by Peter James
“I’m being useless at the moment, and I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve always been determined never to stand in the way of your work. I guess I just didn’t realize how hard looking after a baby would be. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
“I didn’t either. It’ll be easier when we get a nanny sorted out. But we’ll get through it.”
“We will.”
As he said the words he felt his phone vibrate, signaling an incoming e-mail. He excused himself, saying he needed the loo, and slipped into the bathroom to open the e-mail in private, feeling guilty at his deception.
It was the JPEG from Marcel Kullen.
He opened it and stared at the woman’s face. Stared for a full, silent minute. His hands were trembling. Could this be her? Could this be Sandy?
The face was puffy and bruised, covered in abrasions, and a part of it was bandaged, with a plaster on her nose. There were similarities, yes. He couldn’t see the color of her eyes, which were closed and badly swollen. He could see wrinkles where Sandy had never had them before, but this was ten years on. And the short brown hair, in the boyish cut, made it much harder. He enlarged the picture, but it made little difference. It was possible, but … But.
Christ, what would it mean if it was her?
What would it mean to Cleo and Noah? To his life? And there was no way he could take the time out right now to fly over and see for sure, one way or the other.
He e-mailed the German detective back.
Thanks, Marcel. I can see why you sent this, but I don’t think it is her. But please when you find out more about her identity let me know. Meantime Happy Christmas and hope to see you again before too long.
He flushed the toilet, ran the sink tap for a moment, pushed his phone back in his pocket and went back into the bedroom.
Cleo gave him a strange look. “Are you OK, my darling?”
“Yes, I’m fine, thanks. Why?”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
67
Thursday 18 December
The following morning, Roy Grace was checking his notes from the Gold group meeting the previous night, preparing for the 8:30 a.m. briefing. The Gold group had agreed to continue the current media strategy.
On his desk was a note from Glenn Branson, regarding Denise Patterson. Her parents had been located, still in their same family home in Aldwick Bay. Her bedroom had been kept as a shrine and her hairbrush had been sent for DNA testing. They also had the name of the dental practice that the dead woman had attended, and hoped to have identification officially confirmed from her dental records later today.
He was interrupted by a knock on his door and DS Tanja Cale came in, looking flustered, holding a Jiffy bag. “Sir,” she said, “sorry to barge in, sir, but this might be important.”
“No problem, tell me?”
“We had a call to the Incident Room half an hour ago from the Argus. This package was lying on the Argus’s front doorstep this morning, addressed to you, care of the editor. You’d better take a look.” She handed him the padded envelope.
He pulled out a plastic bag, inside which were two sheets of paper, one newsprint, the other plain A4 printed paper. The newsprint item was the front page of yesterday’s Argus containing the news story stating that certain items had been received, purporting to have been sent by the killer, and Detective Superintendent Roy Grace’s comment about how this had been a mistake.
The second page contained the typed words:
HERE’S A PRESENT I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO RECIEVE, ROY. GO TO THE MONUMENTAL INDIAN FOR A TAKEAWAY TREAT!
Grace immediately noticed the spelling of receive. “Well, he’s either crap at spelling or he’s done this deliberately.”
DS Cale frowned. “Deliberately?”
“His way of signaling his identity. His message yesterday had the same mistake. And I have a feeling the killer is not illiterate.” He looked back at the message. “Monumental Indian?” he said.
“It sounds very cryptic,” she said. “Shall I google Indian restaurants that do takeaways in the city?”
“Yes, I’m thinking the same thing. He’s enjoying playing with us, setting us a little puzzle.”
He then read the second part again, aloud. “Go to the monumental Indian for a takeaway treat.”
During her pregnancy, Cleo had begun doing newspaper crosswords, in particular the big daily one in The Times, and he enjoyed attempting to solve them with her. “Monumental Indian.” He pursed his lips, debating for a moment whether to phone Cleo.
Then, suddenly, he got it.
He pushed his chair back and stood up. “I think I know exactly what this means. Let’s go.”
