POETIC JUSTICE & A KILLER IS CALLING: The DCS Palmer and the Serial Murder Squad series, cases 3 & 4.

by B. L. Faulkner

  They both laughed as Gheeta’s phone rang.

  ‘DS Singh, can I help you? Hello, Mr Granger… You’re kidding… Okay, don’t touch anything. We’ll be right over.’

  She put the phone down and looked at Palmer. His shoulders sagged.

  ‘Another body?’

  She nodded.

  ‘With a note attached.’

  ‘A note? What kind – another ‘child’ note, or a ransom note?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  Chapter 10

  Madame Geneelia did not look very nice dead; in fact, she looked hideous. Death has a habit of stripping away the body cosmetic, the personality it once housed, and leaving on view the basic flesh and shape, helpless in its inadequacy to convey to the viewer even the slightest hint of the person it once housed. The person whose body it once was has gone, and now, like an empty pupa, it is left behind; the empty host to an expired life.

  Madame Geneelia’s body, minus Madame Geneelia, was quite a shock to Palmer and Singh, as they took their first look at it lying exposed on the hotel room floor. She had obviously been dressed in only a bathrobe when she had opened her hotel room door to the killer, whose vicious attack had sent her sprawling backwards onto the plush carpet, where he or she had then repeatedly plunged a serrated steak knife into her chest, which had presented itself as a suitable target when the robe had fallen open with the fall.

  They stepped into the room with care, so as not to disturb any forensic evidence that might be there; Palmer removed his trilby as a show of respect. Mr Granger was already there, together with another gentleman that Palmer took to be another hotel management person.

  ‘Could we give her some dignity and cover the chest, sir?’

  Gheeta was embarrassed for the poor woman.

  ‘Better not, Sergeant; best let Forensics do their work first. They’ll be here soon. Anything been moved or touched in here since the body was found, Mr Granger?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Granger was quite white. The blood over Madame Geneelia’s chest and robe was making him feel queasy.

  ‘Oh, except this…’

  He pulled a written note from his pocket.

  ‘It was on the body. I moved it when I felt for her pulse.’

  He offered it to Palmer, who knew better than to add his fingerprints to the piece of paper which could yield substantial clues.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Wednesday’s child.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That’s all, yes.’

  ‘Okay, put it on the bedside table if you would, Mr Granger. Anybody else handle it?’

  ‘Only Mr Dolland here,’ Granger said, indicating a rather portly, balding man standing behind him. ‘It was inside an envelope which Mr Dolland opened.’

  Dolland pulled an envelope from his pocket and gave it to Granger, who added it to the paper on the side table.

  ‘And Mr Dolland is…?’

  ‘Oh sorry, Chief Superintendent, I should have introduced you. Mr Dolland is our Head of Security.’

  ‘Really? Not doing very well at present are you, Mr Dolland? Two murders on the premises? Somebody’s getting in who shouldn’t be.’

  Dolland was embarrassed.

  ‘No, well – I mean… It’s all a bit out of our league, Chief Superintendent. We’re usually catching room thieves and fraudsters; murder isn’t something I’m used to. It’s awful, absolutely awful.’

  ‘Yes, well, not a nice thing to happen at any time. Perhaps you’d make sure the room is untouched, and let our DA people have the note and envelope when they arrive?’

  ‘DA people?’

  ‘Document Analysis. Not an ex-copper then, Mr Dolland? Most hotel security people are these days.’

  ‘No, no. Always been in the Private Sector: G4 Securicor and others.’

  Gheeta felt sure that had Dolland not been there, Palmer would have voiced his well-known low opinion about ‘amateurs’ in the police and security sectors.

  The Forensics team she had called in arrived together with a doctor to issue a death certificate, so Palmer could see no point in remaining.

  ‘Right then, Mr Granger; the Sergeant and I will be off now, so we will leave everything in the capable hands of Forensics. Once they have finished, our undertaker will come and remove Madame Geneelia to the police morgue for a pathologist to do a P.M. That’s a post mortem, Mr Dolland.’

  There was a sarcastic hint in his voice as Palmer said this.

