'Can you stop that?' Quinner points at Jason.
'What?'
'The drumming. I've got a headache.'
Jason holds up his palms in mock-supplication. 'Don't we know it. Jesus, bruv, fucking chill, eh?'
Quinner ignores him and turns back to Niall.
'What happened?' he says, his voice low. 'Did Noone do something?'
Niall shakes his head. 'I don't know.' His voice is almost inaudible. 'I didn't see him.'
Quinner looks over at Jason, who shrugs.
'How do you mean?' says Quinner.
Niall lifts his head and, for the first time since he sat down, looks directly at Quinner while he's talking. 'We followed your feller, just like you said. He headed towards the Pier Head but then carried on down towards the docks. I couldn't see if it was him or not for definite. We'd lost him for a bit.'
'But we picked him up again,' pipes Jason, eager. 'Then we saw him turning down this side road. Spooky as fuck, man.'
'Jason didn't fancy following him.' Niall's voice isn't accusing.
'I'm sorry, Nially,' says Jason. He takes a drag on his cigarette. Quinner notices how young he is. 'Weren't even sure it was him, though, were we?'
'No, we weren't.' Niall looks in the direction of the TV and then back at Quinner. 'But I didn't want to look soft in front of Jason. So like a prick, I followed this guy.'
'And you're not sure it was Noone?' Quinner's getting a bad feeling about this.
'No,' says Niall, 'I'm not. It was dark down there and for all I know your man went home and we followed some other fucker. Anyway, like I said, I followed him to this street. It was fucken scary as shit down there.'
'Yeah?'
Niall nods. 'Horror movie scary.'
'And?'
'And nothing. The feller wasn't there, not what I could see. If it was this Noone guy, he'd gone. I turned around to get out when something hit me. The next thing I know I woke with me head on the floor.'
There's more. Quinner can sense it. Something bad.
'What else, Niall?'
Niall starts crying silently. Jason stops smoking and stares at Niall like he's turned into a unicorn.
'Niall?' says Quinner, putting a hand on his cousin's shoulder. 'What happened?'
After an age Niall lifts his right hand from his pocket. His hand is bandaged. He raises it and holds it up for Quinner to see. Niall's index finger is gone.
'Christ,' whispers Quinner.
What the fuck had he got into?
Sixteen
'God Almighty.'
Like a diver placing his toes at the end of the high board, Frank Keane stops in the doorway and contemplates the once-pleasant, high-ceilinged suburban bedroom which now resembles an abattoir. He puts both hands on top of his head and lets out a long sigh that he tries not to let anyone hear.
This thing had been called in around eight but Frank had let Theresa Cooper start things off with him coming in as Senior Investigating Officer. It was only a little later that he had second thoughts and decided to see for himself. He and Harris didn't speak much in the car. They haven't spoken, other than what is strictly necessary, since the phone call on Friday. Although Frank went into work earlier today he spent the time at Canning Place. Being Saturday the place was quieter and no one mentioned anything about acid or vinegar or Harris.
She pushes past him now and negotiates her way across the blood-spattered floor towards the dead woman tied to the bed. The room is ripe with the stink of chemicals and blood and death. A familiar smell.
Frank gets into gear and moves into the bedroom, sliding his hands into latex gloves he takes from his jacket pocket. Harris already has hers in place. Both officers are wearing disposable covers over their street shoes. Not quite the full rig, but it'll do. With another body hanging in the garage, almost certainly the husband, neither of them thinks this will be a tricky case. Still, Frank tucks his tie inside his shirt just above the second button. He doesn't want to be careless.
'They were dentists?' says Frank. One of the techs had mentioned it downstairs.
'That's right,' Harris replies absently. 'They work – worked – together.' She looks down at the body. 'Jesus. Theresa wasn't exaggerating.' Her phone rings and she looks at the number before answering. 'I'll call you back,' she says and ends the call. Frank glances her way and then back to the bed.
