‘He’s certainly demanding some intelligence from his audience. So, yes - think symbolically, rather than literally.’
‘And the flesh eater,’ said Fry. ‘Tell us, Doctor, is the flesh eater symbolic, or literal? It would be very helpful to know.’
After the psychologist had left, Fry found Hitchens in his office, tapping his teeth again. She resisted the urge to snatch the pen from his hand.
‘I’ve just had a call,’ he said. ‘Instructions from above.’
‘Oh?’
‘We have to play it cool on the phone messages, Diane. No more chasing around the countryside like rabbits after every report of someone a bit late coming home.’
‘We can’t sit on our hands and wait for a body to turn up,’ said Fry. ‘That might be exactly what he wants.’
‘It might be. But we’re downgrading the priority of the phone calls until we have further evidence.’
‘With respect, sir, we have an offender here who’s going to kill somebody soon.’
‘Strictly speaking, he’s not an offender, DS Fry. Not until he actually does something illegal.’
‘He’s making threatening calls.’
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‘Who has he threatened?’ said Hitchens.
Fry grimaced. ‘Nuisance calls, then.’
‘He’s wasting police time. That’s the worst we can say about him at this stage.’
‘He needs psychiatric help.’
‘Well, I’d agree with you there. He definitely has a problem of some kind. But whether he’s actually intending to kill anybody, we don’t know.’
‘What’s the next move, then?’
‘We wait. Patrols will check all the possible sites we gave them, when practicable.’
‘When practicable?’ said Fry. ‘That could be never.’
Hitchens continued with a small frown. ‘And we hope that Forensics can come up with something at the locations he made the calls from. They have two scenes now, so their chances of finding matching traces are increased with each call.’
‘And I suppose we sit here on our backsides and hope he’ll call again, just to make it a bit easier for us.’
‘Possibly,’ said Hitchens. ‘But there are plenty of other enquiries to concentrate on in the meantime.’
The DI looked up at Cooper as he came back into the room.
‘How is the Audrey Steele enquiry progressing, Ben? I’m thinking we ought to make it a higher priority before word gets out. There could be a strong public reaction to an incident like this, and we don’t want to look as though we’re not doing anything.’
Cooper hesitated. As one of the lowliest members of the department, there was always a danger of being caught between conflicting instructions from his senior officers.
‘DS Fry suggested I should pursue other avenues before considering the possibility that an unidentified body was involved,’ he said, choosing his words carefully.
‘I know. A mixing of ashes. And how are you getting on?’
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‘All the ashes I’ve managed to collect have gone for analysis. I’m not sure if they’ll tell us anything, though. Theoretically it shouldn’t be possible to mix up bodies at the crem, unless it was done deliberately, so it may still be just the one cremation we need to explain.’
‘That’s what I’m worried about. We mustn’t appear to be ignoring the more serious possibility, Ben.’
‘No, sir.’
Cooper waited. The DI’s concerns about public perception might well supersede Diane’s judgement on the use of resources, but it was a debate he’d prefer to stay out of. Alongside him, Fry was silent, but he could feel her growing tense. He guessed the debate might continue later, when he was out of earshot.
‘The funeral directors would have to be at the centre of the business, wouldn’t they?’ said Hitchens.
‘Hudson and Slack, yes. I’ve got them listed as my next port of call.’
‘To sum up, then. We have human remains that turn out to be those of Audrey Steele, who was never reported missing because she died of natural causes and was cremated with the full works. Or so her family were led to believe. Right so far?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Hitchens tapped again, then pointed the end of the pen at Fry. She could see a trace of his saliva gleaming on the cap.
‘The question is, if the ashes weren’t mixed up, who or what was cremated in Audrey Steele’s place? You can’t just stick an empty coffin in the hearse. Its weight would be a giveaway, for a start. The bearers would notice. The cremator technicians would notice. We’d have to imagine a conspiracy involving at least half a dozen people, if not more. Very risky.’
‘We’ve been over this. The obvious thing to do would be to put something else in the coffin instead of the corpse. But the crematorium staff still might notice, if the ashes weren’t right.’
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‘Mr Lloyd sent through the computer records for the day in question,’ said Cooper. ‘That was helpful of him, since it never occurred to me to ask for them. There’s nothing unusual about the data for Audrey Steele’s cremation.’
‘Of course, no one would notice,’ said Hitchens, ‘if you put a different body in the coffin.’
‘An actual murder victim, you think?’ said Fry.
‘What better way to dispose of the body? No victim, no forensics. Perfect.’
‘And even if the remains of Audrey Steele turned up, we would never be able to match them to a missing person.’
‘Precisely, Diane. Because she was never missing.’
‘If it hadn’t been for the facial reconstruction ‘
‘And DC Cooper’s persistence,’ said Hitchens.
‘Well, yes, and that.’
‘Have you still got the list of missing persons, Ben?’
‘From eighteen months ago? Yes. But there’s a big problem with it, isn’t there? We don’t know whether we’re looking for a male or a female. We have no idea of age, height, skin colour. Nothing. All we have are ashes.’
