by Malcolm Rose
TRACES
Roll Call
The Third Case
By Malcolm Rose
Text copyright © Malcolm Rose 2013
First published by Kingfisher 2005
Cover design by Colin Rose
Welcome to the world of Traces. Imagine a place where technology rules, where London is a slum and the North is a cultural capital, where from the age of five The Authorities decide your future. In this fascinating parallel world, quick-thinking Luke Harding and his robot sidekick, Malc, make a top forensic team. Luke and Malc have the talent to crack any crime – and a good joke too.
Luke is hot on the trail of a serial killer. Using weapons that leave no trace, the murderer is killing women and girls who have only one thing in common: they share the same name – Emily Wonder. When another Emily Wonder vanishes Luke and Malc race back to London to save her from the killer’s plans – and from a tsunami that threatens to engulf the city.
Of the Traces series, Jan Mark wrote in The Times Educational Supplement, ‘This is fast-moving storytelling in the true thriller tradition, with enough subtext to leave a perceptive reader thinking.’
Also available:
Traces 1: FRAMED!
Traces 2: LOST BULLET
Traces 4: DOUBLE CHECK
Traces 5: FINAL LAP
Traces 6: BLOOD BROTHER
Traces 7: MURDER CLUB
Chapter One
Emily Wonder’s eyes did not narrow when the dazzling sunshine fell across her face. Her numbed eyelids did not snap shut to protect her from the blinding light. Lying across the sofa, she was helpless against the unbearable smarting pain in her eyes. Tears and sweat rolled down her cheeks into the soft cushion. She was not tied to the settee but she was completely unable to shift her position. However much she tried, she could not move an arm, a leg, her head or any other part of her body. She could not even blink an eyelid. She just lay there in her apartment, tethered by invisible bonds, as if immobilized by an overwhelming weight, and waited to die.
It had been a good day until, feeling faint, she’d lain down on the sofa after lunch and become limp within minutes. First, she’d felt a prickling around her mouth. The tingling had spread pleasantly throughout her body, bringing a feeling of lazy warmth. But then came the shivering, the agonizing pins and needles in her fingertips, tongue and nose, and the waves of nausea as her ailing nervous system shut down. Her mind remained agonizingly clear, though, as she realized that she was not suffering merely from heat exhaustion.
****
In this extraordinarily hot summer, the weather was striving to turn the country into a desert. Reservoirs were running dry and rivers were reduced to sad trickles. On the day of Emily’s death, Dundee sweltered. The ski centre’s exhausted air-conditioning system took its last breath and broke down. The indoor slope defrosted immediately and the snow melted away. The Music Hall, Caird Theatre, and the McManus Art Gallery were packed with people seeking leisure and an escape from the heat.
Along Riverside Walkway the tarmac was sticky underfoot. In the morning, Emily hesitated as she strolled past the beautifully preserved sailing ships moored in the docks. For a few minutes, she gazed at cabs speeding over the wide estuary on the impressive Tay Bridge. The iron railings divided the sunlight so that the cabs seemed to move under strobe lighting. It made their crossing appear jerky rather than smooth.
Just as she was about to continue her walk, an older woman bumped into her and muttered, “Oops. Sorry.”
Emily shrugged. “That’s okay.” Even wearing sunglasses, she had to squint in the sunlight to get a good view of the person who had nudged her. But the woman had pulled a wide-brimmed hat down protectively over her eyes. Half of her face was in shadow. Emily watched her walk slowly away. She was dressed in a short skirt and flimsy floral top. With every step, she placed one foot deliberately right in front of the other, giving her the flamboyant bearing of a fashion model.
Carrying on along Riverside Walk, Emily visited Dundee Animal Sanctuary. There, the vets were making garlic ice cream for the animals to keep them cool. For the first time, the amphibian house did not need power to maintain its tropical conditions. The yellow-splashed Californian newts and harlequin frogs were lapping up the sunshine. The aquarium and sea-life tanks had to be cooled to keep the water hospitable for the pufferfish, the tiny blue-ringed octopus, the garish angelfish and xanthid crabs.
Emily took lunch in the conservation park’s restaurant. When she presented her identity card, the attendant asked a question that Emily had suffered a hundred times.
“Are you the Emily Wonder?”
Shaking her head and smiling, Emily pulled down her sunglasses and gave her usual response. “If I started to sing, you’d know right away I’m not. I share a name with her, not a voice.”
“Shame.”
Keen to end the stale conversation, Emily visited the washroom and then returned to tuck into the fish and salad.
Afterwards, thinking that the heat was taking its toll on her, she got up to go straight home. Just as she got to the door, though, someone called her name. She turned to see a man dashing up to her.
He was shorter than Emily, but older. He had a big bushy beard and, even indoors, he was wearing a cap. Under its peak, his eyes were intense. His left arm was encased in plaster and hooked across his chest.
She had never seen him before in her life. Startled, Emily stepped back and her bare arm touched one of the cacti on a shelf. The plant’s sharp spines pierced her skin. “Ouch!”
The man glanced at the large flat cactus with clumps of brown spines and then looked into Emily’s face. “You’re all right. Just a sting. It’s not poisonous.”
