by Michael Kerr
“Yeah, Mike, I was just about to leave. What’s hit the fan to warrant the early call?” Barney said, still looking out towards the pond as he spoke.
“Vlad just struck again, boss. We’ve got another victim.”
Barney’s heart sank. “Where? We’ve got Regent’s Park staked out; no pun intended.”
“Change of venue. Hyde Park, near the boat houses next to the Serpentine. Same M.O., and by all accounts it’s another jogger; a young redhead.”
“I’ll meet you there,” Barney said, then hung up. Less than ten minutes later he was on his way.
The cold and overcast morning was a fitting scene for violent death. The forensic team were on site, and the distinctive white tent marked the spot of yet another atrocity. Barney pulled in behind the bunched mass of official vehicles on Serpentine Road and killed the engine.
“This is worse than the other two, boss, if that’s possible,” Mike said as he walked across to where Barney was ducking under a taut strand of crime scene tape.
“How do you mean, worse?”
“More mutilation. You better take a look for yourself.”
Judy Prescott had foregone her early morning jog for a couple of weeks. But with life moving on, she had resumed her activity. There had been no further park murders, and the news was now full of equally disturbing events. Only the day before an old couple had been found murdered in sheltered accommodation in Chiswick. Jesus. They had been tied up and tortured by three teenage girls. Both corpses had been bound together back-to-back with duct tape. They were covered in cigarette burns, and had plastic shopping bags over their heads, taped to their necks to suffocate them. The girls had been seen leaving the flat and arrested shortly afterwards. The oldest was just sixteen. How sick was that?
Judy was approaching the boat houses when another jogger appeared through the blanket of early morning mist, breathing heavily, looking down at the ground and wearing a bright red bandanna tied around the forehead. As the runner passed by, Judy felt suddenly edgy and was about to turn around as a hand gripped her braided hair and jerked her backwards onto the ground.
Chest ballooning with pain as the impact with the solid asphalt forced the air from her lungs, Judy was stunned and could not gather her wits immediately following the sudden attack. Strong fingers found her throat and dug into it, cutting off her breath. The moon face staring down at her bore a maniacal grin, and yet the shark-like eyes were flat, black, and devoid of emotion.
“Time to die, you whore,” the thick, guttural voice said, breaking Judy’s state of terror, freeing her muscles from the frozen state they had locked in.
Her assailant had straddled her hips and was leaning forward to add weight to the vicelike grip. Judy brought both of her knees up with all the force she could muster, simultaneously clawing at the grinning face with both hands. The pressure left her throat, leaving her suddenly free as her assailant fell back. She flipped over, gained her feet and made to run away. And as the elation of escape coursed through her, a sharp, paralysing pain between her shoulder blades drove her back down, to break her nose and front teeth as her face smashed on to the unyielding surface. Fighting to stay conscious, unable to even struggle, Judy felt her tracksuit bottoms being pulled down.
Somehow, sobbing, moaning, tasting her own blood and spitting out gritty pieces of shattered teeth, Judy pushed herself up onto her knees and tried to crawl away.
The explosive, piercing pain that pervaded her was so devastating that she could not even scream. She stopped, set in place; a living statue. It felt as though she had been impaled on a barbecue spit. After a few seconds her body relaxed, and she toppled sideways. Hands gripped and pulled her over onto her back, which caused her more agony as the object now inside her was forced sideways and driven even deeper under her own weight.
The realisation that she was going to die was a concept that made her mind scream with an unadulterated sense of dread that she had never before experienced. It was a sensation strong enough to distract her from the physical pain, as all else was washed away by the crushing awareness that imminent and inescapable nonexistence awaited. She hardly felt the pressure of the hands at her throat, and was dead when her top was lifted up to disclose her breasts, before the blade of a knife punctured the skin under her ribcage.
