by Vogel, Vince
Jack looked at the aerial shot of a map, a red line zigzagging through it. The distance was just four miles, all open streets except for Arradine. If a killer was lying in wait it would be there, he thought.
“Let’s drive along her way home,” Jack said. “See if we can’t spot something.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Jack started the car and crawled along roads lined with houses until they reached Arradine. He parked outside, and they made their way by foot into the park. At the open ground’s entrance they found a camera sitting atop a tall pylon.
“Give the borough a call and get them to send you Saturday night’s footage,” Jack said to Lange as they passed it on the way into Arradine.
They entered a thick avenue of bramble bushes that snaked through a wide open space of grasslands. While they walked along the asphalt cycle path, the rain was only spitting and the wind gentle, the weather holding up a little. Lange felt eery at the thought of walking the same route as a dead girl. In a sense, he was stepping in her footprints.
Eventually, the brambles ended and they spilled out onto a wide heath. Jack stopped and gazed around the unkept, dew-covered grass, the wind sweeping it in flattened patterns. At the edges, rows of leafless trees like black spindly fingers poked up from the turf, crows endlessly cawing in their branches. Not one back garden or house could be seen from where they stood on the pathway, and there were countless other pathways coming in and out of the heath. Jack was sure now. If the killer had planned this, Arradine would be where he’d take her.
“No signs of struggle,” he muttered to himself.
The other two girls had no evidence on their bodies of a struggle, and the sedative used was given to them orally in a drink, suggesting they had taken it unknowingly but voluntarily. From preliminaries on her body, Becky Dorring appeared to show no signs of a struggle either. Jack wanted to know how someone could meet a complete stranger in the middle of this park late at night and persuade that stranger to go off with them.
“You think this is the spot, sarge?” Lange asked.
“I do. Yeah. We need to get a team out here. For one, we need to do a door to door with all the locals, and you need to get the CCTV at the entrance and any other cameras along the route. We need to be sure it happened here.”
“Do you think there’s a chance the killer could be in any of the videos?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. He’s been very careful not to give us anything so far. Everywhere he’s left the bodies has been somewhere with very little camera coverage. I wouldn’t think he’d be stupid enough to enter the park via the main entrance. No, he’s come in through one of these other pathways.”
“What about leaving?”
“Probably the same way. Plenty of these paths lead to roads where cars can be parked up. There’s not always cameras there. Our man would have done his homework.”
“What about her bike?”
“That’s what I was thinking. Her mum gave me a description before I left, and I’m going to get uniform to show a picture of it with the one of Becky. Hopefully someone can remember seeing her with the bike and the killer.”
“Could be dumped around here.”
“How’d you mean?”
“The killer could have grabbed her off of it. It could be lying around here in the long grass, or the killer could have put it somewhere.”
“No. I don’t think she was taken off her bike, George. I think she walked her bike while leaving this field with someone. Leaving by her own free will.”
“You think she knew them?”
“Maybe. We won’t know for sure whether there was a struggle until the autopsy. But if it’s like the rest, it’ll show none.”
Just then, Jack’s phone rang and he took it out. It was Shiva Patel.
“Just to let you know,” the pathologist said over the phone, “I’ve got Scotland Yard already here, and they’re eager to get on. I can delay them another hour at the most, so you better be on your way.”
“I’m about forty-five minutes away, Shiva.”
“Good. I’ll see you here.”
“Thanks, mate.”
Jack put the phone down and turned to Lange.
“We need to head to the coroner’s.”
11
Jack and Lange stood at one edge of the autopsy room, a dash of Vicks VapoRub beneath both their nostrils to help with the smell. On the other side stood the stretched and squashed figures of Pierce and Locke, Scotland Yard’s finest.
The room was one of those subterranean basements, submerged below the pavement running along one of the outer walls, and the narrow windows looked out onto a small brick recess, the sun’s rays never reaching its bottom even in summer. Jack always felt like he was within the bowels of some great brick beast whenever he stood in the room.
In the center of the ten-by-ten-meter yellow-tiled cell stood Shiva Patel over the naked body of Becky Dorring. She was lying upon a silver gurney that glittered in the electric light.
“The time is three thirty p.m.,” Shiva said, kicking off the proceedings. “I am Dr. Shiva Patel, acting pathologist for the Metropolitan Police. I have before me a caucasian female, blonde hair, blue eyes…”
Jack couldn’t help fixing his eyes upon the girl’s blank, sleeping face. Again he thought of Carrie. He wondered if one day she would be lying on the slab like this, men standing around ogling her naked body as it got cut up.
“…there are no abrasions to the flesh, no obvious bruising. There appears to be no sign of a struggle. Early finger analysis found no foreign tissue underneath the nails. Analysis of the vaginal wall has indicated no abrasions or tearing. This is the same with the anus. This would indicate that the female didn’t have sexual intercourse prior to death, either forcefully or otherwise. X-rays state that apart from several broken metatarsal in the feet and a metacarpus in each hand where the nails went through post expiry, there are no broken bones in the body.”