68
29 December, 1976
He was fifteen, home for the Christmas holidays from the boarding school he hated so much, The Cloisters, in Godalming, Surrey. Everyone said it was a beautiful school, in a fantastic location, and if you wanted to be a cricketer there was no better place. Situated on top of a hill, the ground drained fast, leaving a good wicket even after torrential rain. And the school’s list of legendary old boy cricketers was a hall of fame in its own right.
Except that he wasn’t interested in cricket, or in any ball games. The only sport that interested him was one not on the school curriculum, potholing. He was also interested in caves as well as any kind of tunnel.
Which was why they called him Mole.
No one actually liked him, they all found him creepy—and swanky. He boasted about his rich parents, their flash cars, their heart-shaped pool, their enormous yacht. They liked him even less for that. Even the teachers didn’t like him. He had no friends. The truth was, he was used to that. He’d never had any real friends, and it didn’t bother him a jot. He had his imaginary friends and they were far more fun. And he could trust them implicitly.
But on Valentine’s Day he had received a very loving anonymous card from a secret admirer, which he had proudly showed off to everyone at school, although he hadn’t figured out who had sent it. I’ve got a girl, see?
It turned out the same group of boys who always taunted him had sent it as a joke. They teased him about it for days, chanting whenever they saw him, Mole’s got a girlfriend, Mole’s got a girlfriend, Mole’s got a girlfriend.
But the taunts over the Valentine card weren’t as bad as the night, a few days later, when they had crept up on him and pulled back the sheets on his bed, to reveal him wanking with a torch gripped in his mouth and a Playboy centerfold open in his left hand.
That so hurt. So much.
He was determined to show them all. It would be different next year. Now he had a girlfriend for this Christmas holiday—well—sort of. Maybe not quite The Cloisters’—top people’s school—standard. But she had big tits. Well, they looked pretty big beneath her blouse. When he peered down at her rack he could almost—almost—see her nipples. He imagined them, red, ripe, luscious. The thought made him hard. He had to put his hand in his pocket as he walked with Mandy White toward the ponds of Hove Lagoon. Had to put his hand there to stop the bulge from showing. Not that he needed to worry, Mandy was up for it, he was sure of that. Her mum was the cleaning lady for his parents. Mandy was just a cheap slut with big tits.
But no one at The Cloisters would know that.
They’d been to Marjorie Bentley’s ballroom dancing classes a few days earlier in a room near Hove Station. They’d danced close with his big hard thing pressing against her. She’d whispered into his ear that she would like to give him a blow job. But his mum had been waiting outside to drive him home.
Tonight was different. He’d taken her to a pub near Hove seafront for drinks, which he got away with because he looked older than his age. Then he’d suggested walking her home—she lived in a house opposite Shoreham Harbor. It was a bitterly cold night, the temperature way below freezing as it had been for over a fortnight. He gave her a cigarette and they smoked as they walked, making him feel very grown up. And he was horny as
hell. But despite the drink she seemed strangely reticent and distant, not at all like when they had been dancing.
He’d persuaded her, despite her reluctance, to walk down from the promenade into the darkness of the playground that was Hove Lagoon. It was ten o’clock and the whole place was deserted. Just the two frozen lagoons, the faint glow of the street lighting shimmering on the inky black ice. And Mandy’s big tits shimmering, bulging out of the top of her low blouse beneath her coat. For him. His hard-on was pressing urgently against the front of his trousers.
As they walked around the perimeter of the larger of the two lagoons, he suddenly stopped, pulled her around to face him and pressed his lips against hers.
Instantly she turned her face to the side and pushed him firmly away. “No!” she said.
“It’s all right, I got some thingies. You know. Protection.” He ducked his face and nuzzled her breasts, voraciously.
She gave him such a hard push he almost fell backward onto the ice. Then she turned to walk away. “I want to go home.”
He grabbed her arm. “You said you wanted to give me a blow job last week, before Christmas, in the dance class!”
