Let The Bones Be Charred

by Andy Maslen

  ‘What did you say?’ Stella asked.

  Jamie shrugged.

  ‘I said it was awful, which is true. And I suggested he stick to less-upsetting programmes.’

  At midnight, they left the restaurant. After exchanging goodnight kisses with Stella and Jamie, Gareth and Lucian wandered up towards Shaftesbury Avenue to look for a cab, leaving ‘you two lovebirds’, as Gareth had put it, on their own.

  Gerrard Street was just as busy as it had been three hours earlier. Stella looked up at the red paper lanterns strung across the narrow pedestrianised street. It made her dizzy and she lurched sideways into Jamie, grabbing his arm to steady herself.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yeah. Fine. You?’

  ‘Never better.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘Doing anything tomorrow?’

  ‘Nothing special. Thought I might catch up on some reading.’

  ‘Aha. Uh, you know when Gareth asked you about your intentions towards me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You said they were strictly honourable.’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘That’s a bit disappointing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, Mister Jamie Hooke, I was going to invite you back to mine.’

  Jamie smiled.

  ‘I said they were strictly honourable. I didn’t say they were chaste.’

  Stella grinned.

  ‘Well, in that case, would you like to honourably come back to Lisson Grove with me?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I rather think I would.’

  63

  SUNDAY 26TH AUGUST 9.15 A.M.

  LISSON GROVE

  Stella woke with a pounding headache, a dry mouth and her right arm flung out across Jamie’s chest. Lying face-down, she raised her head off the pillow and turned to him. He was looking at her and smiling. Nice eyes. Soft.

  ‘Morning,’ she mumbled. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Morning. Nine-fifteen.’

  ‘How long have you been staring at me?’

  ‘I wasn’t staring, I was gazing.’

  ‘With adoration, I hope.’

  ‘Yes. I was also admiring your tattoo. What is that, a weasel?’

  ‘A weasel? No! It’s a mongoose. Her name is Mimi.’

  ‘Very fitting. Brave. Takes on dangerous enemies. And an excellent hunter.’

  ‘Exactly. Now, if you want to avoid Mimi’s claws, please could you gaze into my medicine cabinet and bring me some paracetamol?’

  ‘Of course, my lady! Your wish, et cetera.’

  Jamie lifted her arm off and placed it beside her, then climbed out of bed.

  ‘Nice arse!’ she called after him as he left the bedroom.

  ‘Sexist!’ he called back, laughing.

  Stella swallowed the painkillers, then lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes.

  ‘I told you he’s done it again, didn’t I?’ she asked.

  ‘You did And it was on the news.’

  ‘I didn’t want to discuss it last night. I didn’t want to spoil it.’

  ‘Me neither, for the same reason. You want to talk about it now?’

  Stella groaned.

  ‘My head hurts too much!’

  ‘Lie still then.’

  Stella closed her eyes and snuggled closer to Jamie.

  ‘There’re some books on my bedside table if you want,’ she said.

  She felt his fingers running over the scar on her left shoulder.

  ‘How did you get this? It looks messy.’

  ‘That? A low-life shot me with a stolen pistol.’

  ‘Ouch. I hope you shot him back.’

  ‘Head hurts. Can’t talk.’

  She woke, unsure how long she’d been asleep. And she felt better. Her head had stopped throbbing. She lay still for a minute or so longer, listening to Jamie’s breathing and the quiet whispers as he turned the pages of a book.

  She slid her hand under the covers, down towards his groin.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ he said, turning to her with a smile. ‘Someone’s feeling better.’

  ‘Yes, I am. And I’m very hungry.’

  ‘You want to go out for breakfast?’

  ‘Not that kind of hungry.’

  Compared to the urgent, drunken sex of the night before, their lovemaking was slower, and much more pleasurable. They took their time to explore each other’s bodies, finding out what each liked and where their magic places were.

  Afterwards, Stella climbed out of bed and headed for the shower.

  Towelling her hair dry, she looked in the mirror. She smiled at herself.

  ‘Now let’s go out for breakfast,’ she said with a smile as she returned to the bedroom to get dressed.

