by Andy Maslen
‘I don’t know. But I had a burning desire to take one of the boom mikes and shove it up Craig Morgan’s arse.’
Stella drank, enjoying the slow burn of the whisky as it coursed down her throat.
‘It’ll be political. He wants the mayor’s job in a couple of years. You just watch. Even though he’s been on our case about efficiency savings and all the other budgetary bullshit, I bet you he’ll be making waves in the press about how he always wanted to give us more money but his hands were tied by the mayor or the Home Office.’
‘Aye, or bloody little green men from Mars!’ Callie said, finishing her drink and pouring another. She dropped the neck of the bottle towards Stella’s glass, raising her eyebrows at the same time.
‘Go on, then. But I really need to get some food inside me before long. It’s going to be a long night.’
Callie nodded.
‘We’ll get someone to run out for a takeaway. So come on. You visited the site this morning. You met the Wandsworth SIO. What are you thinking?’
Stella looked past her boss at a framed commendation on the wall, one of many, while she arranged her thoughts into a succinct pattern.
‘I’m telling the team to keep an open mind and not get carried away while they do the basics. We need to check the husband’s alibi and see if she had any disgruntled lovers in the background…’
‘But?’
‘But my gut is telling me it’s a serial killer. The mutilation. The way she was displayed.’
‘Not somebody trying to throw us off the scent, then?’
Stella shook her head then ran her fingers over her ponytail.
‘I can’t see it. I want to. I just can’t.’
‘OK. So what’s your next move? What’re your urgent lines of enquiry?’
‘One, get her phone and get it unlocked. See if she made any record of meeting someone on Friday afternoon. Two, budget permitting, I want to call in Jamie Hooke. He’s the best forensic psychiatrist I’ve ever worked with and I’d like to get his take on it. See what he thinks is going on in our boy’s head.’
Callie nodded, sipping her whisky.
‘Budget-wise –’ she winced immediately ‘– Sorry, Stel, I know how much ye hate jargon. I tell you it infects your bloody head while you’re not looking. Well, the budget’s as tight as a duck’s arse, as I think you know. Another year of austerity and I swear we’ll be writing our policy books on the backs of Cornflakes packets. Which means outside consultants, especially expensive ones like Mister thousand-pounds-a-day Hooke will have to wait for now.’
Stella frowned. It was the answer she’d been expecting. But she felt she needed to push back before giving in. Just once.
‘A day of Jamie’s time might help us stop the killer in his tracks. Is a second life worth so little?’
Callie shook her head.
‘Ah, Stel, you would have to pull the moral blackmail on me, wouldn’t you? You know if it were up to me –’ she held up a hand to stifle Stella’s onrushing riposte ‘ – and I know it is, in the end, well, I’d give you a trolley-dash round the forensic expert supermarket. But I’ve got at least two dozen serious crimes being investigated out of this station, including terrorism offences, rapes and a handful of murders. If I said yes to every DCI who wanted to hire a consultant, I’d be pawning my uniform to pay for my morning latte. Just hold off for now, OK? You might catch a break with good old-fashioned coppering. And if anyone can round here, it’s you.’
Stella smiled tiredly and sighed.
‘OK, your flattery trumps my moral blackmail. On my cost-free list I have number three, get a request into SCAS’ – Stella pronounced the acronym for the Serious Crime Analysis Section ‘scaz’ – ‘for any similar murders on the National Homicide Database. And four, I’m going to put in a Heads of Crime request through the Intelligence Bureau. Shake the tree and see if anything weird falls out.’
Callie smiled.
‘Good. We’ve got forty-three forces plus one in Scotland. I’ll keep everybody sweet if any Chief Constables start getting arsey. Ah, Jesus, Stel, why do they have to be such twisted little shits?’
‘What, Chief Constables?’ Stella asked, face neutral.
‘No, ye silly mare! Serial killers.’
‘Honestly? I have no idea. Maybe they caught their parents shagging. Maybe they have unresolved mummy issues. Maybe they were born with it.’
‘Aye. And maybe it’s fucking Maybelline.’
Stella snorted, propelling whisky into her nose and unleashing a violent coughing fit.
Eyes streaming, she held out her hand for a tissue.
