‘There you go,’ said Donovan, smiling. ‘That’s your day mapped out for you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Katya, attempting to return the smile. ‘And will I see … Peta? Is that her name?’
‘You might later,’ said Donovan. ‘But she’s out today. Reliving her youth.’
Katya looked confused.
‘Gone back to college,’ said Donovan. ‘Get another degree. She might be along later, though. In the meantime you’ll find some clothes in the room you slept in. I hope they fit you. So until I get back, just, y’know, chill.’
Katya smiled, placed a hand on his arm.
‘Thank you, Joe Donovan. You are a good man.’
Donovan gave an involuntary but instinctive look on to the landing, his eyes resting on the locked door. He managed a smile.
‘I try,’ he said.
5
Slatted, weak sunlight streamed in through the white-plastic blinds, illuminating the dust motes against the blackberry-coloured walls in slow, lazy, now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t swirls. The workdesks in the small room had all been arranged into a semicircle, leaving a desk in the centre of the room plus space in front of it. Pacing space, Peta thought.
She entered the room, found a space at one of the semicircle of desks and sat down. She began taking out files, folders, books and pens from her shoulder bag. She smiled to herself. A good night’s work previously, a session in the gym first thing. She was doing a job she enjoyed that paid and left her able to fulfil ambitions, expand her horizons. She hadn’t felt this happy in years.
Others were coming, doing the same. Some smiled, talked to her. Most just nodded or ignored her. She smiled back, made small talk while setting up her place at the desk.
Jill sat down next to her. ‘Hiya.’
‘Hi,’ replied Peta.
‘Thought I was gonna be late,’ Jill said, taking out notepads and textbooks identical to Peta’s, her Lancashire accent rendering most of her words pretension-free. ‘Just woke up half an hour ago at Ben’s. An’ he lives in Gosforth.’ She sighed. ‘Jesus. An’ what a hangover.’
‘Good night?’ asked Peta.
Jill’s face split into a smile. ‘Crackin’. Went to see the Bravery over at Newcastle uni.’
‘Were they good?’
‘Brilliant.’ Jill stopped talking, regarded Peta with a frown. ‘Anyway, what happened to you? Thought you were comin’?’
‘Oh, yeah …’ Peta remembered she had said she might go. But that had been weeks ago. Before work got in the way. ‘Sorry. Something came up at the last minute and I had to take care of it.’
Jill looked interested. ‘Oh, what, family or friends, like?’
No, actually. Going undercover, pulling an East European prostitute off the streets and taking her to a safe house so that her brother can give evidence against a gangster, like.
‘Yeah,’ said Peta. ‘I had to go out with friends.’
Jill nodded, satisfied with the explanation.
Peta sensed relief too. She knew Jill had only asked her to the gig out of politeness. Although Peta didn’t look that much older than the rest, and was no stranger to jeans, trainers and combat jackets, she was, she knew, regarded as an anomaly within her year group. A mature student. And whatever she said or did, however she tried to fit in, she knew she couldn’t really. Because she had been out in the world, made a living, and decided to come back to university and get a degree. So she carried with her something alien: the smell of work and mortgages, taxes and pensions. The smell of the outside world.
Jill busied herself with unloading books on the desk. Peta knew what she must have been picturing. Friends. Bottle of wine. Chatting around the kitchen table. Like her mother would do. Knowing how far that was from the truth, Peta hid a smile.
Jill leaned across, almost conspiratorially, eyes wide. ‘They found her, you know. The body.’
‘I know. I heard.’
Jill shook her head. ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it? My God.’
Peta agreed. ‘And they haven’t found out who did it. They’re still out there,’ she said. ‘You take care of yourself.’
Jill smiled. ‘Yes, Mum.’
Peta smiled in return. Unpacked her books.
Working with Albion satisfied Peta. On one level. But something had always nagged within her. Something about unfinished business. Her parents, both liberal, middle-class Guardian readers, had wanted their daughter to go to university. Study the arts. Perhaps become a lecturer like themselves. But Peta, in a spirit of youthful rebellion, had taken what she saw as the most contentious route for herself, and the one that would annoy her parents most: she had joined the police force.
