by Graham Smith
Eric’s voice was soft and his words were delivered in the drawl common to many East Cumbrians. As with many men of his generation, he suffixed every sentence with ‘like eh?’ and turned a statement into a half question.
The room Eric led them to was half storeroom, half cloakroom. Battered clothing hung on pegs screwed to a timber rail and there were bags of feed, heavy leather gloves and wellies on timber shelving that looked as if it may collapse at any moment.
Beth reached into her folder and pulled out a file. ‘Have you heard about the bodies that have been found with wings attached to their backs?’
‘Yeah, I saw it on the news, like eh?’
‘I have some pictures of the wings. Could you take a look at them and help us identify the birds?’ Beth paused before opening the file. ‘Most of these pictures were taken when the wings were still attached to the victims’ bodies. I’m afraid they’re rather grisly.’
‘Don’t worry, I work with birds of prey. I have a strong stomach.’
Beth opened the file and passed Eric the four pictures she’d brought with her. Each was a close-up of the wings.
‘Hmm. You’ve got a Serinus canaria domestica, which is your typical domestic canary; an Alexandrine parakeet or Psittacula eupatria; a Corvus corax, which is your common crow; and an Accipiter nisus.’
The way that Eric had used the birds’ Latin names without so much as a pause for thought gave Beth reassurance that they’d come to the right place to get the info they needed.
‘What’s an Accipiter nisus?’
‘Sorry, it’s a sparrowhawk, like eh?’
‘Okay.’ Beth pointed at the pictures. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing that the canary and parrot could have been bought at a pet shop.’
‘Aye. There are breeders as well. A good Alexandrine will fetch a few hundred quid.’
Beth tried not to mirror Unthank’s wince. With the first two birds available from many sources, tracing them would be next to impossible.
‘The crow and the sparrowhawk.’ Beth locked eyes with Eric and tried not to look at his ridiculous hairstyle. ‘If I asked you to get me those birds, how would you do it?’
‘I’d use a humane trap on a crow. They’re like a cage which has bait in the middle and when the bird steps on a pressure pad, the open side closes.’ Eric pulled a face. ‘It’s a slow process though and if you wanted a specific breed it could take weeks. Anyway, the crow’s wings have been damaged by pellets. I’d say that it was shot down. That’s the easy way to get a pair of crow wings.’
Unthank leaned forward. ‘And the sparrowhawk, how would you suggest our killer got the sparrowhawk’s wings?’
‘If it was me, I’d buy a bird from a registered breeder, or,’ Eric paused and rubbed at his jaw, ‘I’d buy a stuffed one and cut its wings off.’
‘Are you able to tell the sex of the birds from the wings?’
‘Of course.’ Eric’s tone held affront at the thought he couldn’t fulfil this request rather than ego that he could. ‘The canary and sparrowhawk are female while the parrot is male. I can tell that from their plumage. There’s no way of sexing a crow by its wings alone. I’d need to see the entire bird.’
Beth tried a few more questions without learning anything more. The fact there was no correlation between the sex of the birds in relation to the victims whose backs they were affixed left her thinking the birds had been chosen at random.
As they were walking back to the car, she could tell Unthank was about to pass one of his pronouncements on Eric.
‘C’mon then, let’s have it.’
‘Have what?’
‘Your description of Eric.’
‘He’s a nice guy with a comb-over that looks as if it was done with a garden rake.’ Unthank gave a pretend bow before sliding behind the wheel of his car.
Beth tossed him a wry smile as she placed her folder on the back seat. ‘All true, but it’s not funny and I’ve heard you do much better.’
Forty-Eight
Beth rejoined the motorway and, not for the first time, cursed the geographical challenges of policing Cumbria. She’d already been to Carlisle once today and while it was only twenty minutes up the M6, by the time she’d crossed town and made her way to Cumberland Infirmary, it would take at least three quarters of an hour.
Having the morgue and police headquarters so far apart was an inconvenience to say the least, but Penrith was a good location for the HQ and the town just wasn’t large enough to have a hospital with a morgue and pathologist in situ. The only places in Cumbria which had such facilities were Carlisle, Workington and Kendal and she knew they were under threat from cutbacks.
As a part of FMIT, she understood that she had to get used to spending time driving from one location to another, it was just that she felt her time would have been better spent sifting through evidence, or compiling her data-laden spreadsheets, instead of repeating journeys between Carlisle and Penrith.
Policing never worked out that way though. Many times in her career, she’d been called to a disturbance at a domestic property. After attending and dealing with the situation and returning back to the station, with or without people who’d been arrested, a call would come in and she’d be on her way back to the same street to deal with an incident a few doors along from where she’d just attended.
It would have been a lot more practical for her if Dr Hewson had called this morning when she was still in Carlisle, but that wasn’t the reality of her world. Coincidences didn’t happen and now whenever she did encounter one, her training had taught her to question it.
And she was questioning something at the moment. The closer she got to the hospital, the more she found her interest piqued by Hewson’s insistence that his report would be better delivered in person.
Forty-Nine
Beth knocked on Dr Hewson’s office door and waited for a response. She could hear a voice coming from inside the room but couldn’t make out any words. There was the clatter of a telephone handset being dumped into its cradle and then Dr Hewson’s door swung open and a head of curly hair appeared. ‘Ah, it’s you, the protégé. Come on in.’
Beth gave an awkward smile at Hewson’s description. She didn’t want to be anyone’s protégé, she wanted to be her own person. At the same time, it was a flattering thought that an experienced DI like O’Dowd was mentoring her. On the other hand, perhaps the doctor wasn’t being entirely flattering, given Beth knew his relationship with O’Dowd wasn’t the friendliest. Nevertheless she decided to accept the comment as a compliment.