'I think we need overalls,' says Frank, almost to himself. He looks down dubiously at his street clothes. 'This much blood . . .' He lets the sentence trail off. Harris doesn't seem to have heard him. Frank might think it's his little secret that he's squeamish but Harris is confident that most of the Merseyside Major Incident Team already know and don't care.
McGettigan, the SOC photographer, is shooting a wide-angled image from a corner of the room. He's wearing one of the pale blue protective suits. Despite the amount of gore in the room, and McGettigan's bulk, Frank can't see a spot on the man. Maybe they'll be OK.
After getting what he needs, McGettigan looks up from behind his Nikon. 'She's all yours, DCI Keane. I'm about finished in here. DS Cooper said it was fine to get started. I've done the one in the garage already.' McGettigan nods to Harris, his face colouring before he scurries, rustling, back to the safety of his lens. Keane can't blame him. More confident men than the corpulent McGettigan find DI Harris intimidating, Frank being one of them. Harris is used to being regarded with interest, and sometimes with outright hostility, by some of the neanderthals she comes in contact with on both sides of the blue line, but her looks are what most people register first.
'Take your time, Calum,' says Harris, touching the photographer lightly on the shoulder as she brushes past. McGettigan's neck flushes crimson.
Behind him, Frank can hear the soft conversational murmur of the techs working in the rest of the house. He and Harris have arrived late, and much of the initial scene work has already been done. Faced with the horror on the bed, Frank's beginning to wish he had left it entirely to Cooper, like he planned. At least now he can delegate the autopsy to juniors. There are one or two advantages to heading up the MIT unit.
From the street outside comes the rumble of another police vehicle executing a laborious turn in the narrow dead end. The bay windows are draped in heavy, expensive-looking curtains but they can't prevent the red and blue of the car strobes leaking through gaps and flashing up the walls. There's another incongruous sound too: the bass throb of dance music being played loudly in a car somewhere nearby.
Frank tiptoes to the window and pulls back the curtain. About fifty metres away, on the opposite side of the railway line that bisects the street, are two cheaply tricked-out cars full of teenagers watching the action. Despite the barrier of the railway line they are closer than Frank feels is appropriate. He lets the curtain drop back into place and zigzags his way through the puddles of blood onto the landing.
'You.' A young plod loitering aimlessly near the top of the stairs jerks to attention like a startled deer. Keane gestures towards the street. 'Get the fucking ravers across the way moved along and tell whichever attention seeker's got their disco lights on to knock them off. They're giving me a headache. If it's one of the medics, tell them they can go.'
He turns back to the bedroom without waiting for a response.
Harris, as is her custom, is using the video camera function on her smartphone to take a 360. McGettigan will shoot an official video record if he hasn't done already, but Harris likes the scene to be available at a touch.
Christ help anyone who steals her phone, thinks Frank. One look at the image bank and they'd need counselling for years.
Frank finds a relatively clean patch of carpet at the end of the bed and stands, arms folded, looking down at the victim.
She's naked, legs splayed, feet turned slightly inwards, her painted toes clenched. Leather belts have been looped around the iron bedposts and are cinched tightly around her ankles. She has been stabbed repeatedly by someone using massive force. Frank can glimpse bone sh
owing through several lateral slash cuts on her thighs. From the blood spray which arcs out across one side of the room and up a section of wall, it looks like her femoral artery has been severed. Frank feels his stomach lurch again.
Her face is obliterated, pulped. There's no chance of anyone making a visual ID from what remains. Moving around to the side of the bed, and holding his jacket to prevent it trailing in the gore, Frank bends close and notices some teeth scattered across the pillows. He wonders for a moment if there's any significance in her husband having been a dentist. If, as seemed inevitable, the second corpse currently dangling from the ceiling in the garage below had done this, perhaps knocking out his wife's teeth fulfilled some dark orthodontic desire.
Frank puts the brake on this line of thinking and chastises himself for amateur psychology. Koopman, his old boss, wouldn't have approved.
Just look at what's in front of you, dickhead. The pieces may come together later if you get lucky. For now it's enough to record it all.
