Craig returned Hendron’s call first; he deserved to know that Sarah Reilly was safe and had now agreed to stay at High Street for the duration, so he could come and meet her there. There was no point contacting Ash just to hear what he’d already heard; if there was anything more on the court attendees or the significance of the dumpsites then they would be beating down his door.
That made John the next person to speak to and he wanted to do that face-to-face. Liam deposited Sarah Reilly and Aidan at High Street and then headed up the Ormeau Road, with Craig keeping his fingers crossed the whole way to the labs.
They were greeted at the entrance by not just John but Mike and Des as well.
“This must be good, for all three of you to be here!”
Des shook his head and turned towards the stairs. “I was just passing.” He held up a handful of swabs. “Off to run these through. I’ll call you as soon as I get anything.”
“Great.” John nodded to the detectives. “Follow us.”
They did, straight into the dissection room.
John stood beside the first body, shaking his head. “I have to apologise.”
As Craig found a stool and sat down, Liam asked, “What for?”
“Well, strictly speaking it wasn’t our fault, as we didn’t do the first nine P.M.s, but then again, as I’m Director of Path and I set the standards, I suppose -”
Mike was torn between shaking and nodding his head, so he settled for not moving, and Craig had had enough apologies for one day from Ryan Hendron, so he held up a hand to halt John’s.
“Just tell us what you’ve found, please. You can beat yourself up afterwards if you like.”
The pathologist nodded and leaned against a bench.
“OK, so Jim and Renée P.M.ed the first nine victims, but Mike and I did the final two, Judith Roper and Walter Gruber, and we all made the same error. We all got the cause of death wrong.”
Craig admitted to being surprised. How the heck could they be wrong eleven times? When he asked the question, he was surprised by John’s enthusiastic response.
“Well, actually, it’s fascinating. You see, we all postulated that they’d died from acute alcohol poisoning because of the signs of respiratory failure, plus of course, all their blood alcohol levels were off the charts, although as you know I was never convinced of that COD. Of course, some of the victims had other nasty injuries too; for instance, that splenic perforation could have killed Maria Drake all on its own.”
Mike nodded. “It could indeed, but it didn’t.”
John nodded, parroting his subordinate. “Indeed. In fact, we still can’t be certain that they didn’t all die of alcohol poisoning...although I have to say that I doubt it now…”
Craig was losing the will to live.
“What’s the real cause of death, John?”
His tone said that he wanted the answer fast and short. The pathologist obliged with a disturbingly excited glint in his eye.
“BURKING!”
There was silence for a moment, until finally Liam asked, “What?”
John explained enthusiastically.
“Burking is murder by suffocation, so as to leave no, or few, marks of violence. It was named after the Burke in Burke and Hare, the two nineteenth century Edinburgh murderers who supplied corpses to the city’s medical anatomists. They killed their victims by occluding the nose and mouth so they couldn’t take air in, and then lying on their chests to prevent expansion. It’s quick and leaves no marks. But of course, it never occurred to me that we’d see it two centuries later and over here-”
Mike cut in. “Although of course, Burke and Hare did come from Ireland.”
John’s eyes widened. “You’re right! They did. I wonder if our killer is any relation-”
Craig raised a hand to halt the trip into genealogy, interrupting his friend in an incredulous voice.
“You’re…you’re telling me…that all of our victims died from this Burking?”
John nodded, looking far more pleased than the topic said was appropriate.
“Most probably. Death was definitely due to respiratory failure, and that’s why we were confused. You see, respiratory failure’s often the cause of death in acute alcohol poisoning as well, so-”
Liam said exactly what Craig was thinking.
“What the fuck? What sort of nutter does stuff like this?” He shook his head meaningfully. “I despair of the human race.”
After a moment’s silent agreement, Craig summarised.
“OK, so you’re now saying that what we thought was the killer holding his victims’ faces while he kissed them on the forehead, was in fact him gripping hard as his hand blocked their nose and mouth. And he wasn’t actually lying on top of them in some necrophiliac sex ritual, but instead compressing their chests until they died?”
John grinned. “You’ve got it!”
“So the point of the benzodiazepines was…?”
“To induce unconsciousness long enough that they didn’t fight back.”
“And the alcohol poisoning?”
“Well, there’s the symbolic link with alcohol in the Collier case of course, and alcohol poisoning can cause respiratory failure and death, so it could have been done to throw us off the track of the Burking, which in fact it did. And if the pathologists had discovered the cheek bruises and forehead kisses, which no-one did until us, it would probably just have led them down the necrophilia route.” He gave a convinced nod. “It was all very clever. I think many of the things the killer did were to throw us off track.”
“Or game playing.”
“Or weird theatre.”
Craig nodded. “Which would go with all the theatrical nonsense of the angles and glue.”
Liam shook his head, bewildered. “I still don’t get why he needed to Burk them at all. Do you say Burk? Is it a verb, to Burk?”
Mike frowned. “It must be, mustn’t it.”
Craig rolled his eyes at the discussion, but he couldn’t argue with Liam’s point. “Yes, why bother with this Burking at all, John?”
