Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation

by Nigel McCrery

  ‘This place,’ Emma said, looking around, ‘must have taken days, maybe weeks to put together.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Burrows said soulfully. ‘Just – don’t.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We’d best make a start, then.’

  ‘Okay,’ Emma said. She glanced around. ‘Just one thing …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where are you going to stand to take the photographs of each wall?’

  Burrows’s gaze flickered around the church, looking for some kind of access, some way he or his people could wend their way between the wires to a position opposite each wall so they could take pictures from the best vantage point.

  ‘Bugger,’ he said again. ‘We might have to rig up a camera on a pole with a remote control, then somehow poke it in through the wires to the centre of the room.’ He shook his head. ‘There are days when I wish I’d taken my old grandmother’s advice about careers.’

  ‘Why?’ Emma asked, ‘what did she say?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Burrows replied dolefully. ‘I didn’t listen.’

  Someone shouted Emma’s name from the far side of the church. She looked to see who it was. DCI Lapslie was standing on the raised plinth where the altar would have gone.

  ‘How the hell did you get over there?’ Burrows yelled back before Emma could respond. ‘I hope to God you didn’t break any of the wires!’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Lapslie shouted back. ‘There’s another entrance round the back. Leads into a vestry and then out to the side of the altar area. Come round – I’ve found something.’

  Emma walked out of the front entrance to the church and worked her way round to the back of the building, stumbling through clumps of weeds and unkempt bushes, across a patch of burned ground where someone had lit a fire, and past a couple of what had to be molehills. At the far end of the church she found a small door that led inside. It looked like it had been kicked in. DCI Lapslie, displaying his usual disregard for proper procedure.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, entering the church at the west end. She found herself on the raised plinth, and glancing around, orientated herself to the different perspective.

  Lapslie was kneeling down on one side of the altar space. She joined him. He was gazing at scuff marks in the dust.

  ‘I think this is where one of the microphones was placed,’ he said. ‘There’s another similar mark on the other side. Burrows’ people told me that the sound file was recorded in stereo.’

  ‘Hmm. And there are some bigger marks over by the wall,’ Emma pointed out, looking around. ‘That might be where the recording apparatus was located.’

  ‘Could well be.’ Lapslie’s gaze slid around the echoing interior of the church.

  ‘It’s like a bizarre version of that kids’ playground we found the girl’s body in,’ Emma said, shivering.

  Lapslie straightened up, brushing dust from his trousers. ‘How so?’

  ‘It’s like a maze. The one on Canvey Island is all padded and safe and well lit, while this one was all razor-sharp and dangerous and dark, but the principle is the same. Catriona Dooley was set loose in it and had to blunder round looking for a way out. Except that for her, the way out involved a horrible death, rather than orange squash and cakes.’

  ‘You’re guessing,’ Lapslie said gently.

  ‘Yeah,’ she sighed, ‘but you know I’m right. This was some kind of sick game, and the bastard recorded the whole thing for entertainment.’

  ‘And then what – dumped the body in a kids’ play area because of some twisted, perverse sense of humour?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Lapslie considered. ‘That means we’re dealing with someone intelligent – too intelligent for their environment, so they seek kicks elsewhere. They’re not desperate; they’re enjoying themselves with whatever game they’re playing and they want us to join in too.’ He thought for a moment. ‘And it goes against the words that were recorded on that sound file – “That’s gash. That’s just gash.” Using a phrase like that to objectify a woman by referring in slang terms to her vagina doesn’t accord with the idea of someone that intelligent.’

  ‘Careful,’ Emma warned. ‘You’re profiling.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lapslie snorted, ‘look how that worked out last time.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s a tempting picture, but you know what it implies, don’t you?’

  Emma nodded. ‘Nobody starts out with something this complicated, and they don’t invite the police to join in first time around. They work up to it. They practise their sick art first. That means there are other victims out there. Other murders.’