Rubbing the spot where the prickles had scratched her, she said, “What do you want? How do you know my name?”
The strange man held out her identity card in his right palm. “You left it on the table.”
“Oh. Silly me. Thank you,” she replied, taking it from him. Feeling light-headed, she opened the door and made for her apartment.
****
The sun executed an arc high in the clear sky and the vertical blinds in Emily’s window chopped the harsh light into bands of shade and brilliance, turning her living room into a cage with dark bars that drifted throughout the afternoon. Emily could have counted the hours by the alternate periods of welcome shade and tortuous glare on her inert face. So much perspiration cascaded from her body that she felt as if she’d just walked through a rainstorm. Her muscles were paralysed but her brain was fully aware that she was about to die from inevitable heart failure or suffocation. Robbed of speech and motion, there was nothing she could do about it. She was defenceless against the unknown and unseen poison that had penetrated every part of her body except her mind. Cruelly, the chemical could not cross into her brain so she remained perfectly conscious.
For seven hours, Emily experienced her young life slipping slowly away. For seven hours, she was a zombie – alive and awake yet, to all intents and purposes, lifeless.
She was aware of time passing and the pain of her organs failing one by one, but she was not aware that she had been murdered.
****
The forensic investigator assigned to Emily’s death did not realize that she had been murdered either. A thorough examination of her body did not reveal any evidence of a crime. Even the pathologist who conducted the post-mortem did not find the true cause of death. The toxicity tests on her blood were negative. The microscopic puncture wounds and inflammation on her left forearm were trivial, caused by the tiny spines of a prickly-pear cactus, Opuntia vulgaris. All of her internal organs had been healthy when they had suddenly ceased to function. The pathologist put her death down to heart failure as a result of unknown natural causes.
Chapter Two
A mad year was coming to an end. The summer had been the hottest and driest on record. In October, Luke Harding had graduated from Birmingham School as a Forensic Investigator at the age of sixteen. Autumn rains had come late but, when they did, they made November the wettest in memory. Now, on Sunday 25th December, an unusually severe winter had got a grip on the country.
Every roof had turned startlingly white with frost. Every windowpane was decorated with stringy spiders’ webs stretched across the frames. The overgrown grass in the parks was silvery like the greying hair of an old man. Thirsty birds looked in frustration at frozen ponds. The lake beside Woburn Wood was solid and, through the trees, Luke could hear the excited cries of skaters. The hillside opposite was thick with snow and toboggans. At the bottom of the gentle slope, children were engaged in a snowball battle. Some were probably not much younger than Luke. But Luke was dealing with something altogether more adult and serious. His role as FI separated him from the other kids and separated him from fun.
The leafless trees had suspended their life until spring. In the brook, a little cold water trickled under what seemed to be a plate of glass. The banks were lined with great clumps of ice and, above it, long smooth icicles hung down from the branches. Only the holly, the victim’s clothing and blood added colour to the black-and-white world of the wood.
Luke was keeping well back from the young woman’s body while his Mobile Aid to Law and Crime scanned and recorded the scene. “Any shoeprints?” he asked Malc, his breath coming out of his mouth like smoke.
“No,” the robot answered. “Fresh snowfall has covered any tracks.”
“So, there could be something interesting under the top layer.”
“My scan penetrates snow. I have not detected any significant evidence within ten metres.”
“All right.” Stepping carefully on the white surface, Luke walked up to the victim who was lying flat on her back. He crouched down near her bloodless and goosepimply face. In death, she looked older than her age. She was probably eighteen to twenty-five years old. Her hair seemed to be standing on end, as if she’d been scared witless in the moment that she died. But Luke knew that the goose pimples and the state of her hair had nothing to do with cold or shock. Rigor mortis had stiffened the tiny muscles around each follicle, making her hair stand out and dotting her flesh. He glanced down at her chest where her clothing was torn and matted with the brown stain of congealed blood. There was no sign of the weapon that had ended her life. “What caused the wound, Malc? A knife?”
“No. The puncture is round, not narrow.”
“Something like a screwdriver, then?” Thinking of the woodland surroundings, he added, “Or a sharp stick?”
Malc was hovering on the other side of the young woman’s body. “I cannot rule out a screwdriver but the weapon was not wooden. It is a clean wound. I do not detect any bacteria, infection, or residue of any sort.”
Luke felt sickened. She was still a girl really, only a few years older than himself, and possibly too young to have been paired with a husband. Trying to swallow his disgust, he said with a dark smile, “I’ve been watching too many horror films. A stake through the heart would leave tiny splinters or dirt behind. If this is just a clean hole, it’s like she was stabbed by thin air.”
“It is not possible...”
Luke put up his hand. “Don’t tell me. I know. Air can’t be thin and you can’t stab anyone with it.” He inched his way around the body looking carefully for anything interesting. His hands were aching from the cold and his fingers began to feel numb.
She was dressed for the weather. She was wearing a fleece coat and several layers underneath. Around her neck was a distinctive yellow scarf. “Perhaps the pathologist will see something after getting all these clothes off.”
“That is possible but I have conducted a microscopic scan in the area of the wound.”