  ‘I suggest this floor is emptied of guests and kept barred from the public and staff, Mr Granger; can’t think that any guest would want to have a room near a murder scene anyway, and our people will be in and out for a couple of days, and there will be an officer on the door at all times. We’ll be in touch if we need anything. I’ll put a media block on it at our end, so you might want your PR people to spin something to the press, Mr Dolland. It’s bound to leak out now, being two murders, so I’d get going on that if I were you before all your bookings get cancelled. Unexplained death or something similar usually keeps the tabloid hounds at bay for a few days.’

  He put his trilby back on, nodded to the pair of them and left, with Sergeant Singh alongside.

  ‘So, Dolland isn’t much of a Head of Security is he, guv? I think I might check him out. Bit of a clown.’

  ‘The whole hotel is a Fred Karno’s if you ask me, Sergeant.’

  ‘Fred Karno’s?’

  ‘Bloody circus. Make sure we get a copy of that ‘Wednesday’s Child’ note pronto. Those notes with a day written on them are all we have at present that links the murders together. It’s not much, but it’s a link.’

  He smiled excitedly at Singh.

  ‘We have a link.’

  Chapter 11

  The next morning Gheeta and Palmer stood behind the seated Claire in the team room looking at the text on the screen as Claire tapped the keys.

  ‘Putting in the days referred to in the paper notes at the murders doesn’t bring up anything except this text. It’s an old children’s poem.’

  Gheeta read it aloud.

  ‘Monday’s child is fair of face.

  Tuesday’s child is full of grace.

  Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

  Thursday’s child has far to go.

  Friday’s child is loving and giving.

  Saturday’s child works hard for a living.’

  ‘No Sunday’s child then?’ said Palmer.

  ‘No. The poem doesn’t have a Sunday’s Child’

  ‘So, if we take the notes on the bodies to be referring to this poem, then we should get a match between the victim and the day. Can’t mean anything else, can it?’

  Gheeta could see a double meaning.

  ‘Okay, but what’s the key? Is the killer working through the days of the week, murdering somebody for each day? In which case, what about Sunday? Or is he or she working through the types of ‘child’ relative to the poem?’

  ‘Both,’ said Claire, keying in the facts. ‘The victims tie in with the days; it makes sense. Listen, Monday’s child is fair of face; has to be the model, and she was killed on a Monday. Tuesday’s child is full of grace; has to be the ballerina, who was killed on a Tuesday – ballerinas are graceful. Thursday’s child has far to go is the marathon runner; and yesterday, Wednesday; Wednesday’s child is full of woe is Madame Geneelia, the mystic. Got to be that way; each line describes the victim and their day of death.’

  ‘Two to go then,’ said Palmer. ‘Friday and Saturday. Could be anybody, couldn’t it? Friday’s child is loving and giving – that could be anyone. Could be me.’

  Gheeta and Claire both had a sudden coughing fit. Palmer had expected that, and continued with a slight smile.

  ‘As could be Saturday’s child, who works hard for a living.’

  Gheeta sighed.

  ‘Where do we start, guv? It’s too wide a pool of potential victims.’

  ‘We carry on as we are, Sergeant. Put everyth
ing into the computer programmes; keep feeding it in and cross our fingers that we find a link. There will be one somewhere. This killer is killing for a reason, and I don’t think he or she has come across the poem and thought ‘oh that’s a nice thread to kill by’; no, the victims were already lined up, and the poem just fitted them perfectly. There will be a strong link between this poem and the victims. And there’s an audience too.’

  Gheeta was puzzled.

  ‘An audience?’

  ‘Of course. If you were the killer and were doing it for a personal reason, for self gratification, there’d be no need to leave a note. If the victims had done something to you and this was revenge, you’d do the deed and move onto the next one; you wouldn’t leave notes. No, this killer is playing to an audience; somebody or some people other than the killer know what’s going on and the significance of the notes. He or she is saying to their audience: ‘look how good I am’, and to us: ‘come on copper, you can’t catch me.’

  ‘We usually do.’

  ‘And we will this time, too.’

  ‘This is interesting.’

