“Sharpe's ex-wife, Clarisa, and his two young daughters, Milicent and Kimberly, live within sight of here, one of those lights up there.” Copperwaite pointed to the nearby buildings and windows that circled about Hyde Park and the gardens. Copperwaite volunteered more, seeing that Jessica remained interested. “Imagine, this killer has been walking the same paths, visiting the pond where his little girls play and wade. It's really almost too much for anyone, even a stalwart chap like Colonel Sharpe there.”
Jessica imagined the few short blocks that Sharpe could walk from here to see his two children. Those few blocks must seem a mere stone's throw from this bloody path taken by the Crucifier.
When Jessica had first met Sharpe, she could not have imagined him ever being anything but rocklike, unswerving, unshakable. Here he had definitely been shaken and shaken badly, given the proximity of the crime to the flat where his children lived and played. Sharpe's veneer had dropped and fear had replaced the inscrutable eyes, a fear of loss, a fear for the harm a maniac like the Crucifier could do to his children.
Jessica and Copperwaite drifted toward the water, as if drawn by the enormous Serpentine, or merely as subconscious steps to move away from the death at their feet. Copperwaite's reference to Richard as “Colonel” Sharpe surprised her a bit. Something odd in Copperwaite's voice, or perhaps in how Jessica interpreted the tone. Was it a sneer? Something about the sound of it made her recall Dr. Luc Sante's theory, found peppered throughout his book, might well be true: The least suspicious among us, often turn out to be the most evil among us. The thought made her flash on the bizarre possibility that Stuart Copperwaite had somehow arranged to hurt his partner, Sharpe, in this fashion. That the maniac hiding deep within Copperwaite had killed three others in this horrendous manner, just to bring home this fourth to his partner's doorstep, all done out of some twisted desire to see Richard Sharpe quake.
Jessica just as quickly dismissed her mad notion, and returned to the body, knowing her job was to concentrate on the evidence and not speculation. She returned to taking samples, expecting Schuller to arrive, and in his typically bombastic manner, take over the evidence gathering at any moment, but so far, she was the sum total of the evidence gathering team. She wondered at this, curious for a moment, but then her eyes shifted to where Sharpe stood at the water's edge with the two men who had dragged the body from the water, one a civilian, the other a police officer in uniform.
Jessica examined the victim's nails and found them perfectly clean. If she had put up a fight, the water left no trace of flesh or blood beneath her nails. This had been the same with the other victims. She imagined the same drug—Brevital—would be found in the victim's bloodstream, making resistance unlikely.
She glanced time to time from her work to where Richard remained at water's edge, joined once by Copperwaite, but now alone again. His eyes scanned Lake Serpentine in what appeared deep concentration.
“If you can suspect Copperwaite of so foul a crime, to unnerve Sharpe,” she told herself in careful whisper, “then why not suspect Sharpe himself? Sharpe was behind getting you here, Jessica. Maybe, behind that veneer of respectability, he's just another madman anxious to test your mettle against his.”
She instantly cursed herself. Had she become so jaded, she wondered, as to trust no one on the planet ever again? Evil had a way of overcoming the evil-fighter, and was she not being evil in her very thoughts now, first toward Copperwaite and now toward Sharpe?
She gasped when she realized Sharpe now stood over her and the body. He was speaking to her, saying, “I spent a number of years in the British forces, saw a lot of the world and evil at every turn, Jessica, but in all that I never once felt fear as I do tonight. Can you imagine that? I stand here so near my children, and I feel fear as I have never experienced it in my adult life ever. I'm reduced to a child by this madman.”
“It's understandable, and quite frankly, I just finished up trying to imagine it. This maniac has hit quite close to home. Anyone would feel the same, Richard.”
“I'm going to go see them.”
“Now?” asked Copperwaite, exasperated with Richard. “Don't be a fool, Richard. That's all old Boulte will need to hear. He'll have your job f'sure.”