Jack didn’t get this guy. It was workman-like. Each kill gone about with a professional disinterest. The killer didn’t appear to allow himself to enjoy any of it. First, he drugged them with sedatives until they lost consciousness, meaning that they didn’t even see it coming, essentially removing the thrill of witnessing their fear—something characteristic with the majority of killers. Then he deprived himself of the thrill of the actual kill—strangulation was the usual method in these cases, a tourniquet or garrote often used, sometimes the bare hands for that really intimate kill. But here the killer merely injected the women with high doses of street smack while they lay unconscious, and let them slip away mercifully. They never even knew they were dead. There was no anger. Nothing sexual. No real gratification. It’s almost as though he were setting them free before turning them into a symbol. Because that was what it really was for him; he was turning these women into something. It was the act of fixing them to those crosses that got him off, not the kill.
“Early toxicology states that her blood had high levels of the opiate diacetylmorphine. On the left arm, we find a puncture wound indicating the piercing of flesh with what I’d assume to be a hypodermic needle. Of course, I will be doing a biopsy of the tissue around the wound to make sure, but regarding what we know about the first two bodies, I’d be certain that this was how the fatal dose entered the bloodstream. Around the wrists we find scarring.”
Shiva lifted Becky’s waif wrist so that the arm was raised, the bony hand dangling limply. Jack couldn’t help focusing on the small mound of pink flesh on the back of it. It was where the nail had shifted the tissue as it had crashed through. Those marks of stigmata would never heal, Jack thought.
“Referring to her hospital records, we can assume that these scars are the result of Becky attempting to take her own life two years ago,” Shiva commented, before gently placing the wrist back down. He then took a chest clamp from the aluminium trolley to his side and set it over Becky. Having adjusted it into position, he retrieved the rib shears,
which resembled garden secateurs, from said trolley and came back to the body.
“This is where I duck out,” Lange said, heading for the door.
Jack glanced after him, before returning his eyes to Becky. At the same time, Pierce and Locke had a little giggle to themselves as they stood on the other side.
Having cut and stripped back the tissue from the sternum using a scalpel, Shiva began breaking apart the center of the rib cage with the shears. Jack’s eyes never left the girl’s face as it shook with each chomp of the shears’ blades. On the third crunch, her head flopped to the side and the tape over one of her eyes came away and the lid opened. She was looking directly at Jack, her head jolting away as she was broken open. A rush of guilt and shame flew up him like a flock of scattering birds. What if it were Carrie on that table?
In the past ten years, every time he’d had to watch them cutting open a young woman who had lost her way and found murder, he’d asked himself that same question.
One big jolt of her staring face and the ribs were open, Shiva’s black rubber apron now covered in blood. Some of it dripped steadily from the gurney, down to the floor and dribbled into the long drain that ran through the center of the room. The pathologist dipped his hands inside the cavity, pulled out the stomach, slapped it onto some scales, and recorded the weight. He then cut it open and examined the contents.
“Like the last two,” Shiva said, “I can smell alcohol and see what appears to be a thick white residue that I suspect to be the undigested remnants of the sedative.” Once he’d finished with the stomach, he moved on to the heart. “We find with the heart that there’s signs of failure—bruising around the upper ventricle—which I gather was caused by the massive drop in blood pressure brought on by the overdose. Apart from that, there’s no other sign of internal organ damage and…”
Outside in the corridor, Jack found Lange.
“It’s all the blood and gore, sarge,” Lange began excusing himself.
“It’s all right, George. You don’t have to say anything.”
Pierce and Locke now came swinging out of the autopsy room.
“Here he is,” Locke said, nodding his round head toward Lange, a smarmy grin spread across his fat-lipped mouth.
“I don’t know who was whiter,” Pierce added. “You or her!”
“All right, boys,” Jack stated. “Why don’t you two both piss off.”
“I would do, but I’ve got to hand over a call to you from Don Parkinson.”
“Don Parkinson!?” Jack exclaimed, the name feeling like a slap to him. “What does your governor want with me?”
“Just a word, Jack.”
“Well, I don’t want to speak with Don. And he’s made it more than clear to me in the past that he certainly doesn’t want to speak with me.”
“Just a word,” the thin figure of Pierce insisted.
With a groan and a shrug, Jack submitted.
“Go on, then.”
Pierce got his phone out and initiated the call.
“Guv?” he let out after a few seconds. “Yeah, I’m here with him now.”
He handed the phone to Jack.
“Don, long time no speak,” he said into the handset.
“Why aren’t you finished yet, Jack?” came the spiteful voice of his former colleague at Scotland Yard.
“I can’t answer that, Don. Maybe it’s because I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
“If I had my way, you’d be lucky to get a job chasing shoplifters at a fuckin’ supermarket.”
“Was that all you wanted to say, Don? Because I’m in a bit of a hurry what with this murder case.”
“What did the parents say?” he snapped gruffly.
“Not much. She went out early Saturday evening and never returned. She was studying at a friend’s. Left at nine, cycling across Arradine, where I suspect she was picked up. I’m going to have the council look into the CCTV cameras in the area, but I can already tell you that there’s none around Arradine as it’s all open land. Maybe a late-night dog walker saw something.”