Her parents were mortified. They felt they had let her down in some way. Peta, for her own part, hadn’t enjoyed the reaction as much as she thought she would have. They were deeply hurt, far more so than she had imagined they would be. And that impacted on her. She tried to back out but left it too late, was too far into her training by then. So she vowed instead to make them proud of her. That didn’t work either.
When, five years later, she left the force, almost physically beaten down by being patronized, relegated to demeaning tasks, seeing people she had initially had to help climbing the ranks ahead of her, the force’s institutionalized sexism, plus a burgeoning problem with alcohol, her parents had insisted it wasn’t too late. They would regard those last few years as a temporary blip, a gap-year project that had got out of hand. She could still find the right course, still go to university. They would help her, pay for her. Although sorely tempted by this offer, she turned it down. She still had something to prove. So, hoping to utilize skills and contacts she had made in the force, she set up her own private investigation and security business. That, eventually, folded. And then, thankfully, came Albion.
But still that nag, that sense of unfinished business. And here she was. Thirty-one years old. Studying psychology at university. Over ten years later and her liberal, Guardian-reading parents had been right all along.
Not that she would admit that. Nor how much she enjoyed it.
Her body got regular workouts in the dojo. Her mind very rarely. This was the perfect counterbalance. Plus the lecturer had a lot to do with it. Peta had never met anyone like him.
The door opened. As if on cue, in he came. Medium height, slim build, he walked with a slight limp, as if the bones hadn’t set right from an old injury. And his right hand was covered in scar tissue, gnarled and deformed. But that wasn’t the most remarkable thing about him. He was dressed, as usual, like a walking antique. His suit hailed from any time during the 1940s or 1950s and had clearly been originally intended for a much bigger man, the wide, grey, fireman’s braces and thick, black-leather belt holding up his trousers bearing testament to that. On his feet were lace-up DMs, beneath his suit jacket a black T-shirt. His dark overcoat was similarly old and flowing – Peta was sure she had glimpsed a Utility label inside when he had hung it up once – with a bright red, paisley scarf thrown over the top, the swirls drawing attention like some kind of fantastical space vortex. Topping it off was a grey-felt hat that may have been a homburg or a fedora. Peta wasn’t sure. He looked like a child’s idea of a responsible adult.
His briefcase, an old doctor’s bag stuffed with books and other ephemera, was hefted on to the desk. He took his overcoat off, draped it over the back of his chair, along with the scarf. Placed his hat on the desk. His dark hair was shot with grey and cropped close. He wore a pair of old round glasses as modelled by John Lennon in the late 1960s. Peta had tried to work out his age, given up. He was anywhere between thirty and fifty. Probably. It was hard to tell. He seemed unaware of any eccentricity, perfectly at ease with himself. This was him as he was.
Professor Graham McAllister. Usually, as he had stressed in his first seminar four months previously, just called the Prof.
‘Good morning, you fine-minded people.’ His voice was dark and rich, ruminative yet not without a Geordie accent. �
��Now, what shall we discuss today?’
The same introduction as always. Getting any unfocused discussion out of the way before beginning properly. And it still hadn’t worn thin, Peta thought. Although this was only the second term.
‘What about Ashley Malcolm?’ one of the students, a well-built, shaggy-haired boy, shouted.
The class almost froze. The whole university, Peta had thought on walking in, had a morning-after feel in the wake of the discovery of Ashley Malcolm’s body. The students, and staff it seemed, had talked about nothing else all week. First her disappearance, then this. Warnings had been issued, escorts encouraged for all girls. A definite atmosphere hung over the university: loss and shock, certainly, but also a kind of sick electricity. A sense that amid all that horror and upset there was vicarious thrill-seeking to be had. Peta put it down to the fact that the students’ personalities were incomplete and they hadn’t found the appropriate reaction to tragedy yet.
The Prof stopped, stared. Not so much angry that he had been called on to deviate from his usual speech, more curious.
‘Why Ashley Malcolm?’ he asked.
