for you to be frightened of.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He could hear the smile in her voice, and the relief behind that smile.

  ‘Want me to turn the lights off?’

  ‘I can’t afford to waste electricity. Yes, please.’

  Within moments, the only light on in the flat was the hall light. At the door of the front room, Stone noticed the way that the bay window in the living room was flooded with yellow streetlight and found himself walking deeper into the front room, drawn towards the ghostly illumination.

  ‘You can come in, Sammy. You’re safe!’

  He looked across the street at the tall off-white Victorian terrace that mirrored the building he was in and heard the front door close softly. A floorboard creaked as Samantha stepped inside her home. Stone sensed her moving closer, entering the front room. She didn’t turn on the light or speak as she made her way towards him.

  Her natural perfume hit his senses and he felt something turn tightly in his core.

  Her arm brushed his as she stood beside him in the bay. ‘It’s magnetic, isn’t it?’ She looked not at him but out of the window.

  ‘What’s magnetic, Sammy?’

  ‘This window, amongst other things. When the woman from the Housing Trust showed me the flat, the thing that really attracted me was this window. It was daytime, obviously, but I did exactly what you did. I walked over to the window and stood right where you are, looking out at the street and the houses over the road. Isn’t it strange how we both did the same thing?’

  ‘No, it’s beautiful.’

  ‘Beautiful, Karl?’

  ‘This feature.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He turned his head to look at her and she was facing him.

  ‘It’s not the only thing of beauty, Karl.’

  ‘What else is beautiful?’

  ‘You are.’

  He recalled his recent encounter with his reflection and waited for her to laugh. Instead, in the amber light that engulfed them, she pleaded with her eyes. Believe me. He looked directly into her eyes and felt the foundations of his whole self crumbling into dust. He pushed back with all his willpower but his weight seemed to vanish into nothing. Then another picture flashed through his mind.

  It’s a warning, he thought, an instinctive warning.

  ‘What are you thinking, Karl?’

  He turned. Her breath caressed his face and the sweetness intensified.

  ‘I think you’ve been through a great trauma,’ he heard himself say. ‘And I don’t think you’re quite seeing straight.’

  She pressed her hands against his neck, her lips against his and the numbing effect of three years of loneliness disappeared and was replaced by something vivid and painful.

  The tip of her tongue pressed into the small but yielding gap between his lips and an image from the recurring nightmare Stone had suffered since he’d met Samantha as part of his work on the Wilson murder filled his head and made him pull away from her.

  ‘Don’t you like me, Karl?’ Hurt and loneliness marbled each word.

  At their first meeting, the day after he had seen her father’s naked corpse, Samantha had shown him a picture of herself aged thirteen.

  ‘Yes, I like you very much, Sammy.’

  That night, as he slept, he had dreamed he was paralysed, standing in the corner of Wilson’s bedroom.

  ‘If you like me very much, Karl, why won’t you kiss me? Hold me? I’m desperately lonely and you’re so nice to me.’

  In the dream, on the bed, Wilson had grunted a
s he raped thirteen-year-old Samantha, then laughed as he turned his head and looked directly at Stone, frozen and screaming silently. ‘You can go next, Stone!’

  ‘Sammy, listen to me, please. I’m on my own too. I have been for a long time and I do like you very much. But I’m a senior officer in a team investigating your father’s murder. Two things. I can’t get involved with witnesses...’ He could hear blood pounding in his ears. ‘And there’s been a development tonight that’s just made your father’s killing a lot more complex and serious.’

  Tears rolled down her face. He placed his arms around her. Her whole body stiffened and he felt her withdrawing from him.

  ‘When we sort out this mess, maybe we could go out to dinner. Can you wait a while? Can you give me a chance when the time is right?’

  ‘Can you let me go!’

  He dropped his arms and she walked towards the door.

  ‘You’re a very kind man. You’re saying that to be kind to me but you don’t want me...’

  He followed her as she drifted towards the front door of her flat. ‘Sammy, please...’

  She shook her head and opened the front door wide. ‘You’re also a very busy man. That’s obvious. You must go back to work now.’ She pointed to the space beyond the door. ‘Thank you.’