“There’s something else that’s strange. I’m not convinced this is a fatal wound. It’s gone in on the right side of her chest, missing the heart.”
“Correct, but there was massive blood loss.”
“Mmm. What’s your best guess at the time of death?”
“I do not guess,” Malc replied. “I estimate. The body is cold and rigor mortis is fully established. Death occurred one to two days ago.”
“Scan her eyes, please. They look different to me.”
“There is a contact lens in her left eye.”
“Not in the right?”
“Correct.”
“Okay. Let’s get her details.” Luke knelt down, pulled on latex gloves and removed the girl’s identity card from her shoulder bag. “Emily Wonder. Aged eighteen.” It took him a few seconds to call the name to mind and then he muttered, “She’s a food technologist so she can’t be the Emily Wonder. Not the opera singer. Anyway, access her medical records, Malc, and check her eyesight. “Was her right eye normal?”
“Searching.”
While he waited, Luke asked, “You’ve got the details of whoever found her?”
“Confirmed. It was a male walker. He claimed to be going through the wood to join the ice-skating.”
Luke stood upright and sighed. To the south, an imposing building was perched grimly on the rise. “Has anyone escaped from Woburn Prison?”
“I do not have that information. I will request it.” Malc paused and then announced, “The victim was shortsighted to the same extent in both eyes.”
“So, we’ve got a missing contact lens. Ultraviolet scan of the area, Malc. See if you can find it.”
The white snow glowed brighter, and slightly blue, under Malc as he swept a beam of ultraviolet light over the floor of the wood. Finishing the scan, he concluded, “It is not in the immediate vicinity.”
“Interesting. Have any similar deaths been reported?”
“Searching.”
Low-level movement on Luke’s left caught his eye and at once he spun round. But it was only a fox. The animal was probably curious about the smell of death among the gaunt trees. Seeing Luke, it slunk away in the opposite direction. Luke stood still and listened. Malc’s quiet whirring was mixed with the faint sound of screams coming from the hillside. Luke could tell that they were squeals of delight rather than cries of terror. He was pleased that the kids could enjoy harmless fights in which the worst weapon was merely cold and wet. It made a change for them in this hot-spot of crime.
“Search completed.”
“Is there a match?”
“Confirmed.”
Eager, Luke said, “Tell me about it, then.”
“On Saturday the 16th of July, in the heat wave, a nineteen-year-old woman died from natural causes in Dundee...”
Interrupting him, Luke said, “This one’s not entirely natural, is it? She’s got a hole in her chest.”
“The victim in Dundee was called Emily Wonder.”
“What?” Luke exclaimed.
“The victim in Dundee...”
“Yeah. All right. Amazing – having the same name.”
Malc hesitated, churning through statistics. “Given the current population and the number of people called Emily Wonder, the chances of one Emily Wonder being a murder victim are one in five hundred thousand. The probability of a second one being murdered purely by chance is one in two hundred and fifty thousand million.”
The numbers were far too big for Luke to take in, but they were telling him that the two deaths were unlikely to be a coincidence. There again, he’d once seen a telescreen programme about a man in Birmingham who’d been struck by lightning three times. The odds against it were astronomical. But it happened anyway. Luke reserved judgement on Malc’s mathematical analysis. Apart from the young women’s names, there was no obvious link. “Murders in the north are almost unheard of. Anyway, you said the first Emily Wonder died of natural causes.”
“Correct. However, the natural
cause was unknown.”
“Well, maybe that’s another connection. This Emily Wonder didn’t die naturally but the cause is unknown,” said Luke. “Hand the body over to pathology, Malc. Maybe a full post-mortem will turn something up that we can’t see.”
“Transmitting.”
Feeling miserable, Luke let out a long steamy breath. He hoped that Year Birth in a week’s time would bring the madness and extremes to an end.
Chapter Three
Luke felt good. He wasn’t getting anywhere with his case but he was in Sheffield with Jade for the Year Birth Concert. He knew that Jade was delighted to see him as well, but she was pretending to be grouchy.
She grumbled, “We haven’t seen each other for real in two whole months and, when we do, you bring us to see Emily Wonder. Shall I give you a list of all the things we could do together that’d be better than this? I could’ve been gigging at a nightclub.”
“She’s supposed to be high culture, isn’t she?” Teasing her, Luke kept quiet about the real reason for coming to a concert by the celebrated opera singer.
“Top warbler, yes. And she’s going to warble at us till midnight.”
“But you’re mad about music.”
“Yes, I’m supposed to admire her perfect voice. I do. It’s amazing. But I don’t want to listen to it for two hours! Amazing and perfect, it is, but it’s also unpleasant and unlistenable. Anyway, since when were you into opera? You didn’t pick that up in grotty old London.”
Luke avoided the question. He shrugged. “I just thought... you know. Year Birth and all that. We ought to do something.”
Jade grimaced, clearly not believing him. “Her screech can shatter glass, you know. She’ll probably do the same to my eardrums. And you’d better watch out for Malc. When she turns the volume up for the emotional bits – that’s almost all the time – she might blow his casing apart and shake his circuits to bits.”