The student shrugged. ‘Thought you could, y’know, give us some insights.’
The Prof perched on the edge of his desk, leaned forward, frowning. ‘Insights?’
‘Yeah, y’know. You being a psychologist an’ all.’
‘Something which I believe you aspire to, is that not the case, Mr Carson?’
The student shrugged.
The Prof gave a slight smile. ‘Then perhaps you could give us some—’ he paused, verbally placing the word in inverted commas ‘—insight of your own.’
The student, Jack Carson, shuffled uneasily in his seat. ‘Well … she was murdered.’
‘Yes,’ said the Prof. ‘That much is incontestable.’
‘Horribly. Although we don’t know the details. The police haven’t released those yet.’
The Prof nodded. ‘Horribly. I wouldn’t think there was an un-horrible way to be murdered. Go on.’
A few nervous titters went round the room. Jack Carson continued: ‘Well, don’t they always say they know their attacker?’
The Prof raised an eyebrow. ‘Do they?’
‘Unless it’s a …’ He tried to laugh while saying it. ‘I don’t know. Serial killer.’
The Prof didn’t laugh. Instead he nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Thank you for that, Mr Carson. You’re right. Most murder victims do know their murderers. It’s usually someone close to them who has something to gain from their death. By that I mean financially. But from what I’ve seen so far that doesn’t seem to be the case here.’
‘So what’s your take on it, then?’ asked Peta. ‘If you were advising the police, how would you tell them to proceed?’
The Prof gave Peta a look of scrutiny. He seemed to be making his mind up about her in some way. Conclusion reached, he leaned back on the desk, adopted a thoughtful pose. On anyone else it would look ridiculous, thought Peta, but he managed to bring it off somehow.
‘How would I tell the police to proceed …? Well … Now, bear in mind I know as much as anyone else. I’ve watched the news and read the papers. Like I said, those who commit premeditated murder usually have something to gain. I’d say the same is true in this case. Although I have no way of knowing what that would be. But I doubt very much it’s financial. I would advise the police to look into Ashley’s background for a start, but I doubt they need me to tell them that.’
The Prof frowned, nodded to himself. ‘I’d also make a detailed examination of where she was taken. A street in Fenham. Likewise where her body was found. An old, disused graveyard.’ He ruminatively enunciated the words. Closed his eyes. ‘Hmm. I’m just speculating here, but I don’t think she was placed there by accident. No, not at all. I think there’s something special about that place. Something that means a lot to the killer. It’s a clue or a set of clues. A puzzle. What we have to do is solve the puzzle. It might not lead us to him, but it might make us think like him …’
Silence echoed around the class.
The Prof became aware of that silence and slowly opened his eyes again. He looked startled to be back, Peta thought.
‘Ah, yes.’ He stood up. ‘Well. That’s enough of that for now. Can’t have you hanging around campus repeating my half-baked theories.’ He looked at Peta. ‘Then I would be, as you say, advising the police. Although not in the way you meant.’
A small ripple of relieved laughter went around the room.
‘Anyway, enough,’ the Prof said. ‘Tempus fugit, does it not? Let us move on. Take out your textbooks, turn to page 192. Internal conflicts and the compulsions that can be derived from them. Rather apt, I think.’
Peta opened her book, flicked through to the correct page. She kept her eyes on the Prof, though. Scrutinized him. When he had opened his eyes following his discourse, he had seen something disturbing, she thought. And the depth of it had unnerved her.
Her police sixth sense was still functioning. It might be nothing, she thought. But then again it might very well be something.
Whatever, it might be wise to keep an eye on the Prof, she thought.
6
DS Paul Turnbull had his victim. And because of that, his righteous anger.
He pulled the Vectra to the kerb, turned off the ignition. Looked up at the old Victorian bay-fronted semi before him. From the passenger seat, Nattrass moved to open the door. Turnbull remained still. Nattrass looked at him. Not returning her enquiring gaze, he took out the photo, its edges rounded now, thumbprinted and creased from overlooking. He held it in his hands. The image poignantly familiar, the news media having splashed it all over TV and computer screens, newspapers. He had the original. Ashley Malcolm. Alive. Smiling and laughing at a student party, toasting the camera with a can of lager. A strappy, silky top and skirt, long hair. Pretty. She would never grow old, go grey, put on weight, have a satisfying or unsatisfying career, have children, get married or get divorced. She would be for ever locked into joyous, youthful immortality. Freeze-framed by the click of the shutter.