Barney pulled on a Tyvek suit and booties, that a CSI provided him with, before opening the tent flap and entering. For a full minute he let the abhorrent scene burn itself into his mind. The body of a young woman was on its side, facing him, knees drawn up. The expression on the face was a snarl. She seemed to be staring at him, though her glazed eyes were as sightless as those of a China doll. The corpse was covered in blood, and more pooled around it and ran off down a slight incline, to vanish at a point where the wall of the tent met the ground. A thick, dark length of tree branch protruded from between the cheeks of her bottom like a stiff tail, jutting out into the air at a right angle; her lips were swollen and split, disclosing broken teeth, and her nose was misshapen and bloody.
Barney left the tent and walked down to the lake’s edge, to where Mike was standing, hands thrust deep in his trouser pockets as he hunched against the cold, damp air.
“Are you all right?” Barney said, lighting a cigarette as he looked out to where two geese slid through the curling tendrils of mist toward them in anticipation of a handout, only to show their disappointment by hissing and wagging stubby tail feathers when no treats were forthcoming.
“Yeah, boss. I just don’t need to see her again. I had an Indian take-away and a few lagers last night, and I’m trying to keep it down and not contaminate the scene.”
“She’s beyond hurt now, Mike. We’ve just got to view her as evidence, and hope that we find something here that will help us prevent it from happening again.”
Mike shivered involuntarily, only in part due to the low temperature. “I can’t help thinking about how she is someone’s wife, daughter, mother or whatever. I don’t know how loved ones’ come to terms with something like this. It’s too gruesome to have to carry in your mind for the rest of your life.”
“The nearest and dearest don’t see this part of it,” Barney said, dumping his half-smoked cigarette onto the dew-laden grass at his feet and sliding the sole of his shoe over it. “By the time they identify the body, it’s cleaned up and laid out under a sheet. They don’t get to see what we do, thank God.”
They were silent for a while, each assimilating the new horror into their brains.
“Give Mark Ross a bell,” Barney said, taking his notebook out to look up the Richmond number, where the psychologist had said he could be contacted.
“He was right about the date,” Mike stated as he tapped the number Barney gave him out on his mobile phone.
Jane Beatty arrived, donned her one-piece jumpsuit, put booties and gloves on, and entered the tent. She carried what looked to be a small, green plastic suitcase or fish tackle box.
Barney had the fleeting thought of Jane as a ghoul, attracted by death, to indulge in her repugnant, chosen profession. He lit another cigarette and stayed at the lakeside for a while, to give Jane time to examine the body, before he would go and ask the usual, predictable questions.
After fifteen minutes, Barney took a deep breath and walked back up the incline to the tent, which was lit up and showed dark shadows flitting to and fro behind the illuminated canvas. It made him think back to his childhood, when at night he would make dark images of animals and birds appear on the walls of his bedroom by contorting his hands and fingers to bring to life magical moving forms. A light bulb and a play on shadows had probably given him more pleasure back then than all the expensive toys and state-of-the-art computer games available today could give kids. Youngsters nowadays could not even imagine a time before home computers and mobile phones; a time as remote to them as the Stone Age was to him.
“Morning, Barnaby,” Jane said, glancing up as he hunkered down opposite her at the other side of the body, wearing a fr
esh pair of booties.
He nodded and manufactured a thin smile, but said nothing as the pathologist’s attention immediately returned to what he imagined she regarded as little more than work material. It entered his mind that he may end up on a steel table himself, with Jane’s gloved hand wielding a scalpel, to open up his naked body and remove, examine, weigh and section his internal organs. He shivered.
“Does doing this ever bother you?” Barney said, voicing his thoughts.
“Always,” Jane said. “I try to handle them with dignity, and treat them with respect. I know that their essence has gone, and that all I’m dealing with is a shell, but I never let go of the thought that they had lived, hopefully loved and been loved, and passed through the same fleeting state of awareness and actuality that I’m still a part of. I can do what I do because I know that they are beyond discomfort. You have to disassociate, Barnaby. That’s difficult to do at first, but it gets to be just a procedure. I try to do it with compassion. That’s a personal choice. Some of my colleagues are so hardened that they seem to have forgotten what they’re cutting on. To them it’s just sacks of offal that never lived or breathed.”