Frank's queasiness is fading the longer he's in the room. Death's like that: you get used to it.
Some oily dark substance has leaked from the victim's head and joined the blood pooling in the corrugations of the twisted sheets. Like her legs, her hands have been tied to the bedposts using belts wound around her wrists. The belts don't match. Frank doesn't make anything of that, he simply notes the fact.
Harris is inspecting the woman's vagina centimetre by centimetre with the aid of a Maglite torch.
'She'll have been raped. Unless this is a sex game gone bad.'
Frank can't tell if she's making a joke and he's not going to risk Harris's wrath by making the wrong call in reply. Her disposition – never exactly what you might call sunny – can best be described as positively subarctic and has been like that since Thursday.
Since it happened.
Almost two days now and there's hardly been a civil word between them. Maybe I should have called her yesterday, thinks Frank. Who knows what's been happening between her and Linda since Frank hit the pillow on Friday lunchtime.
Harris points the beam of light at a relatively blood-free area of skin at the junction between thigh and pelvis. 'Could be dried semen.' She looks up at Frank now, her face a mask. 'See?'
Frank bends closer. There might be something there. He can't tell.
'I'll lay odds he fucked her after she was dead.'
McGettigan, the SOC photographer, glances up at this but says nothing.
Frank thinks she's probably right. From here there's no way of knowing, but when the thing shakes out and the reports are in he's pretty confident this will be the case.
A simple rape would be too commonplace for this charnel-house. Of course the fucker did her post-mortem.
More of them did than people would believe.
What did it matter, after all? Now the wife, the partner, the girlfriend, is that dead thing, and you're going to finish yourself before the night is through, why not go all the way into that yawning black abyss? It's not like there're going to be any repercussions. If he does turn out to be the guilty party, the last thing the tooth-tickler currently hanging from the garage ceiling downstairs would have been concerned with was leaving DNA behind.
Part of Frank worries that these thoughts spring so readily to mind with the solidity and heft of absolute fact. Part of him – the policeman part – is glad.
Seventeen
McGettigan, standing just outside the bedroom door, is loading his equipment back into metal boxes. It's just ticked past midnight.
'I'll get out of your way now, DCI Keane. I've already done the vid.' McGettigan gives Harris a brief nod. Some people connected to MIT still had problems with Harris's role in last year's Stevie White case and McGettigan is no exception. But since Merseyside Police, like all police forces on the planet, runs on an insatiable appetite for infighting, politics and backbiting that makes the Colosseum seem polite, Harris's transgression isn't the worst there's ever been in the department, not by a long way, but people do like to nurse a decent grudge when one comes along and Harris still has a bit of time left in the sin-bin.
'I'm off,' says McGettigan and waddles out of the room. He passes Theresa Cooper on her way in, clipboard in hand, paper-booted and suited. Seeing Frank at the scene is a mild disappointment to her and Frank can read that on her face. Cooper is currently the only female of her rank at Merseyside MIT and she's hoping to angle that singularity into further promotion down the track. Being named lead on this investigation would help – even with Frank Keane as official SIO – but her boss's arrival doesn't bode well. Since taking the disgraced Perch's role at MIT Frank has had precious little time as an investigator. Cooper doesn't know it, but it's precisely this that has brought him out tonight.
Frank's not sure how long he can stick life on the fifth floor at Canning Place.
For one thing, MIT – the Major Incident Team, his unit – are based at Stanley Road. Now his desk is supposed to be at Canning Place, he feels even more strongly that Perch moved his office there for no better reason than to be less than tongue's length away from the brass.
Frank has made plans to have his office moved back to Stanley Road.
He already spends almost every day there, just as he had done prior to promotion, but it's going to take longer than Frank likes to get the forms signed and the protocols agreed.
Still, whatever the reasons, Frank's appearance at her crime scene isn't the most welcome news for DS Cooper.