His victim.
From Westgate Road cemetery he, along with Nattrass and DS Deborah Howe, the SOCO Senior Manager, had gone with the Home Office pathologist and body to the mortuary at the General Hospital, staying to witness the post-mortem.
The pathologist, Dr Nicholas Kemp, was clearly in his element in the sterile room surrounding the stainless-steel table with the ceiling-mounted mic.
Turnbull had watched, as he had done before, while Kemp went about his business, reducing Ashley Malcolm until she was just a collection of weighed and catalogued inner organs, tissue samples. A carcass of clues. He had watched, struggled even more than usual to find the professional detachment he knew he should have had by now.
Then on to the incident room at Market Street police station in the centre of Newcastle, sitting through DCI Fenton’s morning briefing along with everyone else on the case. The mood had been dark and concentrated, tense and expectant, as if a raincloud had come in through the air-conditioning and was threatening to engulf them all in freezing-cold, needle-sharp rain.
Fortified by heavily sugared coffee, aware of what he must have looked like. Pulling an all-nighter, too tired and wired to wear it like a badge of honour. He and Nattrass had looked at each other.
‘D’you want to go home?’ she had said. ‘I don’t mind. You’ve got a family. I understand if you do.’
Turnbull had thought of home, of what was there for him. Or what wasn’t. He thought of Ashley. Felt something burn hard and bright within.
‘I’ll stay.’
Nattrass had made any contributions on his behalf. His eyes had followed the board’s tortuous trail. It looked to him, as always, not like a chart but more a game whose ending was rigged. A snakes and ladders of horror. Roll the dice and up the ladder. Ashley alive, smiling. Roll the dice and move along. Ashley gone. In her place photos of her friends, her boyfriend. Maps of her last known wh
ereabouts, descriptions of her clothes. Conjecture. Supposition. Roll the dice and down a snake. Ashley dead. The wilfully destroyed and mangled bodily components bearing no resemblance to the earlier photo. No life or joy left there. Roll the dice and down further. Ashley reduced to gory red, butcher’s backshop close-up. Ashley anatomized. Down again. And still down.
Turnbull had his righteous anger. Controlled. Fuelling his day.
Preliminary results showed a positive match, Fenton had informed them. The body was that of Ashley Malcolm. Toxicology and DNA within twenty-four hours.
They had known what that implied. Ashley’s murder had been allocated a high grade. Which meant money and manpower. Twenty-four hours. The more they paid, the quicker the results.
Fenton had gone on, the politician from the press conference of an hour ago now in the descendent, the hard-nosed DCI in the ascendant. He read from reports, talked from memory. Always with authority. Ashley’s parents in Runcorn had been informed and were on their way to Newcastle along with her sister, all broken-hearted.
The body had been mutilated both pre- and postmortem. Eyes and mouth sewn shut. Stab wounds; no final figure yet, probably between ten and fifteen. Signs of sexual activity. And a couple of strange bruises on the back of her neck that they were still looking into. It was, he said unnecessarily, a bad one.
He had asked about leads. The door to door hadn’t shown up anything positive yet. Shadowy figures tended to come and go in the cemetery. They were paid as little attention as possible. No sign of a vehicle as yet.
The same as her abduction, Turnbull had thought. Like she vanished into thin air and reappeared again.
A comment about a Tardis.
Someone put forward the name Lisa Hill, asked if there might be a connection.
Lisa Hill. A part-time prostitute and crack aficionado with convictions for dealing and aggravated assault, whose body had been discovered the week before Christmas. She had been badly beaten, sexually assaulted, murdered. Stabbed repeatedly, frenziedly. Her body dumped at Barras Bridge by the Haymarket.
Bone Machine Page 5
