Let The Bones Be Charred

by Andy Maslen

  ‘What next, then?’

  ‘D’you speak to the neighbours?’

  ‘Yep. Deceased was Sarah Sharpe. Sixty this year. The lady on that side,’ Camille pointed to the house on the right of Sarah Sharpe’s, ‘said she was sure because she remembered the victim had a birthday party in June.’

  Noting these scant details, Stella looked up, smiling to soften the impact of her words.

  ‘Let’s stick to Sarah, please, Cam. You know I don’t like calling them victims. Not if we can avoid it. She had a name in life, so we continue using it in death too.’

  ‘Sorry, boss. Sarah had a sixtieth birthday party in June. Might be worth trying to get a list of the guests, you think?’

  ‘Yes. Good thinking. Take that action, would you? I’ll write it up later and give you the top sheet. What else did you find out?’

  ‘The bloke on the other side’s a journalist. BBC, I think. He said Sarah was a journalist, too.’

  ‘Papers or telly?’

  ‘Papers. The Church Times.’

  Stella’s mind jumped back to Niamh Connolly, the woman she was already thinking of as his first kill. Yes, he wouldn’t officially be a serial until number three, but she knew, deep down, what she and her team were up against.

  Like Cam had said at the morning briefing, Niamh had been a vocal and prominent Christian. Now here was a second prominent Christian woman, killed within a week of the first murder.

  Sure, the MO was different in places. The tortures were different for a start. And Sarah Sharpe had been left suspended from her own staircase naked, where Niamh had been partially clothed and seated. But the signature? Maybe the PM would reveal it.

  ‘Can you get on to the offices of the Church Times first thing in the morning? Ask if she had a work diary on her computer. I want to know whether she’d been in the media recently. I wonder if that’s how he’s selecting them.’

  Cam nodded.

  ‘What about the geography, boss? Niamh lived in Wimbledon, Sarah here. It’s, what eight miles between them? Maybe he lives in between.’

  ‘I’m going to talk to Callie. If we’ve got the budget I think we should get a geographic profiler on standby. Nothing much they can do with two scenes but if he does it again, we’ll likely have a triangle.’

  ‘Something else, boss.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Isaac Holt. Looks like he was in custody when Sarah Sharpe was murdered.’

  ‘Yeah, worse luck. I’ll tell Roisin when we get back to the station.’

  37

  TUESDAY 21ST AUGUST 8.30 P.M.

  The killer leaned forward, closer to the TV screen. One hand gripped a freshly cut half-orange, the other a grapefruit knife: the curved, serrated blade working back and forth in a steady rhythm, separating the flesh from the cup of peel. The BBC continuity announcer informed all those watching that,

  ‘Despite the troubles at the food bank, Sister Moira Lowney still finds time to comfort a new novice. Tilly is worried that convent life is not for her after all, in the latest episode of Habits of a Lifetime.’

  Sister Moira appeared, walking along a gravel path beside rectangular vegetable beds with a woman in her mid-twenties. Their heads were bent in towards each other.

  Apple-cheeked and comically short beside the tall, willowy novice, the sister laid a reassuring hand on her young charge’s forearm as they walked, her pale-blue eyes magnified by frameless glasses.

  Juice spurted as the knife freed another segment.

  38

  TUESDAY 21ST AUGUST 10.00 P.M.

  Thirty minutes later, Stella and Cam were both back at Paddington Green, standing by the whiteboard in the SIU incident room, updating it with Sarah Sharpe’s details.

  Roisin and Def arrived within minutes of each other. Stella looked over her shoulder.

  ‘Rosh, can I have a word?’

  ‘Sure, boss. Here?’

  ‘My desk.’

  Keeping her voice low, Stella filled Roisin in on the situation at Finstock Road before showing her the photos Alec Stringer had taken.

  ‘Where did Holt go after we turned him loose last week?’

  Roisin’s face spoke volumes. Stella knew it wouldn’t be good news.

  ‘He went to his mum’s. She lives in Colchester. I had Will follow him up there. I mean, he might have come back and done Sarah Sharpe, but I’m not hopeful. Should we pull him in again?’

  Stella didn’t have to think for very long.

