Let The Bones Be Charred

by Andy Maslen

  Jamie shook his head violently.

  ‘That’s a really bad idea, Stella. Really bad. You’d be staking yourself out as the scapegoat, waiting for the man-eater to come prowling round, licking its lips.’

  She pressed a splayed hand to her chest.

  ‘Bloody hell, Jamie! That was a bit poetic. You been reading all those big books in your study or something?’

  He smiled, but there was very little humour in it.

  ‘Seriously, please don’t even think of trying that. In all likelihood you are dealing with a violent psychopath, possibly with some kind of religious mania or delusion. Not only are men like that not susceptible to external reason or moral precepts, but they don’t really see other human beings as people at all. They’re just objects to be played with, rearranged and discarded once they bore their captor. You’d be putting yourself in grave danger.’

  Stella nodded, placing her knife and fork together on the plate, which was still loaded with chips and a quarter of the steak and kidney pie.

  ‘You’re probably right. And I don’t think my boss would be any more impressed with that idea than yours.’

  A wasp, drunk on spilled beer and sunshine, flew around Stella’s head and hovered a foot or so in front of her face. Lightning fast, she clapped her hands and snapped them open again. The wasp dropped dead onto her plate.

  Stella dropped Jamie off at Broadmoor with a promise to keep in touch, then rode back to Paddington Green, the two conflicting ideas about how to tempt a killer out into the open swirling through her brain. And overlaying both of them, a third. That Jamie Hooke was the first man since Richard she’d properly fancied.

  She arrived to find two emails from Dr Craven waiting for her. The first revealed that he’d completed the toxicology report in Niamh Connolly. One line stood out:

  Presence of Temazepam and Ketamine detected in victim’s liver.

  So you drug them first, then you torture them, you sick bastard.

  She opened the second email. A brief message from Craven informed her that his report on Sarah Sharpe’s post mortem was attached. She opened the report, scanned the first few lines then pressed the print icon.

  51

  THURSDAY 23RD AUGUST 3.05 P.M.

  Stella took notes as she read the post mortem report on Sarah Sharpe. The similarities between this death and that of Niamh Connolly were overwhelming. Even without a third victim, Stella knew in her gut that she was dealing with a serial killer. When she’d finished reading the report, and entering her conclusions in her policy book, she reviewed the points of similarity.

  Niamh Connolly + Sarah Sharpe:

  Strangled. NC definitively by rope, SS in all probability.

  Tortured ante mortem: NC breasts removed, SS, shot with crossbow bolts.

  Pubic hair crudely shaved.

  No rape or sexual assault*.

  Injected in neck: tranquiliser.

  * Removal of NC’s breasts. If non-sexual, then what?

  Then there was the victimology. Two prominent Christian women. Vocal in their beliefs, though from her background reading Stella knew they sat on opposite sides of the abortion debate. One happily married, one apparently happily single.

  Despite the mutilation of Niamh Connolly’s breasts, Stella wasn’t picking up anything overtly sexual about the killer. Her mind was leading her away from sex and towards religion. But what about the big question, the question that could lead her closer to the killer if she found the right answer?

  Is he picking them because of who they are or because of what they represent?

  She needed to know if they were connected by anything other than the manner of their deaths.

  She’d had the results back from forensic examination of their phones. Both women had appointments with someone calling themselves ‘MJ Fox’ on the days of their murders.

  Stella wrote her points of similarity on the main whiteboard for the investigation – the ‘murder wall’ – and cleared a space in the centre, where she scrawled, ‘MJ Fox = Killer’s alias?’

  Then she returned to her desk and called Jerry Connolly. The phone went to voicemail. Sighing, Stella delivered the message she’d composed, fearing that this would happen.

  ‘Hello, Jerry, it’s Stella Cole. I need to ask you a few questions about Niamh’s network. People she may have known through the charity or socially. Please could you call me as soon as you get this?’

  Stella’s phone rang fifteen minutes later.

  ‘Stella, it’s Jerry Connolly. You said you needed to ask me about Niamh’s contacts?’