“My children, Stuart. This is about my children. You're the primary investigator on this one, Stuart. You've earned it. Tell him that, should he bother to show up.” With that he stepped away from the crime scene, resigned to whatever fate lie ahead.
Jessica watched him disappear into the gloom and fog that had—like a secret everyone but Jessica shared—come in over the area.
She cursed. “I need more light. I can't do any more out here without field lights, Stuart.”
“What more has to be done?”
“I guess you're right. I suppose we should get the body to the crime lab.”
“I'll call for the ambulance. They've learned to come only when they're called. Maybe, if we act fast enough, no one will have to know about Richard's having left the scene. It could go bad for him.”
“No one will hear it from me,” she promised.
“Nor I, if I can at all help it.”
Copperwaite took himself aside and made a call on his cellular phone for the police ambulance. He called back to her after several minutes to say, “Seems Schuller's wife fell ill and Boulte's been at some gala event for the city, some charity affair or other. They've neither one any knowledge of victim number four, our Miss Another. Perhaps Richard's got away with it after all.”
“Are you talking to Schuller's assistant, Dr. Raehael, or someone else on call?”
“It's the Egyptian's day off, I'm afraid. They're overtaxed tonight, and say since you're on hand to leave it at that.”
“We are fortunate, then, aren't we?”
“That we are.”
Jessica looked in the direction Sharpe had taken. Upward in the distance, she could still make out the blinking lights of several tall buildings along Hyde Park Gardens and Baywater Road. They were a far cry from the discovery sites in the three other murders, all of which had been along the Thames, one within striking distance of Lombard Street—the City, as it was called—the principal street for banking and international finance. “The Big Four,” Sharpe had told Jessica, “the major banks, National Westminster, Barclays, Lloyds, and Midland.”
“Giants,” he'd called them. Jessica imagined them now, all the icons of London, among them Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, and Big Ben, now with murder lurking in the shadows cast by each.
Why?” she wondered aloud.
“Why what?” asked Copperwaite.
“Why bring the body so much further away this time?”
“From the Thames and Victoria Gardens Embankment, you mean?”
“From the more central locations the first three were found at, yes.”
Copperwaite considered this. It had been the reason Sharpe had believed it possible the fourth victim could be a copycat. It didn't fit the geography of the other crimes. “He knows we're watching the bridges about the Thames,” suggested Copperwaite. “He's no fool this one. Rather clever, actually, if you think about his movements. The way he's kept us all guessing and on our toes, wouldn't you say? Smart bugger, he is, this one ...”
“Yes, he knows we're onto his MO, at least how he disposes of the bodies.”
“So he motors here with the body in his boot.”
Jessica said, “Yes again.”
“So our killer is quite capable of moving about the city, quite mobile.”
“It appears so.”
Copperwaite snatched out a breath mint and laid it neatly on the end of his tongue. “The bridgeman said he saw a car parked nearby but had thought nothing of it.”
“Exactly how long has he been divorced?” she asked.
Copperwaite, befuddled by the sudden shift in her questioning, at first replied, “The bridgeman?” But he immediately regrouped and said, “Richard? Oh, yes. Three, three and
a half years now, I believe.”
“And has he someone he's seeing now? Has he moved on?”
“Dunno. He never speaks of anyone, no, but for a time he was seeing someone. Quite hush-hush, he is. I never knew her name. Puts his effort into his police work mostly. That and his children. Sees them fairly regularly. Gets on fairly well with the ex as well. She simply couldn't handle being a policeman's wife. Old story, really.”
“Very,” she agreed.
“He cut quite a dashing figure in his uniform. I've seen photos. Looks like your GI Joe, really. Made rank of colonel, you know, in the military, I mean.”
“Is that so?”
“Aye, it is.”
“He seems a remarkable man.”
“Remarkable, yes. James Bond we call him at the Yard.”
“When you're not calling him 'Sharpie,' you mean?”