  Half an hour later they were sitting outside the Regent’s Bar and Kitchen in the centre of Regent’s Park.

  ‘What can I get you?’ a young waitress asked them in what Stella considered to be an indecently perky American accent.

  ‘What do you recommend for a hangover?’ Stella asked with a grin.

  ‘Oh, definitely our Big Breakfast. You’ve got free-range eggs, scrambled, poached or fried, smoked streaky bacon, Cumberland sausage, chestnut mushrooms, black pudding – which, personally, I think is a tad weird, I mean blood pudding? – anyways, oregano-roasted tomato, baked beans and toasted sourdough.’

  ‘Yes please. With fried eggs. And English Breakfast tea, please. Lots.’

  ‘Two of those, please,’ Jamie said.

  ‘Sure! Coming right up.’

  Rose bushes flanked the path leading from the Inner Circle road to the cafe. Their peach scent wafted across the terrace. Stella inhaled deeply and smiled at Jamie.

  ‘Last night was lovely. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I enjoyed myself too. Your friends are great. Especially Gareth.’

  ‘I think he fancies you.’

  ‘Ah. Sadly, he’s going to be disappointed.’

  ‘Can we talk shop?’

  Jamie shook his head then pushed his fingers through his hair.

  ‘Sure. I don’t think either of us has the sort of job where we can just switch off at the weekend anyway. Fire away. Just promise me we can go to the zoo afterwards.’

  Their waitress reappeared with two pots of tea, set two white china mugs down alongside a jug of milk, beamed at them, and was gone. Stella spoke.

  ‘Moira Lowney was enucleated. You know what that means, right?’

  ‘Eyes removed. One of my patients did it to himself a year or so ago. He used a teaspoon. It’s surprisingly common.’

  ‘Yeah? Well it’s also surprisingly horrible to look at. He’s officially classified as a serial killer now. Which you would think means I get a blank cheque from Callie but it’s not like that. Austerity is the worst swear word in the job at the moment.’

  ‘OK, but thinking’s free. Let’s do some of that. What do we know about him at this point? Go back to the basics.’

  ‘He’s a psychopath. He selects high-profile Christian women living in London as his targets. We think he had a deeply religious, possibly abusive childhood, with a domineering mother. He is drugging women, torturing them, then strangling them.’

  ‘What sort of a feeling do you have for him? What’s he like?’

  ‘You said you thought this guy is intelligent. An organised killer. That fits with what we know of his MO. And he is definitely forensically aware. We’ve not pulled a single print, a single DNA sample, a hair, a clothing fibre. Nothing. There was a small trace of talc in Sister Moira’s office, on the back of her chair, so we think he’s gloving up before he goes to work on them.’

  ‘Don’t they say it’s impossible for a criminal not to leave something behind, and the scene not to leave something on the criminal?’

  ‘Locard’s Exchange Principle, yes. But just because it’s there doesn’t mean you’re going to find it. And with the budget cuts we’ve had imposed on us over the last few yea
rs, everything’s been slashed to the bone. CSIs, equipment, external consultants,’ she said, pointing at Jamie’s chest. ‘Lucian told me he even had to pay for some evidence bags out of his own pocket. They’d literally used up their budget and he couldn’t get any until next month.’

  At that moment, their waitress placed two enormous plates of food in front of them. Stella inhaled deeply. The mingled smells of meat, eggs, mushrooms and beans made her groan in anticipation. She reckoned the food in front of her was enough for at least a full day.

  ‘Oh, God, that smells good. Forgive me, but I’m going to do some serious eating for a bit.’

  They ate in silence for a while until, with only half her plate cleared, Stella leaned back and took a swig of tea. She stroked her belly, which felt as though it might burst.

  ‘Need a rest,’ she said.

  ‘Me, too. Have you ever eaten one of these to the end?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I normally have the Eggs Benedict.’

  Jamie frowned. He looked down at his fork, on which a slice of sausage was currently impaled.

  ‘There’s something bugging me about the torture. It’s ringing a bell.’

  Stella nodded.