  ‘Look, I know you thought you had him locked down for Niamh’s murder, but there were already a shit-ton of holes in your hypothesis. Sarah Sharpe was nothing to do with the abortion debate as far as I can tell. Not a Catholic. No reference to her in any of Holt’s literary outpourings in that sewer of a notebook. Look, keep him on the burner behind the back burner, but I want you to start looking at Sarah Sharpe’s background. I don’t think this is a personal thing, like a vendetta or something. And the victim selection isn’t opportunistic either.’

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘I think it’s about the Church, not about the women. Or, not that exactly, I mean it’s clearly about the women, but it’s their faith that’s stoking his anger. Holt’s a pathetic, nasty piece of work, but he’s a fantasist. And his fantasies, sick as they are, don’t match the reality of what we’re seeing. Remember, Rosh, for him, it’s all about sex. These killings, they’re not.’

  By 10.05 p.m. the rest of the team had arrived. Stella looked around at them, assessing who had had enough for the day. Their faces hadn’t yet taken on the grey, stressed-out immobility that came with a case that refused to break. But she didn’t want them working unnecessarily long hours. She filled them in on what they’d discovered inside 63 Finstock Road and then gave them the permission she knew they’d all need before clocking off.

  ‘Look, guys,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing you can do tonight that won’t wait until morning. You’ve done some great work today, and with what Cam and I saw over at Ladbroke Grove earlier, it looks like he’s targeting prominent Christian women. That’s a step closer to catching him.’

  ‘You going to issue a public safety warning, boss?’ Garry asked from his position sitting on the corner of a desk.

  ‘It might scare him off,’ Baz said.

  ‘Yeah, but it might save lives,’ Roisin countered.

  Stella let the discussion play out. It was one of the ways the team worked best, seemingly arguing about a decision or a piece of evidence, but really just digging down to the truth. She waited for a gap, then spoke.

  ‘OK, look, officially it’s not a serial killer yet. But I think we all know in our gut that it is. But for now, we’ll go with a general warning to women, especially if they live alone, to be careful. Not to accept invitations to meet strangers at their homes, for example. That should buy us some time without letting him know we’re onto him.’

  ‘Boss?’ Becky called out.

  ‘Yes, Becks?’

  ‘Should we compile a list of women who match the two existing victims? Like, Christian women with media profiles?’

  ‘That’s an excellent idea. OK, get onto that, please.’

  Once they’d all left and the office was quiet, Stella sat back down at her desk. Callie’s office was dark, which was a shame, as she’d have liked to bounce a couple of ideas off her. That’ll also have to wait till morning, she thought.

  She steepled her fingers under her nose and closed her eyes.

  What’s going on in that messed-up head of yours, eh? The Church Times is C of E, so that chucks cold water on Cam’s Catholic paedo-revenge angle. Holt was probably having a wank in his mum’s guest bedroom, so he’s out. Do you just hate religion in general? Or is it women you hate?

  The image of Niamh Connolly’s mutilated torso swam into her inner vision where it took turns with Sarah Sharpe’s bloated, arrow-ridden body. She frowned. There it was again: that insight she felt would open things up, swimming, like the last time, just beyond her grasp.


  Not an insight, Stel, a memory. That’s what it felt like. Something she was remembering from her own past, instead of connecting the dots between the two dead women. Her dad was saying something. And she, Stella, was rolling her eyes. Bored and making sure he knew it. So, that meant she was deep in the teenage tunnel. Half raging sex hormones, half withdrawn sullenness, and one hundred per cent gold-plated hostility to her parents. How they’d put up with her for those three or so years, she had no idea. What were you saying, Dad? And why was I so hell-bent on showing how tedious it all was?

  ‘Praying for a breakthrough?’

  Callie’s question startled Stella. She jerked back in her chair, eyes wide.

  ‘Please don’t creep up on me like that! You nearly gave me a heart attack.’

  ‘Sorry about that. What were you thinking about?’

  Stella rubbed her eyes, which felt gritty with tiredness. She hoped her own face still had a little colour in it after sending her team home to catch up on their beauty sleep.