“Sharpe he is. Lives up to his namesake. An ancestor who fought in the Napoleonic wars. His great-grandfather or some other fought ferociously for the Crown and won honors in battles in Spain and France, but he didn't come from nothing like royalty. It's partially why he and Boulte can never get along.”
“I see, I think.”
“Richard's just your ordinary British blood, bom of common stock as they say, which isn't bad, really. Richard himself was bom within the sound of Bow Bells.”
“Isn't that where the first victim was found?”
“Aye, true enough, Doctor.”
“Just coincidence, like this ...”
“Beggin' your pardon, mum—Doctor?”
'Tonight... being so close to Sharpe's home, and—”
“Former home,” Copperwaite corrected Jessica as if defending his partner.
“—and that first killing being in the sound of Bow Bells, so close to home—Richard Sharpe's home, I mean.”
Copperwaite suddenly stared quizzically at her. “Whatever are you gettin' at. Doctor?”
Jessica shrugged. “Oh, nothing really. Just funny how coincidental things happen in life, and how small the world actually is, even in an enormous city like London.”
“Coincidence ... occurrences. I could tell you scores of stories about my uncle Thomas that would curl your hair for the coincidence in that man's life.”
She smiled at this. Then the sound of a siren signaled an end to her crouching over the body in the cooling evening, in the now dense fog of Hyde Park.
Somewhere out over the Serpentine, a swan bellowed a mournful cry, like some forlorn mother in anguish over a lost child. Other swans answered the first to call out. Soon, like dogs roused in a neighborhood late at night, a cacophony of swan calls exploded like fireworks all across the lake. The noise it made created a poor mimicry of the ambulance wail as the little automobile screeched to a halt, kicking up dust. Its siren went silent only when the driver came to idle, the spiraling red lights creating a mosaic of shadows in all directions.
The huge-shouldered driver, his shiny bald head reflecting the emergency lights, displayed the forehead of a Neanderthal where he stood after climbing from the cab and striking a match to light a cigarette. In London, smokers enjoyed their cigarettes everywhere, regardless of the known health risks the habit posed. So here the man stood, leaning against his meat wagon like a New York longshoreman, daring anyone to tell him what to do. So he rested, obviously not anxious to lift the ponderous cargo he and his partner had come to collect. The partner, unlike him, his opposite in fact—a petite, long-haired, blond female—raced to the rear of the van to enthusiastically haul out the stretcher on her own. At the same time she frantically searched about for the direction of the corpse, until seeing Jessica, who waved them over.
Jessica didn't see or hear again from Inspector Richard Sharpe until the following morning while at autopsy over the latest Jane Doe. “Still no word on her identity,” he whispered in Jessica's ear. Most people whispered around dead people, as if speaking quietly were a requirement, some sort of Miss Manners rule number seventy-nine that stated, “Thou shalt be tranquil and silent in the face of death.” Perhaps they thought that to go into rancor at it would only upset the demons. But Sharpe's serenity seemed greater than the usual silence about the morgue and crime lab. He appeared genuinely refreshed, as if anxious to attack the problem of the Crucifier as never before.
“How are your girls?” she asked.
“Gonzo, actually. Lovely creatures, the both of them.” Sharpe had a disposable cup filled with black coffee in his hand, the steam caressing his cheek. “Does you well to see them, I can tell. You look refreshed.” She wondered if he'd gone to bed with his ex-wife and had gotten himself into a totally relaxed state this morning. It did seem so, she silendy mused.
“Absolutely, yes. Seeing the children, well it's like taking a drink from that fountain of youth everyone throughout the ages has searched for.”
“Perhaps there is where it lies, in our children.”
“Have you any? Children, I mean?”
“ 'Fraid not.”
“Pity. But then, you're young and have time.” He sipped at his coffee.
She smiled, thought of Jim Parry and his wish for children and wondered if men felt as much a need to have children as did women. In the sense that they wished to carry on their DNA, to make little clones of themselves, perfectly suited to the male ego.