  ‘I had a feeling when I saw Sister Moira’s body. Like I’d seen it before. But it wasn’t on another case.’

  ‘Where then?’ Jamie asked, popping the piece of sausage into his mouth.

  ‘Not sure, that’s the trouble. And there’s a memory I have of arguing with my dad that seems to be really important. Let me think for a minute.’

  Stella closed her eyes, feeling the sun warm her lids and letting the splodges of orange dance across her inner vision. The chatter of their fellow diners faded as Stella tried to go inside her own mind, searching for the memory.

  Whether it was the lingering effects of the previous night’s alcohol consumption, or being out for breakfast with Jamie, she didn’t know, but she suddenly realised what her half-remembered argument with her father had been about. He and Stella’s mum had taken the sixteen-year-old Stella to the National Gallery, and she’d complained, at length, about their choice of outing. But one painting had captivated Stella. And she was standing in front of it now.

  A woman held out a gold plate on which a pair of eyes looked dolefully up at the ceiling. And there had been another in the same exhibition. A pale-skinned, muscular man, naked except for a loin cloth, hung by his wrists from a tree. His torso and limbs were pierced by arrows: through his left forearm, left pectoral muscle, almost over the nipple, lower belly and right thigh.

  What was the show called, Stel? Come on, think!

  Her eyes seemed to snap open of their own accord.

  ‘Martyrs!’ she said loudly, drawing a few curious stares. Then, in a quieter voice, so that Jamie had to lean towards her. ‘He’s martyring them. I went to an art exhibition when I was sixteen. It was called Sacred and Profane. One painting had a woman with her eyes on a plate, another this naked man with arrows sticking out of him like a hedgehog.’

  Jamie nodded.

  ‘I’ve seen those images, too,’ he said. ‘And if you don’t mind, I’ve got a better idea than going to the zoo.’

  An hour later, Stella and Jamie entered the National Gallery’s foyer. The architect had obviously had a thing for marble. Huge rust-red columns of the stuff towered above them, topped with intricately carved capitals. The floor dazzled the eye with an intricate pattern of tiles in shades ranging from silvery-white to gold.

  The place was packed. Throngs of foreign tourists. Art students carrying unwieldy wooden easels and oversized pads of paper. And, she supposed, a few Londoners drawn into this palace of high culture as a respite from the searing heat of Trafalgar Square, visible beyond the plate-glass doors.

  Jamie extended his right arm, elbow crooked. She threaded her arm through his and walked beside him, sensing what he wanted to show her but content to be led.

  She had to walk fast to keep up with his long-legged stride. At one point, an oncoming gaggle of young Japanese women in matching navy blazers, tartan kilts, long white socks and black patent leather loafers split them up. As Stella wove around them she found the time to admire Jamie’s backside in the faded jeans she’d come to think of as his trademark.

  Back alongside him, she asked him where they were going.

  ‘Room 24. It’s just along here.’

  He led her into a large, rectangular gallery filled with gigantic paintings, mostly depicting religious scenes. As he pointed to a painting at the far end, Stella gasped.

  There it was. The second painting she remembered seeing, or another treatment of the same subject. They stood before it, looking up at the artwork.

  He was naked, except for a flimsy wrap of pale fabric at his groin, and he was beautiful. That was Stella’s first thought. A man Gareth would probably nod towards and utter some Welsh phrase meaning ‘I’d give him one’. And he seemed unconcerned at the arrows that an unseen archer had shot into his chest, side and calf.

  ‘Saint Sebastian,’ they said together.

  ‘And Sarah Sharpe,’ Jamie added. ‘There’s more, come on.’

  They walked fast through the dawdling tourists and art lovers until Jamie brought her to a stop by laying a hand on her arm. He pointed at a painting that had Stella inhaling sharply.

  The Renaissance painting hanging on the plum-coloured wall in front of her was titled ‘Saint Agatha’.

  The artist, Lorenzo Lippi, had depicted the saint as a large-eyed young woman in the fashionable dress of the times: rich velvets in deep blue and gold, with white linen cuffs, a double strand of pearls at her throat and her chestnut hair swept up from her neck apart from a few loose strands.