  ‘We need to trawl the records. Look for other unsolved crimes with similar characteristics.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Okay, I’ll stay here and supervise the forensics. Doctor Catherall is on her way to look for traces of human flesh. We still need to tie this place in to Catriona Dooley’s death by DNA or something, otherwise we’re just pissing in the dark and hoping to hit something.’

  ‘What a pretty picture you paint.’

  ‘You head back to HQ and pull out the records of all unsolved murders with similar characteristics, going back, oh, five years.’

  ‘Lovely.’ She paused. ‘What are the similar characteristics?’

  ‘The obvious one is people who disappear and then their bodies are found after an unexpectedly long period, but it’s clear that they’ve been alive for most of that time.’

  ‘We don’t know that that’s a defining characteristic yet.’

  ‘We’ve only got one body. Anything could be a defining characteristic, including hair colour and middle name, but we have to start somewhere. The two unusual things here are the length of time between disappearance and discovery, and the strange means of death. We would have heard if others had died this way, so that leaves the gap.’

  ‘And the sound file,’ Emma reminded him.

  ‘But again, we would know if that had happened before. It would be a talking point. No, let’s go with the disappearances.’

  ‘Okay.’ Emma turned to go. ‘Have fun.’

  She took the train back through the Essex countryside to the Police HQ at Chelmsford. She’d thought about going back to Canvey Island, which she was becoming strangely attached to, but it was quicker and easier to access the records in Chelmsford.

  She found herself a quiet office with a terminal that wasn’t being used, and settled down for a while. The database wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to manipulate, but she could access all unsolved cases and then gradually filter out the irrelevancies – the thefts, the muggings, the white collar crime, the accidental deaths and the manslaughters with obvious causes, the fights that led to one person or both people bleeding out in the street. That left her with a few hundred rather more suspicous deaths with no obvious suspects.

  Her phone rang. She checked her watch as she answered. Bugger! It was past midnight! She’d been working longer than she expected.

  The display said ‘Dom.’

  ‘Hi, babe.’

  ‘Where are you?’ he growled.

  ‘I’m working.’

  ‘Lapslie’s pushing you too hard,’ he said darkly. ‘I’ll have to have a word.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with him.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, it is, but it’s not. I’m looking for something.’

  ‘It’s his case and your case, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have pointed out the connection to him.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got you to thank for that, have I?’

  He laughed. ‘Someone’s got to do your jobs for you. When are you going to be back?’

  ‘Don’t know. Might work through.’

  ‘Okay. Let me know if you need a change of clothes or something. I’ll run them over.’

  ‘I’ve got two changes of clothes here, just in case.’ A pause. ‘Love you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he growled. ‘Same here.’

  She disconnected the call, feeling a glow of happiness inside her.

  Concentration broken, she wandered out and got a cup o
f coffee and a sausage and egg roll from an all-night café across the road. The only other people there were taxi drivers, insomniacs and various police and firemen on a break. Traffic flashed past in the darkness; tail lights glowing like the red eyes of some fantastical predator. A bus heaved itself past, belching diesel fumes. There were five or six people on it, each sitting in their own isolated world, and she wondered, as she always did in these situations, where they were going and why they were out so late. Were they going home, had they just left home, or didn’t they even have a home? Did they just spend their time moving around the town, passing by as life went on without them?

  She finished her food in silence, and returned to her desk.

  Back at her terminal, she continued to whittle down the thicket of dates, times and injuries into a coherent pattern, trying her best to ignore names and stories and just regard them as parts of a puzzle. And, gradually, a pattern did begin to emerge.

  Three disappearances. Three people who had gone missing under suspicious circumstances in Essex and the surrounding counties in the past five years and had been discovered, dead, several weeks later. Post-mortems had later revealed that they had been kept alive and fed, probably while bound, for at least ten days after their disappearance, and they had all died after sustained torture. No traces of rape – in fact, Emma noted with surprise, one of the three was male. All of the victims were aged between twenty and forty. The lead investigator on two of the cases was a former colleague of hers – DS Gary Ellender, based in Southend. They had worked together for three years and had always got on well.