  Claire was scrolling down files on screen and brought one up. She half turned to Sergeant Singh.

  ‘That Dolland chap you wanted a search on?’

  Gheeta nodded.

  ‘The hotel security man.’

  ‘Yes, there were some invoices in the hotel accounts from an agency company called Central Recruitment, who supply manual and catering staff to hotels, including the Majestic. Central Recruitment, according to their details lodged at Companies House, has two directors: Evelyn and Robert Dolland.’

  ‘Crafty bugger,’ Palmer laughed. ‘He’s got it all worked out hasn’t he, eh? Talk about keeping it in the family. I bet that’s a nice little earner for him and the wife.’

  ‘It is,’ Claire said, scrolling a bit further down. ‘Their company accounts show they supply most of the other big-name hotels too on a regular basis; the hotels pay Central Recruitment, who we assume pay the people they send. Last accounts, two years old, show a profit of seventy grand.’

  ‘Hmm…I can’t see a tie in with the murders though. Madame Geneelia would have known Dolland and let him in the room if he’d come knocking, but the other victims in other hotels wouldn’t. Put all that on the back burner, Claire; I think we’re more likely to find links between the victims somewhere else along the line than anything Dolland is involved in. Anyway, it’s all legal and above board. Anything come up on the hotel guests? Be nice to find the same guest booked into each of the hotels on the murder night.’

  ‘I’m still running the programme, sir. Bit of a mammoth job that one, but fingers crossed.’

  The door opened and the portly frame of Reg Frome, Head of the Forensics department, came in, holding up the latest note and envelope in an evidence bag. Reg Frome and Palmer went back a long way together, both joining the Met from school with Reg taking the science path. He really did look like the mad scientist Doc Brown from the film Back to the Future with his hair permanently standing on end.

  ‘Good morning all.’

  ‘Ah!’ Palmer said expectantly. ‘Come to give us some good news, Reg? Fingerprints of a known villain all over the note I hope?’

  Reg sat down.

  ‘Not exactly, Justin, but interesting. I gave it to my Document Analysis chaps, and they say the handwriting is obviously faked; lots of lifts and stop-starts, no flow to it, so whoever wrote it was doing their best to disguise it. It was very amateurish really, don’t know why they bothered. These days you can use any number of type-faces and fonts on a basic computer, and they can’t be traced. Well, only if we get the hard drive and find the letter on it. Anyway, the prints are Granger’s and Dolland’s on the envelope, and Granger’s on the note. The note was folded, so we would expect a partial print where the person who folded it had touched it, but the clever sod used kitchen gloves. They have a high oil content which holds the colour pigment fast to the rubber base material in the manufacturing process. We can pick that up in an infrared scan.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  Palmer was disappointed.

  ‘Pollen.’

  ‘Pollen?’

  ‘Yes, very small traces of flower pollen from roses and chrysanthemums on both note and envelope.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘And that’s it, Justin, I’m afraid. Waiting on a couple of other test results on all four notes, but I’m pretty sure they’ll come back negative too. Sorry.’

  ‘Okay Reg, thanks for taking a look so quickly. Take care.’

  He sat back disappointedly in his chair, as Frome left with a nod to Claire and Gheeta. ‘Well, rubber gloves and pollen, eh? It seems we are looking for a florist who does the washing up.’

  ‘I think you might be wasting your time, sir,’ Claire said dejectedly. ‘Look at this.’

  She’d pulled up a colour crime scene picture of Madame Geneelia’s room. The body, now covered, lay where it had fallen.

  ‘Take a look at the bedside table, sir.’

  Palmer and Gheeta bent closer to the screen.

  ‘Oh blast.’

  Palmer exhaled loudly. The picture showed the letter and envelope on the bedside table where Granger had put them, directly underneath a large vase of roses and chrysanthemums.

  ‘Back to square one then, eh? Mind you, well done for spotting it Claire; I’d have looked a right fool if I’d got the team out interviewing every florist in London wouldn’t I, eh?’

  ‘Hang on, that reminds me,’ Gheeta said, leaning towards the screen. ‘Pull up the crime scene pictures of the murdered model please, Claire.’