  In her hands she held a pair of shears, but what held Stella’s attention was the silver salver in front of her, on which, displayed as if they were sweetmeats, were a pair of milk-white breasts.

  Jamie peered at the plaque screwed to the wall beside the painting.

  ‘Saint Agatha was fifteen when the Roman prefect Quintianus tried to force himself upon her. She’d vowed to remain a virgin and rejected his advances. He had her tortured, which included having her breasts cut off with pincers.’

  ‘Like Niamh Connolly.’

  ‘Like Niamh Connolly,’ he agreed.

  Stella looked at Jamie, who was looking at her intently.

  ‘He’s copying Old Masters.’

  ‘Not just old,’ Jamie said. ‘Look.’

  He pointed at the plaque. Beneath the text explaining the meaning of the painting, the gallery curator had added a reproduction of a second painting depicting Saint Agatha, this one by a young female American artist, a contemporary of Stella’s.

  The depiction of the mutilations was almost clinical in its accuracy, the fatty and glandular tissues inside the breast, and the supporting pectoral muscle and ribs inside that clearly visible. The saint held a plate on which the severed breasts had been placed like fruit.

  Stella’s heart was bumping in her chest. Sister Moira’s eyes were pleading with her to make a connection. She looked up at Jamie.

  ‘You know I told you about the third victim? Sister Moira Lowney?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He gouged her eyes out and put them on a plate. Is that a saint, too?’

  ‘I’m not sure. We could try the bookshop. No, wait! I’ve got a better idea. I know the perfect man to ask. He’s a friend and he’s just published a book about martyrs. He’s the Professor of Moral Philosophy at University College London.’

  They found a quiet corner and Jamie made a call. Stella took the opportunity to observe him as his eyes roved across the walls and ceiling while he waited for his friend to pick up. This close she could see the fine creases fanning out from the corners of his eyes. She thought they suited him. His eyes locked onto hers and he smiled. Then he spoke.

  ‘Peter? Hi. It’s Jamie. Listen, I’m going to have to keep this brief but I’m helping the police with this serial killer
case.’ He laughed. ‘No, not from a cell. We’re in the National Gallery.’ A pause as he listened. ‘Me and the SIO on the case. A DCI Stella Cole.’ His eyes dropped to Stella’s again and he grinned. ‘Yes, she is. Very. So, here’s the question. Was there a martyr, or a Christian saint, who had her eyes gouged out?’

  He listened for a minute or so, nodding a couple of times.

  ‘OK, thanks, Peter. I’m going to introduce you by email to DCI Cole. I have a feeling she’s going to want to talk to you in more depth. Yeah, OK. Bye.’

  He ended the call.

  ‘And?’ Stella asked, feeling sure it would be good news.

  ‘Saint Lucy,’ Jamie said. ‘AKA Lucia of Syracuse. The stories vary but, according to Peter, she is famous for having her eyes gouged out by Paschasius, the Governor of Syracuse, because she wouldn’t make a pagan sacrifice. She is often depicted in art with her eyes resting on a gold plate.’

  Stella ran a hand over the top of her head and then grabbed her ponytail, tugging it through her fist as she tried to tame her racing thoughts.

  ‘Renaissance art. Christian martyrs. Do they sound like the interests of a man of low-to-average intelligence, possibly with learning difficulties?’ she asked.

  ‘No. They sound like the interests of the complete opposite type of man.’

  ‘Shit! I hate dealing with intelligent murderers.’

  64

  MONDAY 27TH AUGUST 8.55 A.M.

  WAPPING, EAST LONDON

  Andy Robbins had served as the Sun’s news editor for three years. Before that, he’d spent over thirty years working as a tabloid journalist in the UK, Australia and the US. And in that time, he’d grown a very sensitive pair of antennae or, as he liked to put it, ‘bullshit detectors’.

  His detectors were able to tell him reliably whether a lead was going to be gold or dross. He reserved his deepest contempt for the people who called, or increasingly emailed, him to confess to murders, especially murders of children.