by Andrew Lowe
‘Your father tried to stop it.’
‘I suppose he believes life should mean life. Part of his newfound sense of religious justice.’
Keating looked up. ‘A few months ago, you asked me for access to the old file, but you haven’t signed it out. Not officially, anyway.’
Sawyer broke eye contact and glanced out of the window. Iron-grey sky. A couple of pigeons, wheeling. He looked back. ‘As you said, sir, I’m concentrating on the here and now.’
Keating nodded. ‘Don’t overload yourself. Hand some more off to Shepherd. He’s capable. Walker is coming through, too.’ He opened the folder, slipped on a pair of thick-framed reading glasses. ‘I’m sure you’re making progress in the case, DI Sawyer.’ He looked up, over the top of his glasses. ‘But I would at least like a suspect sometime soon.’
Sawyer strode out into the main office. ‘Updates! Good news, please.’ He perched on the desk near the whiteboard. ‘Moran. How’s the basement bromance with Rhodes developing?’
Moran glared at him. ‘We’ve covered every inch of the relevant areas at the key times. No sign of the van anywhere.’
‘Any van? Anything similar?’ Moran shook his head. Sawyer nodded. ‘He would have used something different, anyway. Thanks for your efforts.’
Moran forced a smile, nodded towards Walker. ‘We didn’t need another body down there, either.’
‘Bit musky?’
Moran shrugged. ‘Not a smart use of resource.’
‘You weren’t finding anything with two people,’ said Sawyer. ‘We added a body. You didn’t find anything with three. Therefore, assuming you’ve done your job well, there’s nothing to find. That’s good information in itself. Look into recently stolen vans of a similar size.’ He turned to Shepherd. ‘How about Palmer’s car?’
‘Sally’s team swept the house and surrounding area,’ said Shepherd. ‘Checked his car. Nothing but a few blonde hairs. His girlfriend.’
‘How about Sam Palmer and Susan Bishop? Connections?’
Myers waved his pen. ‘Nothing, sir. There’s no evidence that they knew each other or ever crossed paths. DS Shepherd asked me to look into Susan’s heart donor, Roy Tyler. He had a record. Back in 1991, when he was twenty, he was a lorry driver. Sentenced to ten years for causing death by dangerous driving. Three people killed in a crash on the A53 near Brandside. Night-time, bad weather. He was released on licence in 1996.’ He checked his notes. ‘Looks like he went back to working as a driver for various firms, then retrained.’
Shepherd addressed the team. ‘We know that Susan Bishop received Tyler’s heart. We went to see the specialist nurse at Sheffield Northern General. She couldn’t confirm anything about Sam Palmer’s liver—’
‘But we’ll work round it,’ said Sawyer. ‘Maybe get a court order if we need to. The transplants might be a coincidence, and we still don’t know if there’s any connection, but it might open up the picture. The killer stabbed Susan through the heart and Palmer in the back. Both wounds penetrated the transplanted organs.’
Walker waved a hand. ‘Maybe it was easier to keep Sam Palmer quiet by stabbing him in the back. But Susan was different.’
Sawyer shook his head. ‘We know for sure that Susan’s heart and Sam’s liver came from Sheffield Hospital. And the nurse we spoke to wasn’t happy. Way too eager to get away.’
‘Look into the methods more?’ said Walker. ‘Why is he so clean and careful? Why the hands covering the genitals?’
‘Surgeon?’ said Moran. ‘Someone connected to surgery? Unfazed by bodies or death, but used to keeping things hygienic?’
Sawyer raised his eyebrows. ‘Fair shout. Moran, let’s get you some fresh air. Work with Walker. Find me all the names of the surgeons who perform transplant operations in relevant local hospitals. Focus on the ones who might have performed the Bishop and Palmer transplants, at Wythenshawe and Leeds. Any red flags, connections. Myers, find more on Tyler if you can. And look into deaths registered at Sheffield Northern General in the days leading up to Sam Palmer’s liver transplant. Get me some potential matches for his donor. His op was on April 11th. The nurse told us that they keep life support on, and the organs viable, for a couple of days maximum after the patient has died.’
Myers nodded. ‘So, deaths on the 8th, 9th and 10th.’
Sawyer headed into his office. ‘Perfect. We need some angles, new leads. Think lateral.’