  ‘Something I can’t quite put my finger on. A memory. It feels important. It’s to do with the bodies.’

  Callie sat on the hard chair to the side of Stella’s desk, face tightening.

  ‘Bodies? As in plural.’

  Stella nodded.

  ‘As in a second murdered woman.’

  ‘Shit! I’ve been in meetings all afternoon and then a dinner with the DAC and a few of her political buddies. I’ve not heard. Who?’

  Stella sketched in the details of Sarah Sharpe’s murder. When she finished with the description of the wounds, Callie blew her cheeks out.

  ‘What do you need?’ she asked.

  ‘I want to talk to Jamie Hooke. Urgently. And I want a geographic profiler on standby. I’d also like to send the DNA samples Lucian found to an external lab. One-day turnaround. If it helps, I know a pawnbroker in Kilburn who’ll give you a good price on your dress uniform.’

  Callie’s eyes flashbulbed.

  ‘Oh, ye cheeky wee thing! Look, no promises, OK? But I’ll try and rejig a couple of operations and free up some cash. Because mucking about with spreadsheets is my number one favourite late-night activity.’

  Stella grinned.

  ‘Would a drink help?’

  ‘Aye. A bloody big one. But I drank the last of my Glenlivet yesterday. I haven’t had a moment to get to Tesco.’

  Stella leaned over and opened her murder bag, which sat discreetly on the other side of her desk from Callie. From an internal zipped pocket she pulled out a brand-new bottle of the malt whisky she knew was Callie’s favourite.

  ‘Ta-daa!’

  ‘You sweet girl. Come on then.’

  The two women, bound by friendship and some very dark times indeed, retreated to Callie’s office. With a generous measure of the whisky in a tumbler at her elbow, Callie started giving her budget a massage and Stella opened her laptop and began writing up her policy book.

  39

  WEDNESDAY 22ND AUGUST 8.00 A.M.

  After a luxurious four hours of sleep, and a snatched breakfast of coffee and toast, Stella was at her desk and reading through the previous day’s reports by 8.00 a.m. One by one, the other members of the team walked into the incident room, in varying states of alertness. Some were larks, but most were owls, preferring to stay late rather than get in early. However, by 8.30 a.m. everyone had arrived. Time for the briefing.

  ‘Morning, everyone. First of all, thanks for your work yesterday. We do have one strong lead now, which is the DNA samples Lucian retrieved from the rope, which was made of flax, with embedded fibres of wool. Well done, Rosh, for sorting that out with the POLSA. We also know, again thanks to our colleagues in Forensics, that the weapon, well, two really, he used to remove Niamh’s breasts was a pair of vintage sheep shears. Trouble is they’d have been bought in a junk shop or at a car boot or maybe eBay so our chances of tracking him down that way are slim to anorexic. As you all know, we now have a second murdered woman. So this guy looks like he’s just getting started.’

  ‘When do we get the DNA profiles from Niamh Connolly’s place back, boss?’ Def asked.

  ‘We found some cash down the back of the sofa so it’s out with an external lab. They promised me the result by seven tonight. There was blood and also skin cells, so with a bit of luck we’ll have Niamh’s and the killer’s DNA right next to each other. Not quite his fingerprint in her blood, but close. Jumper? How are you and Def getting on with the opponents of LoveLife? I know Holt turned out to be a bust, but is there anyone else in the frame?’

  Arran hurriedly swallowed the mouthful of toast he was eating and consulted his notebook. He had a scrim of grey stubble on his cheeks and the bleary look of a man who’d been awake half the night. Maybe one of his boys had been ill. Stella made a mental note to ask him later.

  ‘We’ve been running through the people in what Niamh called the “crazies”. I’d say you could write off ninety-nine per cent of them as trolls. Never going to do anything more than send abusive messages. But there are three people we want to talk to.’

  People. Not men. That’s interesting.

  ‘Go on.’

  Arran started to speak then stopped abruptly and started coughing.

  ‘Sorry,’ he choked out. ‘Crumb…wrong way.’

  Def rolled her eyes and picked up when Arran had left off.

  ‘Alfie Brown, Josef Kulik, Yukiko Watanabe. The last one’s a woman, before anyone asks.’