“I’ve no idea, except, let’s face it, we’re not dealing with a sane mind here, are we? This killer’s mentally ill and obsessive. Perhaps there’s some loose link between the Burke and Hare criminal case and Collier’s criminal case? There certainly seems to be a legal theme running through these deaths. Your killer could have a fascination with the law.” The pathologist’s expression suddenly changed to one of shame. “I can’t believe that none of us picked the Burking up before-”
Craig cut him off with a shake of the head. “I wouldn’t beat yourself up, John, at least you got there eventually. If you hadn’t discovered the fingertip bruising no-one but the killer would ever have known. Besides, I don’t think we would have done anything different in the investigation, do you? Anyone?”
Satisfied by the silence that followed, John drew back the sheet from Joseph Loughry’s face and pointed to a small mark on the bridge of his nose, then he covered his own nose and mouth with his hand, nodding Mike to give the commentary.
“A man’s hand would be easily large enough to obstruct someone’s mouth and nose, especially if that person was already subdued from diazepam and excess alcohol. And once their breathing was suppressed, lying on them with his full weight would have suffocated them in a very short time.”
John removed his hand, adding. “We missed the marks on the noses because they were very slight; I can still barely see them. The cheeks were where the main grip was so that’s where the bruises were left. As I said I still can’t be sure whether they suffocated from alcohol or Burking, although I’m inclining towards the Burking now.”
Craig wasn’t sure that it added anything useful, but he could see that John hadn’t finished yet.
“The kisses were made just as we said, with the sponge soaked in another victim’s DNA attached over our perpetrator’s lips. The FMO who examined Sarah Reilly said she complained of a pain in her mouth. There were no marks to see
but that’s undoubtedly where her saliva was withdrawn, to then be left on Judith Roper.”
“So what else, John? You’ve got something more, haven’t you?”
The pathologist allowed himself a smug look as he moved to the smallest body in the room and drew back the sheet to show Maria Drake’s face.
“This is Maria Drake. I didn’t do her original P.M., so I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have missed this.”
Liam didn’t have Craig’s patience and he was getting bored with the reveal, so he barked out,
“What did you find?”
John continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I repeated the swabs taken from all of the bodies and confirmed the finding in Renée Laird’s report, that Mrs Drake had had intercourse soon before she died.”
Liam shrugged. “So what? I hope I do. She was a healthy woman who…”
His voice tailed away, making John smirk.
“You were going to say, ‘was having sex’, except why was she having intercourse with a man when she was gay?”
Craig turned to his deputy with a frown. “You didn’t mention her being bisexual, Liam. Get back on to her partner and find out.”
As Liam was about to leave and make the call, John shook his head.
“I believe it was her killer, Marc. She’d been held captive for three days before she was killed, remember.”
Craig beckoned his deputy back. “Hold off on that. OK, if she had intercourse, was there any sign that it had been forced, John?”
“None. None of the eleven victims had signs of sexual assault, vaginal, anal or oral, but remember they were all unconscious so there wouldn’t have been any struggle.”
Liam shook his head, confused. “But if there’d been any discharges where there shouldn’t have been, then surely one of your docs would have followed things up?”
Before John could reply Craig asked another question. “How many of the other female victims are still unburied?”
John nodded Mike to check the files, and “Two” came back. “Judith Roper and Anne Morrison.”
“OK, we need them both checked again for any signs of intercourse.” Craig gestured to the three bodies. “What swabs did you do on these three?”
“I repeated anal, axillary, vaginal, nasal, mouth and throat, and did a swab of their lips as well.”
“How long for the results?”
“We’ll have organisms tonight, and DNA, if there is any, by tomorrow morning-”
Liam cut in. “Hoping to find…?”
“Something that definitively links to our killer; hopefully his DNA this time.”
Craig nodded; it was good information, but like the ID, unless they got a DNA that pinged the database, it would only help them once they’d found their killer to compare against.
He got ready to leave.
“OK, thanks, you two. Keep going with that and call me with anything you get. Liam, we need to pay calls to Bryony Leyton and Rowan Drake.”
Liam frowned. “He and the ex-wife hadn’t been together for two years, boss, and he seemed quite happy about the divorce when I met him. Anyway, he’s a real anorak. Nothing like the man that our Vics have described.”
“And it may turn out to be nothing, but people pretend to be quite happy about lots of things when they’re not.”
As they walked to the carpark Craig made a call to Bill McEwan in Armed Response, the monosyllabic ARC commander was one of his least favourite people but needs must. If their killer was planning to return and finish off Sarah Reilly at twelve o’clock the next day, then it would rude not to greet him with a bang.
Chapter Seventeen
Maggie Clarke’s Apartment, Belfast. 9 p.m.
Davy screwed up his face into his girlfriend’s least favourite expression, the one labelled ‘you can ask if you like, but I wouldn’t’, and then followed up with another one that she hated, ‘but when it all goes wrong don’t say that you weren’t warned’.
It earned the analyst a punch on the arm that didn’t rank as playful, and a mouthful of hair when he leaned in for a kiss. By the time he’d finished extricating her long chestnut strands from his mouth Maggie was at the other end of the couch with her arms tightly crossed.