He closed the door behind him and flopped into his chair. He took a breath and listened. Office bustle from the main room. Keating next door: speaking, pausing, speaking again. A phone conversation. Too quiet to discern detail.
He scrolled down his phone contact list and tapped the name. The call connected after a couple of rings.
‘This is Ainsworth. Can I help?’
‘I hope so, Professor.’
‘Jake? So good to hear from you. How’s the world of rural law enforcement?’
Sawyer snorted. ‘Busier than you might think.’
‘I’m working with your friend, Richard Jensen. The chap I met at the end of the Crawley case.’
Sawyer sat back in his chair and lifted his feet onto the desk. There was something soothing and paternal about Donald Ainsworth’s Scottish lilt. ‘You still at Strathclyde? I thought you said you were moving away from parapsychology.’
Ainsworth laughed. ‘The Persinger Unit is still a concern, but yes. The scales have been lifted from my eyes. I’m focusing on psychology. My core discipline. Shifting away from the supernatural.’
‘Not if you’re working with Jensen. He’s quite an enigma.’
‘It’s a fine combination. The scientist and the sceptic. We’re working on a book about the history of my paranormal challenge here. Examining the methods of charlatans and mediums. Fascinating stuff. Richard wants to do a podcast. Now…’ Sawyer could hear him shuffling around, finding a seat. ‘How can I help?’
‘I thought you might be able to give me a fresh take on something. A current case. I have two murders. Both the work of the same killer, I’m certain. Each body has been stripped, cleaned and presented naked, wrapped in polythene. The victims’ hands have been positioned so they cover private areas: breasts in the case of the female victim, crotch area in the case of the male. Each has only one stab wound, which has been cauterised. Death in both cases was by haemorrhagic shock. Internal bleeding, unsustainably low blood pressure. No sexual assault, and we can’t find a scrap of forensic evidence anywhere.’
Ainsworth sighed. ‘I have no qualification in criminology, Jake. But, as you’re aware, I have done some work in psychopathology.’
‘What’s your initial feeling about what I’ve just told you? What comes to mind? Unfiltered.’
‘The lack of anger. The composure.’
Sawyer shifted his feet off the desk and sat forward. ‘You mean in the cleanliness?’
‘Yes. And the single stab wounds. It’s… efficient. There’s no agenda. The cauterisation and hygiene perhaps suggests someone with a surgical or medical connection?’
‘We’re looking into that.’
‘Or perhaps even butchery. There’s also the possibility that he may have a pathological need to keep the process sterile. Something obsessive that may not even connect directly to the method of murder.’
‘You mean like OCD?’
‘Perhaps. OCD is more complex than just wanting everything to be clean, though. If it’s not pathological, then perhaps this impulse might come from his work. Again, something medical or surgical seems most likely.’ Ainsworth paused. ‘But the thing that really leaps out at me is the hands covering the private areas. That doesn’t feel like compassion to me. It seems more specific, more acute.’
Sawyer bristled with nervous energy. He stood and walked to the window, looked out at the dormant football stadium. ‘Acute? In what way?’
‘I wonder if the poor people are… inconveniently naked. Like he’s covering them up not to maintain their dignity, but to ease his own embarrassment.
He has to strip them and present them as naked, out of necessity. But there’s an over-compensation. He wants to make it clear that this isn’t sexual. Intimate. It’s… and I’m sorry to put it this way, Jake. It’s just a job he has to do.’
Sawyer nodded. ‘Nothing personal.’
25
Sawyer drove back to Edale, hoping to snatch some downtime before the evening briefing. He wove up along the narrow Hayfield Road, too fast, flanked by the undulating moorland, soundtracked by his epic ‘Favourite Songs’ Spotify playlist. As ever, the shuffle algorithm acted like an inspired but demented DJ: Journey, then Portishead, then Eno, then John Denver, then, of all things, ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’. But the shifting mood meshed with the seasonal limbo of the landscape: unsettled, restless, everything in motion. The purple flush of heather—a three-week microseason—had been muted by an avalanche of sandy bracken, and Sawyer felt the familiar, woozy sense of nature dimming the lights for the long night ahead.