Cooper points at the victim. 'Got a few confirmations, sir. Family name is Peters. Paul and Maddy. Both dentists with a longstanding practice in Southport. No prior domestic call-outs. No criminal records. I've got a couple of the uniforms taking preliminary statements from the neighbours but so far nothing out of the ordinary reported. There's a teenage son too: Nicky, missing. DC Caddick is trying hard to track him down.'
At this stage, with no details made public, Caddick's doing this as discreetly as possible. Frank's sure that'll change unless they get hold of the boy soon. The last thing they need is for Nicky to find out about this horror from some source other than the police. Frank doesn't want to think right now about the son being a victim or, perhaps worse, involved in the slaughter.
'No other children, thank God,' Cooper continues. 'Ferguson's looking at the body in the garage now.' She's all business but the pallor of her skin betrays her. Keane knows how she feels.
'I hate murder-suicides too, Theresa. Did I miss the memo? Married life a bit sticky? Kill the missus and top yourself. Fuck me.'
Cooper smiles weakly. Well, I tried, thinks Frank.
'Anything else?' he says.
'There are ashes in the fireplace in the living room. It's one of those log burner things. Not gas. The ashes look fresh. I took samples and sent them in with one of the techs.'
'Interesting. Not really log fire weather, is it?'
Cooper shakes her head. 'I'd say it was clothing in there.'
Frank nods. 'Probably.' He frowns. 'Maybe the dentist burnt his clothes for some reason.'
'I think they're in the garage,' says Cooper. 'There are some clothes there, anyway. I haven't had time to check the sizes yet but I think they'll be his.'
'Any blood on the clothes in the garage?' says Harris.
'None that I can see. Maybe traces once we look harder.'
Frank frowns. The clothing in the log burner – if the ashes turn out to be cloth remnants – is a puzzler. With the working hypothesis of murder-suicide it would make sense for there to be blood on the dead man's clothes. If he committed the crime, why burn any clothing if you are going to kill yourself anyway? Add the disappearance of the teenager, and the murder-suicide theory is already fragmenting.
Frank turns back to the bedroom. Stick to the job in hand.
'Ferguson's already been in here, right?'
'Yes, sir.'
'OK, well, once he's finished in the garage make sure the miserable Scottish bastard has a word before creepin
g back to Castle Dracula, right?' Cooper nods. Ferguson is one of the county pathologists. Despite his undoubted expertise, he and Keane have differing opinions, mainly concerning which brand of red team they follow, Ferguson being – despite his birthplace, or maybe because of it – a Manc at heart.
Misery findeth misery, reflects Frank.
'Who called this in?' he says, a little sharply, his mind having briefly strayed to bleak thoughts of Old Trafford.
'The dentist's brother. Only lives round the corner.' Cooper checks her clipboard. 'Terry Peters. Eight-forty. Came round and got no reply. Seems that the family was supposed to be home. The brother got worried and let himself in. He's back home with a uniform. I'm off there soon to get a full statement.'
'Neighbours?'
'No one in on the left.' Cooper inclines her head one way. 'The other side is a doctor. Chief Merseyside cardiologist, no less. I got a short statement but no one there seems to have anything very useful just yet. Heard nothing, saw nothing. A few vague ideas about car movements but so far couldn't say which house they came from.'
Cooper's mention of the high-ranking medic reminds Keane of the Birkdale demographic they're dealing with. Step lightly, dickhead. Doesn't the CC live somewhere round here?
'He came upstairs? The brother?'
'Must have done. Why, sir?'
Frank shakes his head. 'No reason. Just seems a bit funny. Would you go snooping around uninvited in your brother's house?'
'I haven't got a brother,' says Cooper. 'But I know what you mean.'
'And check about a dog,' says Frank. 'If you haven't already. This house looks like it'd have a dog.' He's thinking about the walled garden outside. From what he could see it was well tended but the grass had none of the bowling green smoothness some of the other houses in the street possess. No point in a perfect lawn if your faithful hound is taking a dump there every day.
'No dog,' says Cooper.
So much for the great detective. Frank makes a note to think a bit harder before he speaks next time.
Down Among the Dead Men Page 6