  ‘Yes. You may have seen or heard that we are now investigating a second murder, of a lady named Sarah Sharpe.’

  ‘Yes, I did wonder whether the two were linked.’

  ‘I can’t be certain at this point, but what I did want to do was find out whether Niamh and Sarah knew each other.’

  ‘Niamh kept her contacts in her phone, which you have,’ he said, not brusquely, but with the resigned tone of a man who sees little point in dressing up simple truths.

  ‘Yes, and I’ve been through them all while I was waiting for you to call. I can’t see Sarah Sharpe in Niamh’s contacts. Look, thanks for your help, Jerry, and I promise you I will let you know the moment we have something concrete to go on. Oh, and one last question. Did Niamh ever mention a MJ Fox to you?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘We found that name in her phone.’

  ‘Sorry. Means nothing.’

  He ended the call.

  52

  THURSDAY 23RD AUGUST 3.45 P.M.

  HALIFAX

  Cam had arrived at the offices of Sherborne Ropes in Halifax at 3.45 p.m. in a black mood. The managing director of The Grantham Bell Foundry Ltd had been almost desperate to help but had drawn a blank.

  Derby had been a bust, too. Strutt and Nightingale had only ever sold one set of ropes with black and gold sallies, but those had been polypropylene.

  Climbing out of the Honda’s driving seat, she cursed the sporty little car for having such unforgiving suspension and such a noisy exhaust. It might have given her the edge negotiating the traffic between Brixton and Paddington Green, but after more than five hours behind the wheel on motorways and fast A-roads, her kidneys felt as though they’d been through a NutriBullet and her ears were ringing.

  Arthur Sherborne, in whose office she now sat, looked exactly the way she’d imagined him from his voice. Age, early seventies. Eyes twinkling with good humour. Hair, mostly gone, what was left, silver.

  His large-boned hand had almost crushed hers when they shook, though she suspected this was not some attempt to intimidate so much as a lifetime’s manual work, bending, twisting and coiling ropes in directions they didn’t naturally want to go.

  ‘Now, then, Camille,’ he said once they were seated in his office. ‘Have you had owt to eat since breakfast?’

  ‘I had two gingerbread men in Grantham,’ she answered, warming to this grandfatherly man with his no-nonsense attitude and old-fashioned manners.

  His wiry white eyebrows rose in surprise.

  ‘That’s not going to keep the wolf from the door, is it? Come on. There’s a decent cafe down the road where I get my lunch. Let’s see if Jane can rustle you up something to eat. Gingerbread men!’ he repeated, derisively.

  ‘I’d love to, Arthur. But I’m kind of on a tight schedule. I need to be back in London tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’ he said, in a tone of outrage. ‘That’s a two-hundred-mile drive down the M1 and tha’ll hit the rush hour, too. What time did you set off this morning?’

  Smiling despite herself, Cam answered truthfully.

  ‘Half past seven.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘So that’s what, seven and a bit hours to get here, plus another five or six to get back again? If you were one of my lads you’d be breaking EU rules doing that much driving.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we won’t have to worry about them much longer, will we?’


  ‘Happen we won’t, but you should still take a proper rest. Can’t the Metropolitan Police,’ he pronounced every syllable as if it tasted bad, ‘afford to put you up in a hotel overnight?’

  ‘Budgets, Arthur. Austerity. I’m lucky my boss didn’t make me hitch.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Aye, well, let’s have a think about that later. I expect you’ll be wanting to get on and see our records, then?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘I did a bit of digging myself. It would’ve taken you ages.’ He pushed a sage-green folder across the desk towards her. ‘It’s all in there. Copies of the original invoice, customer’s details, everything. It may not be computerised, but I like to think we’re meticulous nonetheless.’

  Cam spun the folder round and opened it.

  Customer name: MJ Fox.

  Address: 20 Dean’s Yard, London SW1P 3PA.

  Purchase: thirty (30) metres flax bell rope, black and gold sally.

  Date & time of purchase: Thursday 28th June 2018, 4.02 p.m.