The music changed to something serene and ambient, and his eyelids drooped for a second. The soporific roar of the road. The siren call of sleep. Of oblivion. He could let it all go, let it steal over him. Or he could jerk the wheel violently to the left, lurch into the roadside ditch, crunch into the dry-stone wall, flip the car into the fields. A fleeting spike of agony, perhaps, and then, that everlasting anaesthetic.
The music dropped out, replaced by his ringtone. He looked at the screen, tapped the Accept icon.
Eva’s voice filled the car. ‘You shouldn’t come to the house.’
‘I didn’t know he was going to be there.’
‘That’s why you shouldn’t come to the house.’
He turned off, into Hayfield village, towards the cottage. ‘You come to see me, then. You know where I am.’
The music faded back in. She had already ended the call.
He drove over the driveway bridge, parked up and killed the engine. The silence was complete, deafening. It was still a couple of hours from nightfall, but a plume of black cloud had rolled in over Kinder, casting a premature dusk over the road.
A few raindrops pecked at the windscreen. He closed his eyes.
He was with his dog, with Henry, further along the lane. Ahead of Michael and his mother.
He dug his fingers into a cluster of lemon-yellow buttercups and rolled them around, fluttering the petals together.
Henry bustled through the long green grass and stuck his nose into the petals, picking up scent.
Behind, a shout from Michael. Sawyer heard nothing but his brother’s voice, but Henry sensed more. He jolted his head round, on alert.
Another shout from Michael. Then a laugh. Or a cry?
Henry bolted, back along the lane.
He ran after him.
The colours of deep summer. Rich and real. The bluest blues, greenest greens. His mother: the gleaming orange of her jacket; her black, black hair.
And red. Beads of red, scattered over the shorter grass at the top of the verge. Smears of red across his brother’s face.
His brother, lying in the grass, on his side. The powder blue of his T-shirt.
His mother, crawling towards Michael, reaching for him.
Red on her face, too.
Was it a game? What were the rules?
His dog. Barking, barking, barking.
Someone else there, too. A man in a mask. Just his eyes and mouth. Gloves. Holding a hammer.
He ran for his brother and felt the man at his back.
A hand on his collar.
He stumbled forward. Something clunked against the back of his head.
The colours dimmed. All was black for a moment. A minute? Five?
Intense, unbearable pain. At the back of his head, the base of his neck.
He rose up and looked around, the images swooping and warping.
‘Jake! Run, my darling. Don’t look back!’
Henry jumped up at the man but he pushed him away, gripped his collar.
He watched as the man brought down the hammer.
Metal on bone. Then silence from his dog.
The man turned to his mother.
And now, for the first time, Sawyer caught himself in the moment. In the present day. Aware that he was locked inside an abysmal dreamworld, but somehow in control of his actions. No longer just an observer.
He felt the back of his head, warm and wet.
(No. Don’t do that. You know that).
The pain reared up.
He knew what came next. He would fall to the ground, touch the grass, feel the soil. Smell it, taste it.
He fought the familiar narrative and, instead, ran for the man.
But his mother didn’t acknowledge him.
He saw something new: her hand, pushing away her black hair, swiping the blood from her eyes.
He leapt at the man’s arm as he raised the hammer.
But there was no effect. He brought it down.
His mother reached up, half-blocking the blow, catching the head of the hammer with her wrist.
Metal on bone.
She screamed and reached for him with her other hand.
She pulled off the mask.
Rain. Clattering at the windscreen.
Darkness now. Inside and outside the car.
Sawyer was slumped to the side, his shoulder numb, his mouth dry and bitter. How long had he slept for?
There was a thrill at the lucid nature of the nightmare, but also frustration at the abrupt ending. Had he unearthed a fresh insight or just fictionalised detail he hadn’t even seen at the time? A few extra seconds might have given him more.
But there was no way back in now.
He stumbled out of the car and ran to the porch, through the rain, dense and drenching.
Inside, he cupped his hands under the kitchen tap and splashed water over his face. He filled a glass and drank it dry, without pausing for breath, then mopped his face with a tea towel. The rain spattered against the front window.
And there was another, unfamiliar, noise.
Sawyer froze and slowly moved the tea towel away from his face.
Again. A high-pitched squeak. Plaintive, questioning.