“I don’t know how you can deal with corpses every day and still maintain a sense of balance, or be able to attach much importance to life, knowing how suddenly it can be snuffed out.”
“It concentrates the mind,” Jane said, gently holding the dead young woman’s limp hand as she spoke. “I look on time as being the most precious commodity that any of us have, and don’t take one second of it for granted. I try not to squander it by doing anything that I don’t want to. That’s why some people tend to judge me as being a little antisocial and preoccupied. I choose to do what I want, when I want, how I want, and with whom I want to do it with.”
“That sounds like a good game plan.”
“It is. But I sometimes wish that I could loosen up more. I seem to go through life without taking enough time out to smell the flowers.”
“I don’t think any of us get it right, Jane. In fact, I don’t think that there is a right way. We’ve all got to do whatever pushes our buttons, and try not to do too many things that breed regret. It can sometimes be hard to fight your basic instincts.”
“True. And this girl fought, Barnaby,” Jane said, lifting the pallid hand up to show him the fingers. “The physical injuries suggest that she struggled violently. As you can see, some of her fingernails are bloodied. She must have scratched her attacker, which means we have every chance of retrieving DNA.”
“That’s a break,” Barney said, his knees popping as he stood up too quickly. “Shit. I’ll have to get back on the badminton court. I’m seizing up.”
“When did you last play?” Jane said as she enclosed each of the corpse’s hands in a polythene evidence bag, securing them with thick elastic bands around the wrists.
“Twenty years ago.”
“I think you should find something less energetic to do.”
“Such as?”
“Maybe walking or swimming.”
“I feel as though I’m swimming against the tide every day, Jane.”
Barney stayed inside the tent while Jane made notes and carried on examining the corpse. He backed off and watched her work, but said nothing else to distract her.
“Boss. I’ve got Dr Ross and Ms Egan outside,” Mike said, poking his head into the tent, but not entering. He had the smell of blood and body waste up his nose and couldn’t get rid of it. “Oh, and Jason Tyler, the guy that Caroline Sellars used to go out with, looks to be clean. He was at home when the uniforms called around. There was no evidence that he’d been out, and his car’s engine was cold. But he was alone and had no alibi.”
Barney nodded, turned back to Jane and said. “When you’re finished, I’d like for two civilians to examine the scene, Jane.”
“I’m through. You can bring them in now,” she said, snapping shut the catches on her ‘porta-morgue’ and standing up.
Barney quickly introduced the pathologist to the psychologist and ex-copper, explaining Mark’s background as a profiler.
Mark walked around the corpse. He was now back in full operational mode. It was as if the years since he had attended a major crime scene had melted away as quickly as butter on a hot skillet.
The amount of overt brutality and the manner in which the body had been abandoned with no regard to the victim’s semi-nude state was a testament to the killer’s rage. And yet it was a controlled rage. The tableau was ritualistic; a display that showed the workings of an organised if damaged mind.
“What caused the facial injuries?” Mark said to Jane.
“Impact with the asphalt,” she said. “There are traces of grit in the lacerations to her right cheek, nose and lips. And her upper front incisors are broken. Whether she fell or had her head forcibly propelled, I won’t know until I do the autopsy. There may be subjacent bruising under the skin at the back of the neck, if she was gripped and manipulated from behind.”
“I’d like to be there when you do the cut. Is that a problem?” Mark said.