  He looked at her as he left but she turned her head away. The door closed and he waited. Silence.

  As Stone walked to the stairs, he heard a muffled noise from behind her door.

  He hurried down the stairs and the sound that followed him grew louder with each step.

  Alone in her flat, Samantha Wilson wept.

  17

  9.04 pm

  From the doorway of the bedroom, Clay watched what looked like a deathbed scene from a bizarre dream.

  On the right-hand side of the bed, Harper, senior APT, unzipped a silver-grey body bag. The rasp of its unclenching teeth was the only sound in the room. At the foot of the bed, Hendricks looked down on Steven Jamieson’s body and prepared his iPhone to film the transfer of the body from the mattress into the body bag. On the left-hand side of the bed, Harper’s colleague cast a cold eye over the corpse, working out the best way to move it.

  Behind Clay, on the landing, DS Terry Mason asked, ‘Hey, Harper, do you want me and Paul Price to help?’

  ‘Yes.’ His voice was little more than a whisper. ‘If you’ll hold the bag open, top and bottom, so we can get the body in cleanly.’

  Clay moved aside and, within moments, DS Mason and Sergeant Price were crouched, keeping the interlocking teeth of the zip wide apart down the centre of the bag.

  ‘Turn him over!’ said Harper.

  The junior APT dug his latex-gloved hands under the shoulder and hip and carefully lifted the weight of Steven Jamieson’s corpse. As the chest and front thigh came into view, Harper said, ‘Get ready for it! Carefully, carefully...’

  ‘Oh my giddy God,’ said Mason, who had a close-up view of the turning corpse.

  Clay took a deep breath and hummed three random notes at the base of her throat.

  The source of the bloodstain on the mattress came clearly into view. Between his legs, and rising to his pubic bone, was a bloody cave the size of a large orange.

  Clay looked at Mason’s face as Jamieson’s head flopped towards him. His eyes were covered with a black blindfold. His cheeks bulged and his mouth was sealed by silver masking tape.

  Harper held the weight of Jamieson’s body as it came to rest on its back.

  ‘You did what you did, sure enough, Mr Jamieson,’ said Harper. ‘And sure enough you paid for it.’ He looked at Clay. ‘The killer’s removed the victim’s genitalia with the same or a similar surgical scalpel as was used last time.’

  ‘Twenty-four-carat Vindici,’ said Harper’s assistant with restrained admiration.

  That recurring detail of Vindici’s murders was common knowledge. The removal of the victim’s genitalia was plastered all over the media during his killing spree back in 2007 and 2008.

  ‘Harper?’ She drew the attention of both APTs. ‘Let’s get the body bagged and off to Dr Lamb at the mortuary.’

  Hendricks moved aside as Harper made his way towards Jamieson’s head and shoulders. His assistant stuck his hands around the victim’s ankles. ‘Still warm, said Harper placing his hands under the shoulders

  Harper winced, his face full of pain.

  ‘I’ll lift him into the body bag for you, Harper,’ said Clay.

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Do you want me to do that?’ said Hendricks.

  Yes please, thought Clay. ‘It’s OK, Bill,’ she replied. ‘Keep filming.’

  Loathing mounted up inside Clay and the thought of touching Stephen Jamieson made her nauseous. She looked from his mutilated groin to his bulging cheeks.

  She dug down to the deepest layer of grit in her being and, taking a stiff breath, said, ‘OK, let’s just get on with this.’

  As she stooped next to Stephen Jamieson’s head, Clay placed the backs of her hands between the mattress and his shoulders and was deeply grateful that she was wearing latex gloves. She cupped her fingers into his armpits and, feeling the coarse texture of hair, felt as if her scalp was suddenly overrun with lice.

  ‘On the count of three, lift! Ready?’

  She nodded and counted with Harper’s assistant, ‘One, two, three.’

  Hendricks’s iPhone rang out, Yazz’s 1980s number-one hit ‘The Only Way Is Up’. ‘Can you picture me on the dance floor in the Cabin with a bunch of rather uninhibited student nurses?’ A ripple of laughter ran round the room and, as the music stopped, Clay was grateful for the brief distraction.