He opened the back door and a slender cat strutted into the kitchen, its fur matted with water. It was mostly black with white patches around its head, and a neat, beard-like blot of black under its chin. It looked up at him, miaowed, and curled itself around his shins.
He spoke to it in sing-song, petted it. The cat immediately broke into a loud, continuous purr and tilted its head up to accommodate Sawyer’s fingers as he scratched it under the chin.
He opened the wall cupboard. Mainly condiments and cereals, a couple of tins of rice pudding. He pushed aside a four-pack of baked beans and fished out a tin of tuna. The cat ramped up its purr volume and threaded itself around his legs in a figure of eight.
Sawyer forked the tuna onto a small plate and set it down by the door. The cat nosedived into the food. He filled a cereal bowl with water and nudged it in beside the plate. The cat looked up and considered the water for a second, then dug back into the tuna.
Microwave clock.
Just after seven. He had slept for almost two hours.
He took a can of Coke out of the fridge and sat on the edge of the sofa, watching the cat, pondering his nightmare.
He switched his phone to speaker and called Shepherd. It rang and rang. He placed the handset on the coffee table and lay back, sipping the Coke.
The cat had finished the food and was now lapping at the water. Life pared down to its essence: the base layers of Maslow’s pyramid. Food and water. Warmth, rest. Safety, security. The cat aspired to nothing more, and its finely tuned instinct for danger kept it alive to repeat the cycle and, ultimately, to produce others. Death would come for it eventually, but only when the cat was good and ready. It would retreat from the living world and hide in a cool, dark place. A submission. A passive suicide. Death would need to cheat to take it before then: a speeding
car, a double-crossing human, a house fire. He thought of Susan Bishop and Sam Palmer. Ambushed by death. Had they not been given the opportunity to see it coming? Or had they misinterpreted its approach? Mistook it for something else?
‘Why?’
‘Sir!’ Shepherd’s voice broke through. ‘Sorry. Call of nature.’
Sawyer slurped his drink. ‘I don’t thank you for the image, but I’m grateful to get your full attention.’
‘Too echoey in there, anyway. You would have known.’
‘Let’s move on. Any updates?’
‘Moran has a couple of leads on stolen vans. Nothing on ANPR, so he’s working with Rhodes to match them with CCTV. Relevant areas and times. It’s a bastard of a job.’
The cat slinked over, hopped up on the sofa next to Sawyer and began to wash itself. ‘He can take some leave when we’re done. What about the transplant surgeons? Anything there?’
‘All checks out. Nothing interesting about the surgeons who performed the Bishop and Palmer ops at Wythenshawe and Leeds. Myers has five potential matches for Palmer’s liver donor. They all fit the accepted parameters for age.’
The phone bleeped. Sawyer checked the screen. Call waiting. ‘Okay. Work through them and check for any connections. And find me that van.’
He switched to the other call. ‘Max?’
‘Jake. Good time to talk?’
‘For you, Max, any time is good.’
DI Reeves indulged him with a laugh. ‘Got something for you. The Casey name has come up in an investigation. Public order offences on the Isle of Dogs. Unlicensed boxing.’
‘Bare knuckle? Is that legal?’
‘Technically, yes. But there’s no regulatory body, so it’s the Wild West. Some places have associations to keep it above board at decent venues, but there’s still a lot of underground fights. Warehouses, garages. We mostly bump up against it for public order offences.’
‘When the fights spill out of the ring.’
Reeves snorted. ‘Exactly. Which they do, a lot. So, it kicks off at this fucking nasty old gym in the Isle of Dogs. Most of ’em leg it, but we get a few collars for possession, possession with intent. Mostly home-grown cannabis. Some speed. The gym owner was desperate to keep his legit licence, so he spilled on the network. And it’s fucking national, Sawyer. Seedings, leader boards. Fights arranged over social media. One poor bastard died in a fight back in February down here in Radlett. Middle of fucking nowhere. Head injury. He was gone before the ambulance even found the place. So, this gym owner says he has a “relationship” with a family up in the Midlands. Derbyshire area. Looks like the top boy is one Ryan Casey. Seventy-odd but made of fucking steel. He’s got two sons, Wesley and Ronan. He pimps them round the circuit. They’re like rock stars. They turn up, beat the shit out of someone and Ryan handles the figures. He’s pretty much the main connection north of Birmingham.’