  ‘Bit of a longshot, isn’t it, Def?’ Will asked. ‘Research says serial killers are almost always male.’

  She nodded.

  ‘On the basis of the data, yes. But then, what about Beverley Allitt and Rose West? Or Myra Hindley? They do exist. Between them they killed at least fifteen people, mostly kids.’

  ‘Tell us about them, Def,’ Stella said.

  Def nodded and smiled briefly.

  ‘Alfie Brown, twenty-year-old white male, lives in Milton Keynes with his mother. Unemployed. Sent Niamh seventeen abusive emails and Facebook messages. Threatened to come to Wimbledon, which is interesting in itself because, as Jerry Connolly told us, the house was in his name, and, I quote, “teach you a lesson about the true meaning of cruelty”.

  ‘Josef Kulik, forty. Polish. He lives in Roehampton with his wife and three kids. That’s only a couple of miles from the Connollys’ house. Seven or eight minutes by car, thirty-five if he walked. There’s even a convenient bus, the 493.’

  ‘That’d be great, wouldn’t it?’ Baz called out. ‘If we could nick him ’cos he was caught on the bus’s CCTV.’

  Def waited for the laughter to subside, then continued.

  ‘Kulik wrote Niamh a single letter. Very graphic, wasn’t it, Jumper?’

  Arran, who had now recovered from his coughing fit, though it had left his eyes watering and his stubbled cheeks pink, nodded.

  ‘He described in some detail what he’d like to do to Niamh. It included a threat to tie her up and cut her breasts off and make her eat them while he watched her.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Garry said, shaking his head. ‘Where do they get it from, all that shit?’

  ‘I’m going to see a psychiatrist tomorrow who might just explain it to me,’ Stella said.

  ‘You want to watch it, guv,’ Cam chipped in. ‘He might start poking about in your head while he’s explaining the mind of a serial killer.’

  More laughter.

  If only you knew, Stella thought. I’m only one off Allitt, West and Hindley’s total combined.

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t think he’d find much in there. Just a ton of paperwork and a bunch of alcohol-damaged brain cells.’

  Only Garry didn’t join in the laughter. Stella hadn’t told him the details of her lost two years after Richard and Lola had been murdered, but he knew enough about her history to know how much the banter sometimes cost her. Def battled on again.

  ‘And finally, our statistically unlikely person of interest,’ she winked at Will. ‘Yukiko Wa
tanabe. Thirty-three. Female. Single. Lives in a shared flat in Finchley with three other Japanese women.’

  ‘Why her?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Two reasons. One, she attacked Niamh on Twitter over a period of three months last year before going silent. Her last dozen tweets were really unhinged. I’m surprised Twitter didn’t take them down. I mean, totally bizarro shit about mutilating Niamh and slicing her up.’

  ‘OK, but so did hundreds of people, thousands, probably.’

  ‘Second,’ Def said, flipping a page in her notebook with a magician’s flourish, ‘Yukiko Watanabe’s job.’ She paused. ‘She’s a sushi chef.’

  The room fell silent for a second as everyone digested the import of Def’s last sentence.

  ‘Good work, Jumper, Def, thanks. So you’re following them up, are you? Need any support?’

  ‘That would be great, boss,’ Arran said.

  Stella opened her mouth to start assigning jobs when the door to the incident room swung inwards. All eyes turned to see who had invaded their space.

  Stella’s pulse jerked up and she felt a wave of anger crash over her. Standing in the doorway was Craig Morgan. Without waiting to be invited, he strode in and perched on the corner of a desk, beside Garry.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Deputy Mayor,’ Stella said, managing to utter the pleasantry without adding, and what the hell are you doing in my incident room?

  ‘Don’t mind me, DCI Cole. I wanted to check in on the progress of your investigation.’

  Knowing when she was beaten, Stella forced a smile that felt as if her face was audibly creaking. She nodded.

  ‘OK. Baz, Becky, Roisin and Will, can you work with Jumper and Def on the two IC1 males and the IC5 female threatening Niamh, please? Take a person each. The usual. Interviews, financials, work history, and especially anything weird on the psychological front. Apart from the obvious.’