“Have you informed Pierce and Locke of this yet?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because what have they told me since this all started, huh? What’s Scotland Yard given us?”
“Scotland Yard is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police. Upper Hackney is part of the Met. We’re your superiors. You are obliged to send on any information regarding this case—a case that we generously allow you to help out on because the bodies were found on your patch. Your continued involvement is a courtesy. One that can be revoked if I think you’re holding back information.”
“Well, thank goodness I just this minute gave you everything, then, Don.”
“You always were a cheeky cunt, Jack. Always took the piss. Always went too far. Went too far with Col, didn’t you?”
The hairs along the back of Jack’s neck went up.
“Don’t you mention him,” Jack snarled down the phone.
“Make sure you tell Pierce and Locke what you got and do as you’re told.”
Parkinson put the phone down, and Jack very nearly threw it at the wall. His face had distorted into an angry frown, and he had that blank look to his eyes that he got when the red mist descended.
“My phone, Jack,” Pierce asked, and Jack slammed it into his palm.
He then begrudgingly told the Scotland Yard boys what he’d just told Parkinson, and they left, chuckling to themselves once they were a little farther along the yellow-painted corridor. Meanwhile, Jack was muttering inaudible words to himself and looking blankly around for something to punch. The mention of Col had twisted him up, and he needed to calm down.
“You all right, sarge?” Lange asked as he stood watching Jack pace the thin corridor.
Jack looked at the detective constable as though he’d only just realized he was there.
“I’m okay, George. It’s just that man. Don fucking Parkinson. I don’t like him. I guess I never did, even though you could say we were once friends. Used to drink together. Now the only thing I’d drink with him is bleach.”
“What’d he say?”
“Nothing, as usual. Merely wanted to wind me up.”
At that moment, the door to the autopsy room opened and Shiva Patel popped his head out.
“Can I have a word with you, Jack—in here?”
“Of course.”
Jack and Lange followed Shiva into the room. He took them to a far corner and gave a furtive look around, before bending clandestinely forward.
“There’s something a little odd about this body,” he began in a hushed tone. “I told those two idiots from Special Crime, and they dismissed it. It could be nothing, but they didn’t want me to include it in the report.”
“What is it?” Jack wanted to know.
“Little things. For example, the first two bodies had been bound at the wrists and ankles with plastic zip ties to hold the body in place for the nails. We knew this from the abrasions and microscopic fragments of plastic commonly used in ties of this type that we found there. But this body was tied using rope. We found manila hemp fragments commonly found in everyday rope.”
“The killer could have run out of zip ties,” Lange put forward.
“That’s what those two said. But killers like this have methods, standards that they always keep to.”
“The same as the cross,” Jack stated.
“You noticed that too?” Shiva said, turning to him.
“Yeah. The others had a rounded edge. This one was more plain.”
“I mean, it could be nothing. Just slight differences. Everything else was exactly the same. But something to think about.”
Jack started to see the fragments of something come floating together. Something was up with this murder. But he had no idea what.
12
Six p.m., back at Upper Hackney.
Jack stood in front of the evening shift as they began filling up the briefing room. He never
attended briefings but occasionally had to give one. Today was such a day. Behind him stood Tapeworm and Three Balls, Pierce and Locke. Next to them was DCI Caldwell, looking proud as always, his chest puffed out almost as far as his belly. The other side of him was tonight’s shift commander, Sergeant Timothy Atkins, a tall, thin man who reminded Jack of a Victorian streetlamp, especially his long face.
To the side of them, pinned to a whiteboard, was an enlarged photograph of Becky Dorring, a recent school picture that Helen had given them. Pretty features, straight blonde hair, bright smile shining on her lips, and a supposedly even brighter future shining in her light blue eyes. Next to that was a picture of her blue mountain bike and an aerial view of the land between her house and that of her friend Lauren Chalmers. A jagged red line denoted the route Becky had taken, and it stretched between both houses, passing through the middle of the expanse of grass and trees that was Arradine.
In the hour since they’d gotten back to the station, Lange had searched the video from the CCTV camera at the entrance of Arradine and seen Becky enter on her bicycle at 9:08 p.m. Only two other CCTV cameras existed on the rest of the route, one several streets after Arradine and another close to her house. Neither showed any footage of Becky in the hours after she’d entered the heathland. Lange then searched footage from several cameras in the surrounding area, on different routes out of the park, and again found no sight of the girl. But it was like Jack said: most of the local area had no CCTV.
Everything pointed toward something happening on the heath that had changed the direction she was heading in forever.
“Right,” Jack announced, bringing quiet to the room. “All got your coffees?” A general murmur went around. “Then I’ll start. As you may have heard, the body of a young girl was found in Epping Forest late afternoon on Sunday. I can now confirm for you that we have identified the girl as Rebecca Dorring, a nineteen-year-old from the Barnet area. Becky was last seen leaving her friend Lauren Chalmers’s house at nine o’clock Saturday night. Now, on the board behind me is the route that Becky would have taken to get home…”