‘We’ll catch him, Callie,’ she said, finally.
‘Aye, well, I hope you’re right, Stel. And the sooner the bloody better. If that wanker Morgan turns up at one of my press conferences again I’ll make good on my promise. So listen, parking the shop talk just for a minute, how are things? With you, I mean.’
‘Oh, you know, they’re all right. A little romance wouldn’t go amiss, but I’m OK.’
‘Still seeing your shrink?’
‘Once a month. He says I’m fine and I don’t need to keep going but I just want to know it’s all as it should be up here,’ she said, tapping the side of her head. ‘I still have the odd nightmare where she’s back.’
‘Other Stella, you mean?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You’re not really worried, are you? That shaman guy in Canada cured you, didn’t he? And our psychiatric team confirmed it. She’s gone, Stel. It’s OK. You’re just you.’
Stella sighed.
‘Yeah, yeah. But you know what I did when she was in control. I just… It’s not a part of my history I’m particularly proud of.’
‘None of us are. Gordon Wade and I burned a lot of midnight oil and sank a few bottles of his finest single malt agonising over that little business, believe me. But in the end, you know what? You did this country a service. A messy, bloody, violent service, but a service nonetheless. If she helped then I think you can make your peace with her over that. Or her memory, at any rate. She’s gone, Stel. Trust me. Trust yourself, for God’s sake. Now,’ she said, clapping her hands together. ‘I have calls to make to smooth your path with my oppos around the country. But I can’t do it on an empty stomach. What do you fancy? Thai, Indian, pizza, Chinese?’
While they were eating, Garry put his head round the door of Callie’s office.
‘’Scuse me, ma’am,’ he said, then looked at Stella. ‘Niamh Connolly’s iPhone just arrived from Wandsworth along with the rest of the physical evidence they gathered. Locked.’
It was only what Stella had been expecting, but it was a small obstacle to add to the pile nonetheless.
‘Well, we have three options. We can find some tame IT company, which will cost money. We can email Apple, which will cost time, and my patience. Or we can wait for the post mortem and do it the old-fashioned way.’
17
WEDNESDAY 15TH AUGUST 08.15 A.M.
Stella rounded up the people she wanted present at the post mortem. As well as the three obvious picks, Garry, Lucian Young and Alec Stringer, she pointed at the three DCs.
‘Will, Cam, Becky. Take a car and meet us at Westminster mortuary, OK?’
‘Yes, boss,’ they chorused.
Was that a flash of anxiety that crossed Cam’s face? Stella hoped it wouldn’t presage a fainting fit. It was hard enough getting respect as a female DC, despite having a woman in the Commissioner’s office.
The on-call forensic pathologist was Doctor Roy Craven. He spread his arms wide in greeting as Stella, Garry and the rest of her team entered the post mortem room at Westminster Public Mortuary in Horseferry Road. He was gowned in an oversized pair of pea-green scrubs, with a black plastic apron over the top. His hair was gathered under a surgical cap printed with characters from The Simpsons.
Stella had never minded Dr Craven’s eccentricities: she knew that beneath his occasional departures from what some of the br
ass regarded as ‘protocol’, he cared as much as any of them for the people whose soul-emptied husks he had to take apart on his tables. Before transforming Niamh Connolly from a human being into a piece in the judicial jigsaw puzzle that would hopefully lead, one day, to her killer, he would mutter a quiet prayer.
Three stainless-steel tables occupied the centre of the twenty by twenty foot space. The table furthest from the door was vacant, a gleaming stainless-steel bed with room for one.
The centre table held the mortal remains of Niamh Connolly. At the moment, her body was shrouded in a green drape, beneath which the contours of her limbs, torso and head were clearly demarcated. And on the closest table, another green cloth lay across a low mound that, with a jolt, Stella realised must be the murdered woman’s breasts.
The room smelled of antiseptic and the unmistakable stink of recent death, which to Stella always put her in mind of her grandad’s butcher’s shop in the small Berkshire town where she’d grown up. ‘Cole’s High-Class Family Butcher – All Meat Home-Killed’ the blue-and-white glazed tiling had declaimed above the door and display window. High-Class. Home-Killed, Stella thought. One out of two, I suppose.