  Payment: £130 (cash).

  She looked up and smiled at Arthur.

  ‘Thank you. That’s brilliant. Now, what about the CCTV?’

  Ten minutes later, alone in a tiny windowless room, Cam was speeding through surprisingly high-quality colour footage from the company’s CCTV camera for the 28th June. As the time-stamp hit 4.07 p.m. she let out a shout of triumph.

  ‘Yes! There you are!’

  A baseball cap pulled low over the eyes and the camera-aware villain’s downwards glance meant she couldn’t see Fox’s face. Despite the heat, he was wearing a baggy green parka, over the right shoulder of which was slung a coil of rope with a fluffy black and gold tail. Better still, she could see the car and its number plate: a dark-blue Ford Focus, registration AG54 LKF.

  She printed out a copy of the screen, sending it to a printer in the main office as Arthur had instructed her, then went to meet it.

  Back in Arthur’s office, she thanked him and stood to go.

  ‘Hold your horses, Camille,’ he said with a smile, rising as she did. ‘About that rest.’

  She grinned.

  ‘I can’t, Arthur. I said, no budget for hotels.’

  ‘Aye, well, as it happens, the vicar at Halifax minster’s a personal friend of mine. We supplied their bell ropes, naturally, and she’s a grand lass. I called Liz and she said she’d be happy to put you up for the night at the canonry.’

  Cam was torn. Sit in rush-hour traffic on the M1 as part of a gruelling six-hour drive in the Civic but sleep in her own bed, or call it a day up here and set off for home refreshed in the morning? Then she thought of the two murdered women and what connected them and made her decision.

  ‘That would be lovely and it was very kind of you.’

  53

  THURSDAY 23RD AUGUST 5.00 P.M.

  PADDINGTON GREEN

  The team were assembled. Their afternoon briefings had become an embedded part of everyone’s day and they were all present. As was the deputy mayor, who had also cottoned on to the fact that this was an ideal time to update himself on what was happening in what he had begun calling, ‘the case that all of London is watching’.

  Stella had learned to contain her feelings, which were mostly directed towards dreaming up gruesome ways of despatching Craig Morgan into the afterlife. He sat on the corner of Garry’s desk, favouring her DS with smiles of complicity Stella imagined as saying, ‘She’s up there giving out the orders, but we know who’s doing the real work, don’t we?’

  Garry remained stony-faced, refusing to make eye contact with Morgan.

  Stella began by filling the team in on Jamie Hooke’s ideas. As she spoke, she surveyed each face. She was looking for telltale signs of that grey, dispiriting mood that afflicts coppers working round the clock without making progress.

  They live on caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, adrenaline and junk food: none of them decent substitutes for a decent home-cooked meal and a good night’s sleep, and none of them able to restore the sense of purpose that solid leads provide. Morgan was busy on his phone, listening with half an ear, she supposed.

  ‘You’re not serious about playing the “God’s Copper” card, are you, boss?’ Arran asked. ‘Sticking yourself out there as bait is a terrible idea.’

  A chorus of agreement rippled through the incident room.

  Stella shook her head.

  ‘That’s what Jamie said. On the plus side, it would certainly get the killer’s attention if I claimed to be doing God’s work. But on the minus side—’

  ‘You might end up with your tits on a dinner plate,’ Def interrupted.

  ‘Exactly. Which would, I think it’s fair to say, be career-limiting at best.’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, Stella,’ Morgan said. ‘God’s work?’

  Stella sighed. So he hadn’t even been listening with half an ear.

  ‘We discussed ways of drawing our boy out into the open. Jamie’s idea was to suggest I empathised with him. Say I understood how he felt about the Church. I said why not go further? Say I knew that God was working through me to bring him to justice? Jamie felt that would be far too risky and, on balance, I agree. We were just brainstorming.’

  Morgan nodded, and made a note on his phone.

  54

  THURSDAY 23RD AUGUST 5.15 P.M.