  A few keyboard clicks later and there they were, in a page of small icons. Gheeta studied them closely and pointed to one.

  ‘Pull that one up.’

  It was similar to the Madame Geneelia picture. A hotel room with a body lying on its back on the floor; the face had been attacked with a vengeance. Palmer grimaced.

  ‘Not a pretty sight.’

  ‘It’s the T-shirt, guv; her T-shirt has writing on it. I meant to take a look before, but Madame Geneelia’s murder made it slip my mind. Can you get a better image, Claire?’

  Claire could. A few clicks and zooms later, and the logo letters MCDA were clearly visible on the bloodstained T-shirt.

  ‘What’s MCDA then?’ Palmer asked. He guessed it would be some fashion logo being promoted by the model.

  Gheeta was stumped.

  ‘No idea, guv..’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Claire.‘But give me a minute and I’ll find out.’

  She keyed the letters into her computer.

  ‘Here we are: Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis…?’

  She looked enquiringly at Palmer and Gheeta.

  ‘I can’t see how that has any relevance to modelling?’ Gheeta said.

  ‘No,’ Palmer agreed. ‘It’s not going to be that, whatever that is. Give the team covering her murder a bell, and get them to ask the Victim Support Officer who’s with her family to have a quiet word and see if they can help. It could be some local club she belonged to.’

  His phone rang across the corridor in his office.

  ‘Hey up, here we go. Let’s hope it’s not Friday’s Child been knocked off a day early!’

  ‘I’ll get it, guv.’

  Gheeta made her way quickly to the office and picked up the phone.

  ‘Chief Superintendent Palmer’s office, Sergeant Singh speaking – can I help you? Hello Mrs P., how are you? Still waiting for the new addition then, eh? Okay hang on, he’s here now.’

  Palmer came in and took the phone.

  ‘Hello Princess, I take it that George is taking his time, eh? Well don’t worry, I seem to recall one of ours kept us waiting for three days… You’re getting what? Spike? What’s Spike? Oh, Skype… on the computer – what’s that for? Why do you need to see them? You call the kids near enough every night as it is, and spend hours on the phone – you don’t need to see them on the telly as
well… Who?... Oh, I might have known Benji would have it… So what, doesn’t mean we need it just because Benji has it.’

  Benji – full name Benjamin – was Palmer’s next door neighbour; a retired advertising executive in his early sixties, with spray-on tan, ponytail, designer clothes, and, in Palmer’s estimation, of questionable sexual orientation. Too much money and too much time on his hands was Palmer’s usual ‘Benji’ mantra; three or four continental cruises or holidays a year, a new motor every year, and Palmer reckoned a fresh nip and tuck every year too. Benji was a great favourite with most of the ladies in the area, especially Mrs P. and her gardening club and WI friends; this rankled a bit with Palmer, who had previously been their favourite until Benji moved in.

  ‘How will it possibly save us money? Those solar panels were going to do that… We had to have them after Benji had them installed on his roof… Yes I know they will eventually – eventually being in about twelve years’ time, and then only if we’re lucky and the government still wants to buy electricity off us by then. Be better off doing some fracking under the garden – now that’s an idea!’

  He winked at Gheeta.

  ‘I’ll get a fracking company to drill down, and then turn right and go under Benji’s garden and do some fracking there – with a bit of luck it’ll loosen the rock and cause a sinkhole, and he’ll fall into it and never be seen again… What do you mean he’s at the door now? What for?... To help you download the Skype? Get the chap from the TV shop round to do it… I don’t care if it is easy to do – and if it is easy, why has Benji got to come round to do it?... I’m not being silly… Okay… Yes, yes, see you later… Normal time if nothing crops up this end… Okay… Love you too.’

  He put the phone down and slumped into his chair, exhaling loudly.

  ‘Apparently we are now going to be in visual contact with all the family through the computer linked to the telly by a thing called Skype. So no prizes for guessing where Mrs P. will be sat all evening, every evening.’

  ‘Cheer up, guv, it will save you money; there’s no charge for it, so your phone bill will go down if she uses it instead of the phone.’