‘Yes, that is a problem,’ said Hitchens. He paused for a moment. ‘So what do we make of Melvyn Hudson? He’s the boss at Hudson and Slack, isn’t he? So he’d be in the best position to interfere with a body.’
‘Would it be possible on his own?’ asked Cooper.
‘The staff at Hudson and Slack might know something. They could have helped to cover up, at least. It’s one of those jobs, isn’t it? An “us and them” sort of job. No one else understands or appreciates us, so we have to stick together, no matter what,’ said Fry.
‘Could be,’ he said. Fry might just as well have been describing the police. It was definitely an ‘us and them’ sort of job. ‘You don’t think it’s any more than that? There couldn’t be somebody with a more personal reason to cover up?’
‘And we still have the crematorium staff,’ said Hitchens.
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They’re hidden away in that room at the back of the chapel. It’s an ideal situation for the kind of person Dr Kane described just now. Imagine - he sees human beings reduced to dust every day. There’s nothing so predictable as ashes.’
Fry stood up, though she wasn’t going anywhere. She just needed to move restlessly around the room.
‘If you ask me, there’s nothing so predictable as the opinion of an expert.’
‘Diane, sit down,’ said Hitchens.
‘You know, I’m not sure about the crematorium staff,’ said Cooper. He’d found himself thinking of the terrarium at Mrs Askew’s house, with its seashells and Venus flytraps. Nothing predictable about that, really.
‘Why?’ said Hitchens.
‘Well, I think the type of person Dr Kane was talking about would want to see the processes the body went through after death.’
‘And that means he’d have to go back to the scene to check on the body. Maybe several times.’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Somebody must have seen him, surely.’
‘We could put
out appeals.’
‘Only if we had some idea what times he went back.’
‘Of course. But wait a minute, Diane - does he know we’ve found this body?’
‘What?’
‘We haven’t issued a statement yet, have we? There’s been no announcement to the media?’
‘Well, apart from your facial reconstruction splashed all over the papers and TV screens the other day. Getting the attention of the public, remember?’
Cooper’s shoulders slumped. ‘Oh, that’s right.’
‘Why, what were you thinking?’
‘That he might go back to the body again. To do a final check.’
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‘Not much chance of that now.’
Hitchens thought about it. ‘Let’s stick to what we actually know. We’ve got a positive ID on a body that was entrusted to Hudson and Slack for proper disposal. But instead of being cremated, the body ended up in the woods, ten miles away at Ravensdale.’
‘That’s about it.’
‘Pretty nasty business, if you ask me. Something we should take very seriously.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Let’s take some action, then. We’ve still got to maintain a “softly, softly” approach towards Hudson and Slack. But I think we’re justified at this stage in applying for a search warrant and seizing their records.’
‘Wow,’ said Cooper, sitting upright with a surge of excitement. He looked at Fry to share the reaction, but she didn’t seem quite as enthusiastic as he’d expected.
‘Can we raid their premises and go softly, softly at the same time?’ asked Fry.
But Hitchens was into the flow now that he’d made a decision, and he started counting off on the fingers of one hand.
‘Secondly, we need to interview anyone who was working at the firm eighteen months ago, at the time of Audrey Steele’s funeral. Any former employees who’ve left since then will also have to be traced. Background checks on them all, plus any known associates. We have to narrow down the list of names to those who had the opportunity to interfere with the body. A motive would be helpful, too. But God knows what that might be.’
The DI looked at Cooper. ‘How does that sound for starters, Ben?’ Cooper had been trying to make notes. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘And what about the family, sir?’
‘Audrey Steele’s family? That’s a bit delicate, isn’t it? But one of them might have noticed something, so they’ll all have
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to be interviewed.’ Hitchens stopped counting fingers and steepled them, as if praying. ‘Handle that yourself, Ben. You’ve already spoken to the mother, you said? I suppose she’s getting on a bit?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, treat her with kid gloves and don’t upset her too much. See if you can find some other members of the family who might be easier to talk to. You know what I mean?’
Cooper nodded. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘Diane,’ said Cooper when they’d left the DI’s office, ‘I don’t think you’re doing yourself any favours with the DI, or with Mr Kessen either. You didn’t seem to give Dr Kane’s views any respect.’
Fry slapped her notebook down on her desk. ‘Have you ever killed anyone, Ben?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Nor me,’ said Murfin from the next desk. ‘I’ve thought about it a few times, obviously.’
‘I didn’t ask you, Gavin.’
‘What’s your point?’ asked Cooper.
‘My point is, if none of us have ever killed anyone, how can we possibly know what it feels like?’
‘We can’t. Not really.’
‘And Dr Rosa Kane? Do you think she’s ever killed anybody?’
‘I’ll run a check on the PNC, if you like, and see how many murder convictions she has.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Ben. It was a hypothetical question.’
Murfin laughed. ‘Please dispose of your hypotheticals safely, in the interests of the staff.’