  Emma checked her watch – it was nearly seven o’clock, and she’d worked through the night. Her eyes felt hot and gritty, and the muscles around the back of her neck ached, but she didn’t actually feel tired. The adrenalin was keeping her going. If she could face the drive down to Southend, she could catch Gary at his desk.

  She logged off the police database, closed up the quiet room and headed for the car park, grabbing a coffee from the cafeteria on the ground floor on the way.

  Her drive to Southend got caught up in the morning rush hour and school run, and she didn’t hit the centre of town until nearly half past eight. She parked in an open-air car park between the Court and Southend Victoria railway station. According to the desk sergeant at Southend nick, Gary was giving evidence at a Coroner’s Court that morning.

  She booked into the court, flashing her warrant card but still having to pass through the obligatory metal detector before heading up the wide stairs to the first floor, where the courtrooms were located. She’d given evidence at several trials in Southend before, and she knew the ins and outs of the building; the side corridors, the ante-rooms, the impressive main courtroom with its wooden panelling and huge royal crest behind the bench, and the smaller, more down-at-heel courtrooms where minor cases were heard. She recognised the ever-present sense of desperation and seediness that hung over everything. A coffeestand in the foyer was about the only trace of modernity in the entire place, and Emma felt it was a bit like putting lipstick on a corpse.

  She found Gary in the waiting room outside court number three – not so much a room as a widened area in the corridor lined with chairs. He was sitting opposite a family group dressed in black and a separate group who looked like office workers. Gary was a big, bear-like man with a close-cropped beard and a twinkle in his eye. He was soberly dressed in a dark suit. Seeing her enter the room his eyebrows raised in surprise and pleasure. He got to his feet as she approached. She extended her hand awkwardly, but he grabbed her and gave her a hug.

  ‘Emma, it’s been ages. Where have you been?’

  ‘Around and about.’ She hugged back. ‘It has been a long time. Sorry I drifted out of touch.’

  ‘I hear you had your hands full with that mad DCI – Lapslie.’

  ‘He’s not that mad,’ she said awkwardly. ‘He gets results.’

  ‘By witchcraft, I hear.’

  ‘Hey – whatever works.’ Changing the subject, she asked: ‘So what’s the inquest?’

  ‘Actually a pre-inquest hearing,’ he said quietly. ‘The coroner wants to establish the ground rules before the inquest proper starts.’ He nodded his head towards the group of office workers. ‘They’re from the Ministry of Defence. One of their scientists died during some secret experiment. There’s some question about the Official Secrets Act, and the coroner needs to establish what can be revealed in open court and what needs to be held in camera. The family solicitor is pressing for everything to be out in the open; unsurprisingly, the Treasury Solicitors who are representing the MOD want it all hidden away in dark places. And the press are interested as well, which doesn’t help. They can smell a cover-up a mile off, whether it’s there or not.’

  ‘So what are you doing?’ she asked. ‘It’s not a suspicious death, is it?’

  ‘First police officer on scene,’ he said. ‘I’m just a witness.’

  ‘Have you got time to talk?’

  He glanced around. ‘The coroner’s clerk popped his head around the door earlier to say that things were running late on the previous inquest. I think I’ve got time, but I have to stay here.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘So – what do you want to know? I presume this is business?’

  ‘Do you remember two cases you worked on – Lorraine Gregory and Alison Traff?’

  He nodded, face turning solemn. ‘Yeah. I sometimes wake up sweating in the night, I remember so much.’

  ‘Sorry to have to raise the ghosts.’

  He shrugged. ‘Comes with the territory, doesn’t it. We’re never allowed to forget.’

  ‘What can you tell me about the cases?’