“Yeah, well you didn’t have spots all over your face then, did you? And you didn’t stink of aftershave.” She broke free and strode away.
The acne rash that had broken out on his face in the past few days had acutely embarrassed him. Several of them were big, livid pustules and he’d done his best to mask them with Clearasil ointment. He’d also doused himself for his date tonight with Brut aftershave, which he’d seen in a telly commercial. It showed women going crazy for it.
“You fucking prick-teaser!” He ran after her and grabbed her again.
“Lemme go!” she said, her voice raised.
He tried to kiss her again, and she kneed him in the groin.
“Owwww!” he howled, winded.
She broke into a run and he sprinted after her, grabbed her by her coat belt.
“Lemme go, you fucking spotty perv!”
“Just give me a hand job then.”
“Yech. Let go of me.”
He put his arms around her and tried to pull her tightly to him. As she pulled away, he stumbled, losing his balance. Holding her tightly, they fell together, to the left, shattering the thin ice into the freezing cold water of the Lagoon.
Mandy screamed. “Help, police, rape, police!”
He pushed her face down under the water, crying out in fear and in anger, “Shut up, you bitch, you cheap, prick-teasing bitch.”
He felt her struggling under him in the shallow water, thrashing with her arms and legs, but he kept her face submerged with both hands pressed against her forehead. She was writhing like a mad thing, but he just kept on holding her down, weakening with the exertion.
He kept up the pressure, holding her head below the surface, invisible in the inky darkness.
Gradually, her struggling lessened. Then she became still, inert. He continued lying there, shivering, his hands growing numb with the cold, his entire body growing steadily numb, his brain racing.
Then, finally, when he was sure she had been under the water for long enough, he scrambled to his feet, climbed back onto dry land, and ran across the grass and up the steps to the promenade. Then, waving his arms like a mad thing, dripping with water, he ran out into the road, screaming, “Help me, help me, someone! Oh God, please help me!”
A passing car pulled up and he ran, crying, over to the driver’s window. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. Please help me.”
69
Thursday 18 December
Roy Grace left Iain Maclean in charge of the 8:30 a.m. briefing, then drove with DS Cale the short distance down the A27, over a series of roundabouts and up a hill that climbed steeply, adjacent to the dual carriageway. He pulled up close to a five-barred gate and noticed the padlock chain had been cut through and had fallen to the ground. Then they hurried up a grassy hill, avoiding a line of horse dung. It was a cold, sunny, blustery day and Grace was grateful that the rain of the past few days had stopped.
After ten minutes of hard, uphill climbing, following tire tracks in the soggy grass, he saw the small, domed temple-like structure over to the right nestling among the hills. The tire tracks veered toward it. The Chattri was one of the city of Brighton and Hove’s most beautiful but less well-known landmarks. It was a round, white temple at the top of several flights of stone steps, in a beautiful location on the South Downs. Open to the elements, it comprised a dome supported by a circle of columns.
During the First World War, many Indian soldiers who had been wounded fighting for the British Empire had been brought to makeshift hospitals in England. One had been sited in Brighton in the Royal Pavilion. The Chattri had been constructed on the site where those who had died had been cremated.
As the two of them approached the fence around the monument, Roy Grace stopped, suddenly.
Ahead were two women with long brown hair, lying motionless, side by side on stone slabs at the foot of the monument steps, in front of a neat row of empty benches, their arms folded behind their heads as if they were asleep. But they were too still. Impossibly still. He raised a cautionary hand to DS Cale, signaling her to follow him.
As he stepped closer to them again he stopped. He’d seen enough bodies in the course of his career to be able to tell the difference, even from a distance, between the dead and the living.
These two women were clearly dead.
Young women. One was in jeans and sneakers, wearing a puffa over a knitted sweater; the other was in jeans, also, and a soiled T-shirt. Both had long, dark brown hair.