Flanking Craven were two people in green scrubs and white rubber boots: a slender young woman, wisps of blonde hair escaping her green scrub cap, and an older man, grey stubble on his cheeks, a digital SLR camera slung round his neck. With a purple nitrile-gloved hand, Craven pulled his surgical mask under his chin so he could speak to the detectives.
‘Good morning DCI Cole, DS Haynes,’ Doctor Craven said, offering a small glass vial of oil of camphor. ‘And good morning to you all,’ he continued, beaming at the other five members of Stella’s team.
They took turns tipping the bottle against the pads of their index fingers, and smearing the aromatic waxy substance along their top lips, the better to dispel the stench of decay emanating from the body.
‘Ready when you are,’ Stella said.
Craven nodded and, almost ceremonially, Stella thought, withdrew the draped cloth from Niamh Connolly. He pulled the green cloth down to her waist, then, with a flourish, all the way to her feet, from where he swirled it like a bullfighter’s cape before spinning it into a corner.
Stella heard Garry’s indrawn hiss of breath as he took in the horrendous wounds to Niamh Connolly’s chest. Though they had both seen the photographs, the reality was infinitely worse.
‘Behold!’ Craven said, theatrically. ‘The latest testament to man’s inhumanity to man, or, as is so depressingly common, woman.’
From behind her, Stella heard a moan and then a crash. She spun round to see Will crumpled on the floor.
‘Probably the smell,’ Craven said. ‘That’s what gets them ninety-nine times out of a hundred. The smell.’
Lucian and Garry hauled Will over to a chair and got him sitting, head dangling between his knees until he came round. Stella noticed Cam and Becky exchange a glance. It wasn’t hard to read. Thank Christ it wasn’t one of us!
As Stella had known he would, Craven bowed his head and spoke briefly, and quietly. She caught the odd muttered word – enough to make the gist clear.
‘… struggles … over … pain, likewise… allow us … bring her killer to justice … Amen.’
Taking a pair of dressmaking scissors from a stainless-steel tray, Craven cut through the fabric of Niamh Connolly’s skirt on the right-hand side. He signalled for the mortuary technician to pull the skirt away and seal it in a paper evidence sack.
‘Thank you, Verity,’ he said, after she’d placed the rustling paper bag on a bench.
He repeated the process with the plain white cotton knickers and the shoes. The blouse and bra had been recovered by the Wandsworth CSIs and were on their way to Paddington Green.
While Craven worked, the photographer moved around him, in a series of moves that looked choreographed not to get in his boss’s way, taking pictures of the body at every stage of undress. These would be added to the Murder Book and kept on file when, hopefully, they closed the case.
Delicately, as though the dead woman might still be capable of feeling pain, Craven removed an emerald stud from each earlobe, refastened the butterflies on the posts, and placed them in an evidence bag Verity held out to him. The watch followed.
‘Nice timepiece,’ Craven remarked, turning it so that it caught the light. ‘Mrs Connolly was a stylish lady.’
Stella looked down at the body.
She saw a woman in her middle years who had kept herself in good shape. Curvaceous but definitely not overweight. Still some muscular definition beneath the subcutaneous fat that was only natural in a woman of her age. Fine, silvery stretch marks across her lower abdomen, little more than strokes of a pen.
A maroon bruise, a finger’s width, encircled her neck. And there, dominating her abused torso, the mutilations that Stella had flinched at when Callie had shown her and Garry the photograph sent in by Wandsworth’s Crime Scene Manager. Irregular ovals chopped out of her flesh so that the torn pectoral muscles were visible with their marbling of whitish-yellow fat. Her pubis was a stubbly triangle.
‘Oh, shit!’ Garry said. ‘I can see the headlines already. London Ripper on the loose.’
Stella wanted to silence him. Wanted to deny what was staring her in the face. The very worst kind of murderer was active on her patch. A psychopath with a paraphilia – a sexual deviancy that drove him to commit this sort of desecration on a woman’s body. A sex killer.
‘Maybe we should let Doctor Craven do his stuff before we jump to any conclusions, eh?’ she managed to mutter.