Demonstrating his mastery of emotion Davy asked, “Are you annoyed with me?”
The journalist’s response was to cross her arms even tighter and turn her head away. It was another sign of her chagrin and Davy was immensely pleased with himself for recognising it as such.
“You are annoyed!”
She swung around to face him. “Well, you needn’t sound so pleased about it!”
“I’m not. Well, I am, a bit. You say that I never understand w…what you’re feeling, but I must be getting better at it!”
Maggie suddenly realised that there was no point in either of the things that she’d been doing: huffing with her fiancé or expecting him to work out why. Davy spoke several languages, but all of them except English and Irish were for communicating with computers, and their vocabulary didn’t include feelings.
She gave a heavy sigh before speaking again.
“Do you know why I’m annoyed with you?”
The analyst thought about it for a minute, wondering if the question might be a trick. If he identified something he’d done that wasn’t the thing that she’d been thinking of, he could be giving her a second stick to beat him with. On the other hand, if he didn’t answer in the briefest of times, that in itself might be added to the list.
As Maggie wasn’t usually huffy, he decided to answer with the first thing that came into his head and take his punishment like a man, just this once.
“Is it…because I forgot your birthday?”
Her small mouth dropped open in shock. “How could you have forgotten my birthday? It isn’t until next week!” She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Davy, you really are the pits sometimes.”
The journalist decided that further subtlety was useless.
“I’m annoyed because, when I said, what do you think Marc will say if I ask if I can follow his serial killer case through for my new book? You were supposed to say, ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine, pet’, not give me that look!”
“What look?”
“The one that says, ‘it’ll all go horribly wrong, and don’t blame me when it does’.”
“I didn’t!”
“You did, and you didn’t even know that you were doing it!”
The analyst’s frown of confusion gave her a choice; she could either spend the night trying to teach Davy how to read emotions, or she could teach him the language of love.
As she moved across and kissed him hard the analyst tried not to smile, at how his pretence of never understanding emotions had just dug him out of a great big hole.
****
Rowan Drake’s Home. Belfast. 10 p.m.
“It looks like he’s in. Knock the door, Liam.”
Craig was too tired to even lift his hand to the doorbell, after the hour he’d just spent trying to smooth over the feelings that Liam had ruffled. It was his own fault, of course; he should have known better than to let his deputy lead the conversation with Bryony Leyton, but in his own defence, Liam had met her before.
But as soon as Liam had started querying the possibility of Maria Drake having intercourse with a man with, “So, did you two like to swing, then?” he should have seen the car crash that was about to come. He’d been so shocked that Liam had been halfway through the emotional GBH before he’d managed to stop him, and they were bloody lucky that Leyton hadn’t chucked them out.
It had taken all his diplomatic skills to redress the balance enough to determine that, a) Maria Drake hadn’t been bisexual, and b) even if she had been, she would never have been unfaithful with anyone, full stop. When he’d seen Liam’s mouth open again, with what was bound to be ‘but she was unfaithful to her husband with you’ he’d resorted to standing on his deputy’s foot to shut him up.
Thankfully Bryony Leyton had been a toleran
t woman who’d eventually rolled her eyes at the behaviour, and replied calmly when he’d taken over the questioning to ask about Maria’s relationship with her ex.
“She and Rowan rarely saw each other, only to talk about their dog, Buster, who’d stayed with him after the divorce. But when they did meet they got on well. Rowan’s a nice, quiet man. He isn’t in a new relationship yet, as far as I know. To be honest, I don’t think he’s interested in anything but his trains nowadays.”
It had supported Liam’s original nerdy impression of the train hobbyist, as had Drake’s job as a middle-grade civil-servant, and they’d left Leyton’s home convinced that Maria Drake hadn’t voluntarily had sex with any man before her death.
Craig was still thinking about the conversation when Rowan Drake’s front door was answered, and a middle-aged man who looked older than both of them appeared. He was stooped and wore a heavy Aran sweater; with a pair of thick wire glasses resting on the end of his nose. Craig showed his warrant card.
“Mister Rowan Drake?”
The civil-servant nodded in response, smiling vaguely at Liam. “We’ve met before. DCI Cullen, I think?”
“That’s right, sir. Sorry to bother you again but we’d like a few more words.”
Drake stood aside to let them enter. “Two doors down, that’s the living room.”
There was no sign of an SUV in the driveway or street, but Craig asked anyway.
“Is the Ford outside your only car, sir?”
“Yes. A boring diesel, I know, but it gives great mileage.”
He waved them to a sofa and made the offer of tea. Craig declined for them both; he was still hoping to get home before it was time for bed.
“Do you do many miles?”
The host nodded and sat down opposite. “Weekends, when I go to train events, and hobby exhibitions of course. They’re held all over Ireland. Scotland and Wales too, so the miles soon mount up-”
Liam interjected. “You should see the trains he has, boss. Brilliant.”
Craig smiled. “I’m sure they are but they’re not why we’re here.”
The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Page 33