In death, human expressions changed. They became inert, like waxworks in a museum. But, he knew sadly, he was not staring at two waxworks. From the photographs he had committed to memory he was looking at the bodies of Emma Johnson and Ashleigh Stanford. Their faces were alabaster white. Both of them had their eyes open, blind to the vapor trail of a plane high in the sky.
He did not need to go any closer and touch either of them. Instead he stayed where he was, not wanting to contaminate this crime scene any more than he already had, and pulled out his phone.
He was as close to despair as he had ever felt in all his career.
Then he noticed something fluttering in the wind, behind the neck of the woman he believed might be Emma Johnson. Signaling DS Cale to stay where she was, he stepped forward and knelt down. There was a note wedged between her fingers. Snapping on gloves, he teased it out and read it.
HERE’S ANOTHER PRESENT, ROY. I’M SURE YOU’D LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE RECIEPT. THE DOWNSIDE (NO PUN INTENDED RE THE LOCATION) IS I HAVE TO REPLACE THEM. LIFE’S A BITCH, HEY? THEN A BITCH HAS TO DIE. HAPPY SLEUTHING. NO SHIT, SHERLOCK! CAN YOU GUESS MY NEXT VICTIM? CAN YOU SAVE HER? FEEL FREE TO PUBLISH THIS NOTE IN ANY PAPER YOU LIKE. VERY BEST REGARDS. MR. BRANDER.
70
Thursday 18 December
Six hours later, in the mortuary, Roy Grace’s worst fears were confirmed. Both young women were branded, on the inside of their right thighs, with the wording, U R DEAD.
Pathologist Nadiuska De Sancha was standing over Ashleigh Stanford’s naked body, taking fluid samples from her stomach and bladder for testing, but she was already fairly confident of the cause of death for both young women. Both had the tiny, blotchy red spots of petechial hemorrhaging in the whites of their eyes, on their eyelids and at the top of the cheekbones, which was brought on by oxygen starvation through asphyxiation. Neither of them had bruising around their necks, nor damaged hyoids, but their lungs were filled with water. They had drowned. Both women had been sexually assaulted but no DNA was found.
Ashleigh Stanford had bruises to her body and abrasions to her face, consistent with falling off her bike. She also had a large bruise to her forehead, sufficient to have caused concussion. In addition, she had seventeen contusions to her body consistent with being struck with a blunt instrument, as well as bruising on her knuckles indicating she had, per
haps, tried to fight off her attacker.
Emma Johnson had ligature marks on her neck, stomach, thighs, wrists and ankles, indicating she had been kept a prisoner.
There was no evidence of strangulation in the two women from thirty years ago either. But there had not been enough soft tissue left of the victims to establish for sure how they had died. They could have been stabbed—but there were usually nicks on the bones of stabbing victims. Possibly shot, but again bullets often struck bones. They might have been poisoned—toxicology tests were being carried out on samples from both bodies. But one problem with testing for poisons was that the pathologists needed to know what they were testing for—which restricted them only to the most obvious ones.
Had they drowned, also, he wondered?
Had the same sicko branded, raped, then drowned them?
What the hell was going on in the Brander’s mind?
Was Logan Somerville being held prisoner? Did that mean she might still be alive?
Photographs of the brandings had been sent to an analyst, and in less than an hour he had confirmed they were, in his opinion, an exact match to the brandings on Katy Westerham and Denise Patterson.
In Grace’s view, the idea of a copycat could now be ruled out. The Brander, intelligent, arrogant, whoever the hell he was—and wherever he had been for these past thirty years—had resurfaced. He postponed today’s press conference, in the light of the present developments, until tonight at 7 p.m.
* * *
Shortly before 4:30 p.m., he had left Glenn Branson at the post-mortem of the two women, which was likely to continue for several more hours, and was now back in his office, seated at the round conference table with DCI Sweetman and the forensic psychologist Tony Balazs.
The three of them were staring at the note recovered from Emma Johnson’s fingers this morning. Because of the sensitivity of the location of the deposition site, Grace had already arranged for a representative from the Chattri memorial committee to join the Gold group, to manage any possible community impact.