  HALIFAX

  Liz Stephenson turned out to be a vivacious forty-year-old with an athlete’s figure and a thousand-watt smile that made Cam feel she’d been reunited with a best friend she’d never realised she had. Liz batted away Cam’s thanks for the room, saying, ‘It’s the least I could do and Arthur’s such a sweetheart, isn’t he?’

  Settled in one of the canonry’s huge bedrooms, with a view over Halifax’s rooftops and the forbidding blackish-brown stonework of the minster itself, Cam logged in remotely to the PNC. She entered the index number for the blue Focus. It came back as scrapped. A dead end. She was just about to start searching for the address when her phone rang. It was Stella.

  ‘Hi, boss.’

  ‘How’s the road trip?’ Stella asked. ‘I was just briefing the team. I’m putting you on speaker.’

  ‘Good. Really good. Hi, everyone. I think I’ve found the supplier of the rope he’s using. It’s a company in Yorkshire called Sherborne Rope. The MD’s a lovely guy. He sold a thirty-metre bell rope with a black and gold sally, that’s the fluffy bit at the end, on Thursday 28th of June. I’ve got the customer’s name and address. Probably fake but you never know, he could be one of the stupid ones.’

  ‘Please tell me someone remembered serving him,’ Stella said.

  ‘Sorry, boss. They had a temp in that day. I contacted the agency who supplied him, but they haven’t come back to me yet. But Sherborne Rope do have CCTV and guess what? I got a shot of the buyer and his car.’

  ‘Brilliant work, Cam. What are we looking for?’

  ‘Blue Ford Focus. Index number Alpha Golf Two Four Lima Kilo Foxtrot. Only trouble is, I just ran it through the PNC, and that’s when I hit a snag. That index number was last used on a white Nissan Micra, which was scrapped on July sixth, 2016.’

  ‘OK, that’s not so good, but it’s more than we’ve got on him so far. It’s still great work, Cam.’

  ‘Thanks, boss. I thought, maybe Lucian could do something with the photo of the buyer.’

  ‘If anyone can, he can. So what name did he give?’

  ‘MJ Fox.’

  ‘Shit! It’s him! Niamh and Sarah both had appointments in their phones on the days they were murdered with an MJ Fox. What was the address?’

  ‘Twenty Dean’s Yard, London. In SW1. Hang on, I’ll put you on speaker then I’ll Google it.’

  Cam’s fingers flashed over the keyboard then she hit return and waited.

  ‘OK, he’s not one of the stupids.’

  ‘Fake?’

  ‘No, it’s real enough. It’s Westminster bloody Abbey!’

  ‘Fits with the two victims, that’s s
omething. So, where are you? You going to be all right driving back tonight?’

  Cam smiled.

  ‘You won’t believe this, boss. I’m staying the night with the vicar of Halifax minster.’

  ‘Bloody hell, what did you do to swing that one?’

  ‘Nothing. It was the MD at Sherborne Ropes. He pulled strings, well, ropes, really. He and the vicar are friends.’

  ‘Ha! Only you, Cam. OK, look, get a good night’s sleep and we’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Stella ended the call and turned back to the team. Morgan had left, she noticed.

  ‘OK, so our killer’s being clever. No doubt the deputy mayor’s tame profiler will wow us all with some fresh angle.’

  A barely suppressed laugh from Arran set the whole team off and Stella waited out the hilarity.

  ‘We could track down the breaker’s yard that scrapped the Nissan, boss,’ Def said. ‘Maybe they have a record of who brought it in.’

  ‘Or maybe they’re the ones who transferred the reg to the Focus,’ Arran volunteered.

  ‘Good, good, this is all good,’ Stella said. ‘OK, Arran, can you and Def get onto that, please. I did some research on geographical profiling. I know we only have two murders so far, but it seems that our killer probably lives with a fifteen-mile radius of the centre point of a line connecting Niamh Connolly’s and Sarah Sharpe’s houses. So I want you to work that area first. Because that’s my feeling. We’re looking for a Londoner.’

  A female PC in uniform burst into the incident room, causing everyone to turn round.