  Lifting the dead man from the mattress, Clay looked at his gagged mouth, blindfolded eyes and then at the curve of his forehead, imagining what kind of darkness, what decadence had filled his brain when he was alive. In life you were a predator and a menace, but in death you’re just a dead weight, she said to herself, trying hard to concentrate on getting him into the body bag.

  The smell of his burned flesh clashed with his sour body odour.

  ‘Stop!’ said Clay, her head swimming. She looked down at DS Terry Mason at the head of the body bag, holding it wide open.

  A bead of perspiration rolled down Clay’s forehead.

  ‘Ready to lower him in?’ asked Harper’s assistant.

  ‘Let’s just do it!’ said Clay, hating the touch of his head against the tops of her thighs.

  ‘One two three, lower!’

  She bent her knees and as she came closer to the ground the weight of his body seemed to double.

  ‘I really appreciate this, DCI Clay,’ said Harper, touching the base of his back.

  As Clay slowly sank the shoulders between the open zip, his head flopped back, giving him a momentary semblance of life.

  Shoulders in the bag, Clay pulled her hands away as quickly as she could, feeling the teeth of the zip comb the backs of her hands.

  As she stood to her full height, Clay looked at her hands in the light and wanted to sink them in boiling water laced with industrial-strength bleach.

  Harper’s assistant pulled the zip of the body bag up from the base towards the top, sealing in Steven Jamieson’s remains. Clay looked again at his blindfolded eyes and gagged mouth as the closing zip folded over them and wondered what his eyes had seen, what he’d said to his victims, what weeping and begging for mercy he’d heard, and how the pain and terror must have elevated his senses and made him buzz with illicit pleasure.

  ‘I’ll stop filming now,’ said Hendricks.

  She felt the weight of a hand on her left shoulder and was reassured by Hendricks’s touch.

  ‘You did well, Eve. Not the easiest thing to do.’

  ‘Thanks, Bill...’ A thought struck her and she paused.

  ‘What?’ asked Hendricks.

  ‘We’re going to have to dig out the sex offenders’ register, contact every paedophile in Merseyside area and warn them to be vigilant. We can us
e constables for the little fish, but we may well have to bring in the sharks.’

  She clenched and unclenched her hands, the texture of Stephen Jamieson’s hair still alive on her fingertips.

  ‘You want me to call Barney Cole and get him to organise that?’ asked Hendricks.

  Clay nodded. ‘Please.’

  ‘I’ll call him.’ He looked at the display on his phone. ‘That was a missed call from Carol White.’

  Clay pictured Sergeant White, child protection officer, and was sorry for her. ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s wading through the filth from David Wilson’s laptop. I spent a lot of time with her last Friday. A lot of tears. A lot of silence. She’s getting through.’

  ‘How on earth does she do it?’

  ‘I don’t know – but what’s wrong, Eve?’ asked Hendricks. ‘You look like you’ve just lost your engagement ring.’

  Clay took a moment to straighten out her thoughts. ‘We’ve got a leak and they’re in league with the perpetrator.’

  ‘How are you going to address this, Eve?’

  ‘Head on. Before the team meeting in the morning. I’ve got no choice.’

  18

  9.46 pm

  In the cool and brightly lit air of Autopsy Room 1, Clay tied the belt at the back of a green plastic apron and watched the elderly-looking pathologist washing her hands at the aluminium sink, her name etched in indelible ink around the tops of both rubber boots: ‘DR MARY LAMB’.

  Clay turned on the hot tap, the sensation of Steven Jamieson’s dead body still alive on her fingers and hands. As the stream of water turned quickly from warm to hot, she sank both hands into the liquid, turning them over, spreading her fingers to allow the water to cover every last piece of the skin from the base of her wrists to the tips of her fingers. The water burned as it ran down the lines on her palms and, slowly, she withdrew her hands from the flood.

  From the pocket of the blue theatre tunic that she had dressed in to watch the post-mortem, Clay’s iPhone rang out.

  ‘Domestic or private?’ Dr Lamb smiled.