by Mark Roberts
Clay looked at Dr Lamb’s kind, elderly face and caught the pathologist watching her. ‘Penny for them?’ asked Dr Lamb. ‘I’ve known you a long time, Eve. You have that look about you. Like a very nasty penny has just dropped...’
‘It’s David Wilson’s penis,’ replied Clay. She looked at the pathetic scrap of flesh. In death, she thought, it looked like the corpse of a small, defenceless animal. But in life, she reminded herself, it had been a lethal weapon that corrupted and abused Samantha Wilson, the daughter he was supposed to protect and cherish. ‘The killer, she’s harvested Steven Jamieson’s genitalia for her next outing.’
Footsteps echoed on a set of stairs outside the autopsy suite. Clay looked towards the source of the noise. Dr Lamb indicated the corpse.
‘That’s his spirit trying to escape before we cut him open,’ she said.
Clay smiled and wished she could escape as easily and, as the futile desire bloomed, the disturbing knowledge that the female killer was convinced of her own rectitude slammed into her. With two successful hits, the murderer’s appetite for blood would be massive and her craving for revenge would send her out on the hunt as soon as the first chill settled on her latest kill.
‘Harper!’ said Dr Lamb. ‘Please turn him onto his front. I need to look at the back of his neck.’
‘Eve?’ said Dr Lamb. ‘Can I have a word with you?’ The pathologist drew Clay out of the APTs’ earshot. ‘You’ve attended over a hundred autopsies that I’ve conducted. I have to say, you don’t look yourself.’
‘I’m OK.’ Clay smiled at the pathologist. The kindness in Lamb’s eyes had sparked a sensation she used to experience all the time when she was a little girl in the care of Sister Philomena. As though something large and warm and invisible was wrapping itself all around her.
‘Your phone call from home? Is everything all right?’
‘There’s a huge part of me that’s a mother and the mother in me doesn’t like working this case.’
‘I’d advise you to ask to be pulled from it, but I know what your response would be. You’d say, Another huge part of me is a police officer. I won’t ask to be pulled. It makes me look weak and unprofessional.’ Dr Lamb smiled at Clay. ‘It doesn’t matter what awful things these people have done. We cannot tolerate a vigilante roaming round Liverpool doling out the death sentence. It doesn’t matter what people think or say. To live in a civilised society we must make difficult choices and do things that sometimes go against our human nature.’
‘It’s as if you’ve read my mind. That’s what I’ve been telling myself from the moment I knew about Wilson’s past.’ Clay looked at Jamieson’s body on the rubber board. ‘And now this.’
Dr Lamb placed her hand on Clay’s right forearm, curling her fingers around her wrist. In the bright overhead lights of the mortuary, for a moment, the sight of her thin-skinned hand and the tender gesture sent Clay back in time to Sister Philomena and her gentle touch.
‘I know you’ve got your husband to talk to about this at home. But if you need an extra pair of ears, call me any time, Eve,’ said the pathologist.
Clay watched Dr Lamb return to her work and felt a weight lifting from her whole being. As the pathologist spoke to Harper, for a brief moment she even looked like Sister Philomena dressed in a pathologist’s theatre clothes. The moment passed, and she whispered to Hendricks, ‘I’m seeing things.’
‘What was that, Eve?’
Clay pressed down on her feelings and commanded herself with a silent rebuke: Work!
‘I can see the bruising on his neck and throat in keeping with strangulation as in the last case. Let’s shave the hairline at the back of his head, see if the cause of death is the same as with the oh-so-charming Mr Wilson,’ said Dr Lamb.
‘The bookies won’t be taking bets on it,’ said Harper.
Harper rubbed water into the hair at the centre of Jamieson’s neck and massaged shaving foam into it. Then, without looking, he took a cut-throat razor from the aluminium trolley behind him.
‘Anything for the weekend, sir?’ he said as he drew the edge of the razor across Jamieson’s skin and hair.
Beneath the buzz of an overhead fluorescent light, Clay heard the rasping sound of Harper’s razor on Jamieson’s flesh and the hairs on her arms rose.