“Not many people call it that,” Jane said, not yet decided whether she liked the tall American or not. He gave off no clue as to his emotions. She felt that the body at his feet was no more to him than an interesting specimen in a jar of formaldehyde, rather than the fresh corpse of what until so recently had been a vibrant, living individual, who should still be alive and enjoying life to the full. Even the man’s hard, grey eyes failed to give a hint as to his feelings. It was as if what they saw and the light that conveyed it was absorbed into the black and non-reflecting reservoirs of the pupils. He was without question enigmatic and, she decided, potentially dangerous. “I don’t think―”
“I’d appreciate you allowing Dr Ross to be present,” Barney said. “I want him to have access to whatever he needs. It may just save us re-enacting this scene again.”
“Make it official then, Barnaby. Put the request in on paper,” Jane said, walking to the entrance to the tent and pulling the flap open. And to Mark: “Be at the mortuary for three o’clock, Dr Ross.”
Mark had no time to answer. The flap dropped back into place. She was gone.
“Did he make any mistakes this time?” Mark said to Barney.
“No apparent latents in the coating of blood on the body. The technician is pretty sure that he wore gloves. There are just two footprints on the road, leading off into the grass, but with no discernible pattern left by the soles. There’s a chance that he left us blood and tissue under the victim’s fingernails, though. All we can do is pull Tyler in and have a doctor check him for fresh lacerations, and take samples for DNA comparison.”
As they walked back towards the Cherokee, Barney lifted the tape for them to duck under, and stopped abruptly as a bright, blinding flash lit the matt-grey morning air in a sudden burst of harsh light. He knew it was a camera.
“Detective Chief Inspector Bowen, who are the two civilians with you?” Larry Holden said, appearing from a thick stand of laurel at the side of the road, raising his Canon to take another shot.
“Blind me again and I’ll break that fucking camera on your thick skull and nick you for assault, Holden,” Barney hissed through clenched teeth, approaching the paunchy, dishevelled little man with the purpose and speed of a pissed-off rhino.
“Hey, hey, easy, man,” Larry said as he lowered the camera and backed up until the evergreen foliage brought him to a halt. “I’m just doing my job. You know I report it as it is, chief. Give me a break, huh?”
Larry Holden was a freelance stringer who liked to think he was a crime reporter, but spent the lion’s share of his time as a paparazzo, determinedly dogging celebrities around the city’s top restaurants and nightclubs, to take photographs of the subjects at play, while they were more relaxed and less guarded than usual. The media paid handsomely for candid shots of drunken actors or singers in a brawl, or in any way making fools of themselves. And to catch a glimpse of the thigh, crotch or
tits of a female celeb was celluloid gold. Nothing deterred Larry from his quest to take the shot. The more his marks were surrounded by minders, the more he was drawn; a bee to the honey pot. He was less interested in the second leaguers who actually courted paparazzi attention. He needed the challenge and the big reward that the exceptional shot attracted. He had a smell for what he did, born of a past career in mainline journalism. Had his love for the bottle been less consuming, then he may have still been plying his trade from the relatively respectable offices of Canada Square at Canary Wharf.
Johnny Walker had a lot to answer for in Larry’s book. Not the Radio DJ, but the amber nectar, that in both red and black label guises had proved to be the sly demon that had cost him both his job and marriage. Hannah had tried to put up with him, mainly for the sake of their daughter, Annette, but his countless empty promises to reform had eventually fallen on deaf ears, and now he was alone, left only with the need to take photos that would pay the bills, and a newshound’s compulsion to dig out the nuggets of clandestine information that were deeply imbedded in supposedly solid rock walls of secrecy. His mission was to disclose the truth in all its less than attractive guises. He had paid a WPC handsomely for the tip-off that the Park Killer was expected to strike again on the first Friday of the month. From his small, tawdry flat he had monitored the police bands all through Thursday night, waiting for any transmissions that indicated an incident in any of the city’s parks. His perseverance had been rewarded.
Leaving his battered Vauxhall outside the park, Larry had lowered his equipment bag over the railings and then, with difficulty, climbed the pointed palisade of defensive iron spikes and dropped down into the bushes that bordered it. He knew that the police would be guarding the murder scene, and that he would have to approach with stealth.