  ‘Okay.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘Lorraine Gregory. Studying engineering at Essex University. Third year, lived in the halls of residence there. Attractive girl: brown hair, brown eyes, vivacious personality. She disappeared two months ago in the middle of the week after attending a rehearsal – she was lead singer in a band. No clues, no suspects. No boyfriend, for a start, and no stalkers that we could identify. We did all the usual things – canvassed the neighbourhood, did interviews for the local TV and radio stations, but nothing. No suspicious people hanging around, no strange cars seen motoring around the neighbourhood – nothing.’ He stopped. Emma noticed him swallow. ‘Her body was found four weeks after she disappeared, in the inspection pit of a car garage. Someone had broken in and left her there.’

  ‘You checked out the mechanics and the owner, obviously.’

  ‘First thing we did. They were clean. I mean, they had a nice sideline in taking write-offs from car accidents and welding the front end from one to the back end of another and flogging the resulting monstrosity on eBay as a functioning car, but they all had alibis for the time she was taken and the approximate time she was killed.’

  ‘Okay. Sorry to interrupt.’

  ‘She’d been … tortured,’ he said starkly. ‘Horribly, and over the course of several weeks. Her fingernails had been pulled out with pliers, for a start, and then the skin between her fingers had been cut and the fingers slowly pulled apart all the way down to the wrist. Her right hand looked like … like a bloody spider. Like something from a horror film.’

  ‘What about her left hand?’ Emma asked, feeling sick. ‘What happened to that? Was it taken?’

  Gary’s normally pink face had gone pale now. ‘No. No, it wasn’t taken. It just wasn’t there any more. Not in one bit, anyway. The wristbones of her left arm had been cut through with shears from front to back, from the hand towards the elbow, and then the same thing that had been done to the hand was done to the arm: the flesh was cut down for a distance, and then the two bones of the forearm – the radius and the ulna – were gradually pulled apart. And when I say ‘gradually’, I mean over the course of several hours. It must have been … unimaginably painful. When we found her, the two parts of her forearm were at right angles to each other.’ He swallowed again. ‘It’s bad enough when things are done
to people, and you find the bodies, but they usually still look like bodies, know what I mean? Lorraine – she looked like … I don’t know. Like someone was trying to take her apart like you’d take a car engine apart to see how it worked, but stopped after a while when they got bored and left the bits scattered around.’

  ‘And there was – ’ Emma stopped to swallow the flood of saliva in her mouth; precursor to her throwing up if she wasn’t careful – ‘no clue as to the perpetrator?’

  Gary shook his head. ‘Nobody hated her enough to do that to her, and nobody who even disliked her had blank spots in their calendar long enough to cover what was done. Eventually we had it down to a predatory psychopath who’d just picked up a passing stranger, but then you would expect there to be an element of sexual crime. She was, as far as the pathologist could establish, still a virgin.’

  Emma’s forehead was hot, and she could feel sweat prickling it. The other people in the waiting area were looking at the two of them strangely; not hearing what was being said but aware from the body language that it was disturbing.

  ‘And the other disappearance?’ she asked. ‘Alison Traff?’

  ‘Some similarities, some differences.’ Gary seemed glad to change the subject. ‘She was thirty-five, married with two children. Disappeared one evening after filling her car up at a petrol station. She was on her way back from choir practice in the local church hall. The family lived out in the countryside, in a fairly remote farmhouse. The suspicion was that she’d either been run off the road or stopped to help someone in trouble, and been abducted.’ He shook his head. ‘The family were devastated. The husband had a rock solid alibi, and no reason to kill her. We did check. He’s still seeing a therapist to try and come to terms with it. The council have put the children into care, because the husband is having such a hard time.’

  ‘I hate to ask, but how was she found? I mean—’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ He seemed to brace himself. ‘This time the body was dumped in the car park of a holistic therapy practice in Frinton. The body had been pierced repeatedly with what the pathologist estimated were meat skewers. Pierced in every place you could put a skewer and still keep someone alive. You know that kids’ game when we were young where you had all these thin plastic rods going from one side of a Perspex tube to the other, going through all these small holes in the sides, and there were a whole load of marbles balanced on top of the rods, and you had to take turns pulling the plastic rods out and the loser was the one who caused the marbles to fall down the tube?’