‘Took us ages to find on the last one. Such a tiny yet lethal entry wound,’ observed Dr Lamb.
Harper placed the razor back on the trolley and took a torch from it. He directed a beam of light where he had shaved Jamieson’s neck and Dr Lamb crouched behind the corpse to take a close look.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Dr Lamb. ‘It took us such a long time to work it out last time. But the cause of death is the same as Wilson’s. Someone’s pierced his brain with a two-millimetre-wide spoke, probably from a bicycle wheel. The spoke’s been sharpened at the tip and down each side. The spoke went into the brain, and when it was inserted as far it could go, the killer used the spoke like a windscreen wiper, over and over and over. They... she certainly knew what they were doing. Harper, take some pictures of the entry wound, please.’
The pathologist looked at Clay and Hendricks. ‘Same methodology as last time. Same methodology as Justin Truman aka Vindici back in the day. She took Wilson to the point of passing out with strangulation. Then she entered his brain while he was conscious. Vindici was a creative killer. As copycats go, she’s very good. This man died in agony. Then she took his genitals.’
As Harper and his assistant turned Jamieson’s body on to its front, Clay felt the buzz of an incoming text on her iPhone; she ignored it to home in on the rectangular bald patch at the base of his neck.
Jamieson’s skin tone was lighter than Wilson’s and so the bloody dot inside the shaved skin was clearer to see.
As Harper’s assistant took picture after picture of Jamieson’s back, he said, ‘Look at that! She’s carved Vindici on his shoulder, almost like she’s branded him as an animal on a farm.’
‘No sign of any penetration to his anus,’ said Dr Lamb. ‘Count the whip wounds to the back of his legs. Judging by the narrow width of the cuts, she used the bicycle spoke to do this, I think.’
Clay looked at Jamieson under the harsh overhead fluorescent lights, at the dark hair that obscured his buttocks and legs, and was put in mind not of a farm animal but of an ape that by some freak malfunction of nature had morphed into the approximation of a man.
22
10.13 pm
Alone in the dark of a small bathroom, warmth flooded her heart, and a satisfaction that was even deeper than the glowing pride she’d experienced on the first outing to Aigburth Vale to visit David Wilson, a week and a half ago. She recalled how she’d hidden on the corner of Lugard Road, in the shadows of the school railings, and watched Sandra Wilson walk out of her house in Dundonald Road, get into her car and drive away, leaving her husband David all alone in the house.
With each passing day, the warmth that she’d gained from torturing and killing Wilson had slowly diminished until she was as cold as ice once more, cold enough to completely focus, cold enough to kill. And just as the warmth had faded, the peace in her mind which accompanied that warmth had crumbled and her night-dreams were once more filled with chaos.
She looked into the mirror over the sink, her eyes growing accustomed to the solid darkness of bathroom, the sodium streetlight outside seeping through frosted glass into the bathroom just bright enough to make out the outline of her face and head in the glass.
Points of light shone in her eyes and reflected in the mirror; around her eyes, she saw white circles.
Pipes rattled, the faulty bath tap stuttered and leaked drips of water. With each drip she spoke into the mirror. ‘He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me!’
The dripping stopped and she fell silent but other words echoed inside her head.
‘Of course he does? Of course he does...’
She felt a smile filling her face and could make out the pattern
s of black and white paint that covered her features.
Dead and alive. Alive and dead. Skeleton and shadow. Shadow and skeleton. Neither one thing nor another.
With warmth back in her heart and peace in her mind, she went back in time as she’d walked along Mather Avenue in the bitterly cold evening air, the wind lifting dry autumn leaves in random patterns on the pavement as she made her way to the second destination.
She remembered the feeling and the thoughts inside her as she took step after step.
Colder than the night that cloaks me.
More chaotic than the wind that scatters the leaves.
Passing the Merseyside Police Training Academy, on the other side of the dual carriageway, she pulled the hood of her blood-red coat over her head and watched a police car speed past her in the direction of Garston, while across the central island, an 86 bus, alive with light but with not a single passenger, rumbled towards the city centre.