‘A very wise sentiment, DCI Cole, if I may say so,’ Craven interjected. ‘Let’s start with what our eyes tell us, shall we?’
He reached up and pressed a button on the mic dangling above the body on a shiny coiled black plastic cable. From another ceiling mount, the red light of a digital camcorder indicated the process was also being filmed.
‘For the record, I am Doctor Roy Craven. I’m a senior forensic pathologist based at the Iain West Forensic Suite, at Westminster Public Mortuary. The date is fifteenth of August, two thousand and eighteen. The time is oh-nine-oh-five a.m. Present are Detective Chief Inspector Stella Cole, Detective Sergeant Garry Haynes and, ah…’ He paused.
‘Senior Forensic Officer Lucian Young,’ Lucian said, then nodded at Alec.
‘Crime Scene Manager Alec Stringer.’
The babies followed suit.
‘Detective Constable Will Dunlop.’
‘Detective Constable Becky Hu.’
‘Detective Constable Camille Wilde.’
Craven continued after nodding his thanks and smiling at the three DCs.
‘I am conducting the post mortem of Mrs Niamh Andrea Wilhemina Connolly, fifty-two, of Valencia, Wimbledon Parkside, London, SW19 5TR.’
Craven began a verbal description of the condition of the body. Stella half-listened while following his words on the actual terrain of the dead woman’s flesh, observing closely, trying to imagine what had led her killer to contemplate, and then inflict, these particular wounds.
The days when she had been shocked at the methods one human being could – and would – choose to end another’s life were a fading memory. And a faint whisper deep inside her head echoed the sentiment. After all, Stel, you got quite creative with PPM, didn’t you? At least Niamh’s in one piece. OK, three pieces. Not like poor old Debra Fieldsend.
18
WEDNESDAY 15TH AUGUST 9.15 A.M.
After his preliminary remarks concerning the effects of livor mortis – the pooling of blood in the downward-facing portions of the dead woman’s anatomy, giving them a distinctive dark-red, bruised appearance – Craven moved on to the chest.
‘Both breasts have been entirely removed. Judging from the blood loss evident in the corpse, it seems clear that the excision was performed ante mortem.’ He turned to the babies and opened his mouth.
‘That means—’
‘Before death, Doc,’ C
am said, grinning. ‘I speak enough path-lab Latin to understand that.’
‘Forgive me, DC Wilde. Old habits.’
‘It’s fine. Sorry,’ she said, ‘we’re here to learn, after all.’
‘Very well,’ he said, winking at Stella. ‘Perhaps you’d like to take a look at my little toolkit here and give me a run-through.’
Cam rounded the table and came to stand by Craven’s right side. She looked down at the array of instruments, mostly stainless-steel, and pointed at them in turn.
‘Scalpel,’ she said. ‘Is that right, Doc?’
‘Bravo!’
‘Used for making incisions. The big curved blade is ’cos you’re not doing anything massively delicate.’
‘And the long handle?’
Cam wrinkled her nose, making the camphor oil shine as the light caught it.
‘Um.’
‘Is it to get deeper into the body cavity?’ Will asked.
‘Very good.’
One by one, Cam itemised the tools on Craven’s work-tray, from hammer to bone saw, rib-cutters to the T-shaped chisel he’d use to pry off the dead woman’s cranium. Only the bread knife stumped her.
‘Sandwich break?’ she asked, eyes wide, all innocence.
He smiled and shook his head.
‘Anyone else?’
‘They’re for slicing off organ samples for histology,’ Becky pronounced.
‘Excellent! My goodness, DCI Cole, you have a whole squad of budding pathologists here. Now, let’s continue. Skin, fatty and glandular tissue have all been removed, along with irregular sections of the pectoralis major muscle.’
Stella observed the ragged muscles and couldn’t help thinking of a side of beef.
‘Pause the recording for me, would you, Verity? Tell me what you see, detectives,’ Craven said.
Out of the corner of her eye, Stella saw Garry lean closer. The slick of oil of camphor glistened in his moustache under the bright blue-white light of the halogen spots above the table. The three DCs, now fully engaged with the proceedings, leaned in behind her. Thankfully, Will’s faint seemed to have been a one-off.