Fry glared at him, but he kept his head down. Cooper thought of the legend of the Gorgon, whose gaze could turn you to stone if you looked at her face. Gavin must have read that story. He rarely met Fry’s eye these days.
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‘The point is,’ she repeated, ‘even the precious Rosa doesn’t know what it’s like to kill someone. Despite all her theories, she can’t actually tell us what goes on in a killer’s head, how he feels before and after the act. Let alone during.’
‘She must have talked to a lot of convicted murderers,’ said Cooper.
‘And do you think any of them told her the truth about their crimes? The clever ones will have told her what they thought she wanted to hear. The less clever ones couldn’t articulate a complex emotion if their lives depended on it.’
‘Which sometimes it does,’ said Cooper.
‘Yes,’ agreed Fry. ‘Sometimes it does.’
‘And in the meantime, all we can do is rely on the expertise of someone like Dr Kane. Theories may be all we have.’
‘But we don’t have to take them as gospel,’ said Fry. ‘Just because somebody once wrote a thesis for their doctorate expounding their own theories, everyone takes that as proof. It may be all we have, but we don’t have to assume it’s all there is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There may be reasons for killing that no psychiatrist has ever thought of.’
Cooper threw his hands in the air and let his pen fall on the desk. ‘Well, if that’s the case, we’re in the shit, aren’t we? A killer we can’t identify planning the death of a victim we don’t know for reasons we can’t imagine. That’s just great.’
Fry didn’t answer. But Murfin’s response was to raise his hand and drop his own pen on his desk with a loud clatter.
‘Hey, are we giving up?’ he said. ‘Throwing in the towel? Does this mean I can go to the pub?’
Fry stood up, her body tense. ‘What I’m trying to do here is encourage a bit of independent thinking. It would be nice to hear a few ideas that haven’t been borrowed from some so-called expert. I’d like to see open minds from my team,
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not a ragbag of second-hand psychoanalysis and sociological mumbo-jumbo. Is that so difficult to understand?’
Cooper and Murfin tried to look suitably chastened.
‘OK, Diane,’ said Cooper.
He watched her leave the room. It wasn’t clear where she was going. Probably just to stamp up and down the corridor swearing under her breath.
‘There were some big words in that last bit,’ said Murfin.
Cooper picked up his pen. ‘She’s right, though, Gavin.’
‘Yes, I know. But it’s like telling jokes, isn’t it? Some people know how to be right. And others don’t.’
Then Fry came back into the room to answer her phone. Her face changed as she listened, and she looked at Cooper.
‘That was your idea, too - the new search at Litton Foot,’ she said.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘I don’t know whether you’d call it a problem or not. They’ve just found some more bones.’
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Fry had expected dense undergrowth, a thick covering of trees on a steep slope, to make the location inaccessible. But the new site was just above the tree line. There were plenty of rocks, though - thousands of them scattered across the hillside in both directions, clustering downwards as far as she could see. There was no pattern to the rocks, no logic to the way they’d tumbled and come to rest. Many had weathered over the years into smooth, hunched shapes. They covered the hillside like a vast flock of deformed sheep lying asleep or dead in the cold shadows of the north-facing slope.
Yes, there were certainly a lot of rocks. Even so, it seemed incredible that a body could have lain here unnoticed for so long.
She looked around for the crime scene manager. Wayne Abbott was there, already watching her. When Fry gestured, he came towards her slowly, picking his way among the stones.
‘Yes, it’s north-facing,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘There will never be enough sun on this slope to show details from a distance. If you were standing across the other side of the valley there, you could look for as long as you like, but see nothing unless it moved. These rocks must create all
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kinds of deceptive shapes, and a lot of interplay of shadows. Very misleading to the eye.’
‘And would nobody ever walk across the slope itself?’
‘Not unless you had a particular reason to. It’s difficult going, as you can see. You’d break an ankle very easily.’
‘So how the hell did the killer get the body down here?’
‘He didn’t carry it, that’s for sure.’
Abbott was sweating inside his scene suit, though the weather was cool. Fry could see two trickles of perspiration starting at his temples and clinging to the black bristles on his jawline. She wasn’t sure why she disliked him so much. She could only explain it as an instinctive reaction. Wayne Abbott certainly wouldn’t have been her choice for a supervisor. But he had the qualifications and experience, so here he was.
The CSM pointed up the slope to where the rocks formed a fissured cliff.
‘I’d imagine there are two possibilities. One, the victim fell from the cliff up there. Or was pushed, as I’m sure you were about to suggest. If that was the case, we should find structural damage to the bones. But the second possibility is that the victim might have come to this spot - voluntarily or otherwise - while still alive.’
‘And died right here?’
Abbott laughed. ‘In either scenario, the victim died right here. The question is how they died, and why.’
‘That’s two questions,’ said Fry.
But he took no notice. ‘Did they die suddenly, or slowly?’ he said. ‘Accidentally or deliberately? By misadventure, or … with assistance?’
‘Are you planning to give us the answers, Wayne? Or do you just like asking rhetorical questions?’
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