She reached into the pocket of her coat, felt the solid handle of her Stanley knife and the first crumbs of returning warmth, the first drops of precious peace. In her backpack, she felt the weight of the tools that she would need, and, tucked neatly in the lining of her coat, her spoke.
Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
She walked and walked. Time collapsed as she reached the lower 600s of Mather Avenue. The odd side of the road. Out of the teens and into the big houses of the 650s and 660s.
She tripped a security light at 671 and at 689 she looked at an empty driveway, saw the blinking red eye of a CCTV camera pointing out at the closed gate of the darkened, empty house.
Cameras held no terror for her, for how could a lens tell what she was, neither one thing nor another? How could they read what was and wasn’t her?
As she approached 699 she could almost smell the interior of the house, even though she was yet to step inside that particular lair with its smell of air fresheners that did nothing to mask the foul stench of corrupted flesh.
A police car travelled at eighty miles per hour on the other side of the dual carriageway, siren wailing, as she walked into the shadow of a tree and became the tree and became the shadow, neither one thing nor another.
Through the cold and chaos, she carried on in silence, and went about her business: 695. 697. 699.
The drive. Nice car. Citreon. Shiny and new.
As she passed the rear door, she dug the lethally sharp tip of her Stanley knife into the car’s paintwork and, carrying on slowly up the path, drew a continuous curving pattern, up and down, across the driver’s side, past the door, along the body to the headlights. Up and down. Down and up. Not one thing nor another.
The security light came on as she reached the open porch at the front door.
She looked down. Flat black shoes from Clarks. White socks pulled up to the knees. Red duffel coat a size too big for her body.
Now, in the mirror in her bathroom, she could see her face because a band of cloud that concealed the moon had passed by, and she laughed at the memory of the way he’d looked when he saw her painted face.
She laughed and it echoed in the confined space of the bathroom.
Jamieson had opened the door.
She had sprayed deodorant into his wide-open eyes, the hiss of the spray drowned by the cry of fear and pain from the bottom of his being.
She laughed and the noise travelled in a circle around the walls of the bathroom, rippling from her heart at the memory of Jamieson, the Human Abomination, falling back as she delivered five massive punches to his right ear, destroying his balance and turning him into human putty.
His Slut Wife, astonished and terrorised, gasped as she fell back under his weight, the crack of her skull as it connected with the post at the bottom of the stairs like music.
She kicked him on his face, and the Human Abomination butted the Slut Wife with the back of his head.
She read their faces and knew they understood. This was their worst nightmare come true and they had no hope of escape.
The Slut Wife’s head was bleeding and, as the Human Abomination ground the heels of his fists into his eyes, she reached a hand to the wet spot on her scalp. The Slut Wife opened her mouth to speak, to beg for mercy, but closed her mouth when she hissed at her for silence.
There could be no mercy for those who have had no mercy.
The Slut Wife looked up at her, her body heaving with sobs as he wept and made noises like an animal with its leg trapped between the jaws of a metal trap.
She took the My Little Pony backpack from her shoulders and, taking out two rags, stuffed one in his mouth and showed the other to the Slut Wife.
The Human Abomination rolled right on to the floor and passed out. She kicked him in his back but he didn’t react. She gripped the Slut Wife’s face and squeezed the cheeks hard, stared into her terrified eyes.
She laughed deep inside the redness of her hood and the Slut-Wife let out a feeble ha ha.
She laughed again, longer, louder, harder this time, poked the Slut Wife in between the breasts and she responded by laughing as best she could.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
The Slut Wife laughed as if she didn’t have a care in the wicked world.
The Slut Wife laughed, even though her husband was coming round now and weeping at the bottom of the stairs in the hall behind them.
Ha ha ha ha ha, laughed the Slut Wife. Mechanical and alone now because she had stopped laughing in the depths of her blood-red hood.
Ha ha ha ha ha...
She swung her arm back and slammed the palm of her hand at full force into the Slut Wife’s laughing face, silencing her as she dropped to the floor. She stuffed the rag into the woman’s mouth and watched terror rising in her eyes at the sight of a Stanley knife coming closer to her face.