Jessica returned her attention to the dead woman on the slab before her. Schuller's young assistant, Dr. Al-Zadan Raehael, remained all the help she had. He seemed capable and a good deal more at ease knowing that Dr. Karl Schuller would not be barreling through the door at any moment. Called back from his day off, he appeared sullen. “I've found nothing to distinguish her,” Jessica informed Sharpe, her eyebrows raised in mock supplication. “No birthmarks, no earlier fractures or sutures. Very little dental work has been done. It will be hard to ID the woman.”
“I've spoken with Paul Boulte. Fortunately, he never knew of my stepping off the task last evening. Copperwaite covered my bases, as you Americans are fond of saying.”
“Not all of us are fond of baseball metaphors, Richard.”
“I do wish to apologize for my behavior of—”
“Not at all.”
“—leaving you and Stuart in the lurch.”
“We managed just fine, as you can see.”
“Well, do accept my sincerest thank-you.”
“Accepted.”
“And should you care to see more of London, I do happen to be free this evening, say for dinner?”
“There's a great deal of the city I'd still like to see, and you have been so generous with your free time. Well, I'm both pleased and overwhelmed. You make a terrific guide.” Their eyes met and held for a moment, as they had the first time they met one another, back in Quantico, Virginia.
He smiled wide, his eyes flaring silver sparks from the deep green irises. “I'll take that as a yes, then.”
“Yes.”
“Another scare for Londoners,” Sharpe said, indicating the body before them.
“I saw the news photos. They must have paid the ambulance drivers. I never saw any press at the scene, nor at the crime lab when we got here.”
“Imagine the usual Geordie out there, opens his morning paper to find her dead eyes looking back up at him from his Gazette or Times,” ruminated Sharpe. 'To find a photo of the victim in death on the front page. Turns out that Stuart put the other victims' photos out there, and he likely did this one as well, to shake the tree, so to speak. It's a general call that's gone around, for anyone recognizing the woman to step forward, you see.”
“And you agree with the tactic?”
“Not altogether, no. Stuart and I had words about it.”
She nodded, biting her lip, wondering what “had words” in Great Britain meant. She certainly knew its American cousin. She finally said, “We're apt to utilize the press often in such cases in the States, but it's usually a step not taken lightly, much argument of the pros and cons with each case. You h
ave to weigh everything in the balance, and often you weigh up all wrong anyway.”
“Press pressure,” he confided.
“Ahhh, yes, we've certainly got that in the States, too. It's a so-called legitimate duress.”
“Serial killers here are rare, so the press is all over it. Actually, it's becoming all too common, as if... as if... Well, I'm not a bloody philosopher, but as I said, the closer we get to 2001, as was the case with the year 2000 as well, the more madness and deviltry we find ourselves embroiled in and surrounded by. Course, you know more about that than I.”
The millennium? The madness? Or being surrounded and embroiled in deviltry?” she asked.
“Quite possibly all three. Oh, we have our share of terrorists, what with the IRA and Hamas and other organizations swom to destroy us. That's madness enough, but this sort of thing, someone killing a string of people out of some blind rage or cult blindness.... No, I've not come across the like of this crucifying thing before.” He tossed his empty cup into a trash container. “Nor has anyone, I assure you. But you've faced monsters, human monsters, before, and that's what we're dealing with here. Not a man with a misguided political cause, but a man with a fantastic plan that boggles the mind and dares you to decipher the meaning.”
“Yes, in that regard, I guess I have had some experience. And perhaps you're right to work a theory connected with what the popular press is calling the turn of 'true millennium.' I know we Americans are overanxious about it. The teen suicide rate more than doubled at the turn of 2000. I shudder to think it will triple with the turn of 2001. Teens are routinely carrying guns and other weapons to schools, many out of paranoia. Unfortunately, we often downplay the force of change—especially technological change—and the anxiety it breeds. But also this fear of a major shift in time.”
“People are struggling, searching to make sense of a fundamentally unsteady world, a changing, evolving world,” Richard agreed.
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