The Slut Wife’s words were buried in the dense rag, but she pointed at the Human Abomination, and pleaded with her eyes. She plucked the rag from the Slut Wife’s mouth as the Human Abomination crawled three steps towards the door.
Exhausted, he stopped, looked at the Slut Wife, silently pleading with her to help him.
‘Do it to him! Don’t do it to me,’ said the Slut Wife. ‘Kill him if you want to but spare me.’
23
11.01 pm
In the shadows at the entrance of the Yewtree Road car park in Calderstones Park, DS Bill Hendricks stood outside his car and watched Carol White’s headlights swoop between the stone gateposts. Painfully aware of the time, Hendricks followed at speed towards her vehicle as she parked it under the skeletal braches of an oak tree.
Carol turned off her headlights and flicked on the little light above her head.
To Hendricks she looked as though she had just been hit with considerable force. She stared straight ahead, mouth open, eyes fixed and wide.
Stepping from the darkness, Hendricks jangled his car keys and called her name, firmly but kindly, ‘Carol, it’s me, Bill.’
When she looked at him, Hendricks had a fleeting insight into what it was like to be a ghost. She leaned across the empty passenger seat and unlocked the door.
As he sat and closed the door, he asked, ‘Are you all right?’
Carol looked directly at him, pushing her blond hair behind her ears, the blue of her eyes accentuated by the dark rings beneath them. For a moment, Hendricks thought the power of speech had deserted her.
‘I had to get out, Bill, I just had to.’
He read her face. The last time he had seen her, as she took a break from trawling through the pornographic films found on David Wilson’s laptop, she had seemed calm and tearful in equal measure. Now she looked lost.
She dropped her window with one hand and produced a packet of cigarettes with the other.
‘Do you mind?’ she asked, lighting up.
‘I thought you gave up?’
‘I did. When I got pregnant after all that IVF. Damien’s three now.’
‘So what made you go back to it?’ he asked, knowing the answer and looking
at the time on her dashboard.
‘When I began trawling through the laptop and pen drives discovered at Wilson’s den.’ She blew a stream of smoke into the darkness.
‘But, Carol, you’ve seen so much...’ He left the semi-concluded question in the tight space between them.
‘Yes, I’ve seen so much filth, so much violent oppression and heartless perversion, you’d think I’d be bomb-proof.’
‘That’s true but you’re only human.’
‘So are the children who I watch on film being abused. So are the adults abusing them. Suddenly I’ve gone from being numb and professional to this feeling like my entire skin’s crawling and the blood in my veins is toxic.’
‘Do you feel you need to come off the job? Get reassigned—?’
‘I can’t!’ she interrupted. ‘I’ve got the biggest overview of what Wilson and so many others used to watch for pleasure and I’m trying to work out if there was a connection between what he watched and what killed him.’ She drew in a lungful of smoke.
Hendricks knew she had a point.
‘If someone else takes over they’ll have to either rely on my reports or go back to square one. It’s a time-waster and we simply have no time to lose.’ A cold breeze blew through the open window and silent tears rolled down Carol’s face.
‘I’ve read all your reports. You’ve seen some grim stuff.’
‘Yeah.’
Her small, forlorn voice made Hendricks want to help her as quickly as he could. ‘Have you seen something tonight that’s upped the ante on what you’ve already seen?’ he asked, wondering if that was humanly possible.
‘No,’ she replied immediately. ‘It wasn’t good. How could it be? It was awful. But was it the worst? No.’ As she flicked the cigarette butt out of the car, Hendricks realised she’d smoked it in four or five drags. ‘But I sat there watching my laptop and suddenly my head felt like it was made of glass and about to explode into thousands of splinters. I could feel the tears rolling down my face and I wondered why? Why has this section of film affected me like this? I rolled it back to the point where I was aware I’d started crying. At first I couldn’t see. I couldn’t connect the action on screen to me snapping inside. It was a boy who I knew by sight. I’ve watched him grow older online. What Wilson had on his computer was new to me but it was a boy I’d seen from some other fucker’s treasure trove of misery.’