‘Enough with the flattery. DI O’Dowd said you wanted to speak with one of us.’
‘Not just speak, show.’ He reached behind the door and produced a lab coat. ‘Come with me.’
As she followed him to the lab, she tried to find out what he was going to show her, but Hewson deflected all of her questions with a polite, but infuriating, ‘wait and see’.
He guided her to a bench and told her to wait a moment. Beth watched as he opened a refrigerated cabinet and pulled out a tray.
When he laid the tray on the bench, she saw there were four different versions of the sliced-open trachea she’d seen during Angus Keane’s post-mortem. Each was positioned next to a label. Going left to right they were: ‘Woman 1’, ‘Woman 2’, ‘Angus Keane 3’ and ‘Man 4’.
‘What am I looking at? Or should I say, for?’
‘Patience, DC Protégé, patience.’ Hewson pulled out another stainless-steel tray and laid it beside the first. It contained two longer versions of what looked to be tracheas. ‘The ones in the first tray are the tracheas, the second tray holds Man 4’s oesophagus and a sample one from a non-victim.’
‘We’ve identified Man 4. His name was Nick Langley.’
The tattoo had been referenced as identification and while there was no doubt Man 4 was Nick Langley, his wife would still have to make a formal identification.
The sample labelled ‘Woman 1’ was half the length of t
he others and had pieces missing where animals had feasted. The other three were similar in size, but she didn’t see a lot of differences until she took a deep breath and bent over for a closer inspection.
A part of Beth knew Hewson was testing her, and it was this knowledge that kept her leaning over the two trays until her back ached.
She looked at the facts. Woman 1 had a scorched trachea. Woman 2 only had scorching on the upper part of the trachea. Angus Keane’s trachea showed worse burning than either of those two, while Nick Langley’s trachea was even worse. In one or two places the fire had burned holes which allowed her to see the polished stainless steel of the trays beneath.
None of it made sense to her and she couldn’t see what the doctor’s point was. Rather than admit defeat, though, Beth kept looking at both trays until her mind interpreted what her eyes were seeing. Back and forth she gazed until she made a connection.
She straightened up and resisted the urge to massage her lower back. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong here, but are you trying to tell me that the killer has been experimenting with the fire breathing for his dragons?’
As soon as she’d verbalised her theory, Beth felt stupid. Only a handful of people knew the dragon theory, and it was by no means something everyone agreed on.
Hewson’s face was impassive. ‘What makes you say that?’
His question was a double-edged sword. Either he was of the same thinking and wanted her thought processes explained, or he was mocking her and seeing just how long she’d keep digging herself deeper.
She didn’t believe he was the type of person to mock her, so after a deep breath, she opened her mouth.
‘The first woman’s burns look to be lesser than those of the others. In fact each victim shows more fire damage to their trachea than the one before.’ Beth looked at Hewson’s face again but saw no indication of whether she was right or wrong. She’d come too far to stop now. ‘He’s trying different things to see which burns the best. Not only has he been using an accelerant, but it looks like he’s been putting more of it into each of the victims. Am I right?’
A smile creased Dr Hewson’s face. ‘You would indeed be right. At least with most of your theory. Woman 1’s death was not a pretty one. When I examined what was left of her lungs and stomach, I came to the conclusion that the accelerant in her stomach, which for the record was petrol, poisoned her. I hate to say it, but she would have had a slow agonising death until dehydration overwhelmed her.’
Beth reeled at the thought of the poor woman, abandoned to die in that foetid cellar. Her throat ruined by fire. Every breath filled with agony as the poison attacked her body. Not only would her death have been excruciating, but she’d have felt her strength fading. Try as she might, Beth couldn’t help but hope the woman’s injuries had caused her to pass out so she didn’t experience either the pain or the horror of her last hours of life.
‘What about the others?’
‘My best guess is that the killer put too much petrol into Woman 2. Her lungs were saturated with the stuff and I’d say that she was technically drowning when he put his match to her. There would have been a huge puff of flame but it wouldn’t have travelled far inside her. She’d have died instantly as the fire would have burned all the oxygen in her mouth and throat.’ He leaned forward and assessed her with a careworn expression. ‘Not a good way to go, but better than her predecessor’s by a long way.’
Beth stepped away from the bench and put her back against a wall. The room was in danger of spinning as she contemplated the women’s horrific deaths in the dingy cellar that had almost taken her own life.
The pathologist gave her a couple of minutes to pull herself together, then walked across and stood in front of her. ‘You ready to continue?’
Beth nodded and let Hewson lead her back to the bench.
‘Do you see this?’ He used a pen to point to the pair of oesophagi. ‘Man 4’s, sorry, Nick Langley’s, is charred away whereas the unburned one is in good order. This is wrong. The epiglottis wouldn’t normally allow a fire to travel down an oesophagus. However, his was all but burned away. I’m not sure how, but it looks as if there was substantial burning that went on after he died.’
‘How could that have happened?’
Hewson turned from putting the trays back into the chiller and stood in front of her. ‘C’mon, DC Protégé, you can have a seat in my office while I tell you the rest of my findings and my suspicions.’
With a mental girding of her loins, Beth pushed herself off the wall and trailed behind the doctor as they walked back to his office.
It had been kind of Hewson to not comment on how she’d reacted. Instead of asking if she was okay, he’d recognised that she wasn’t and had offered a distraction, a way out. There was little doubt in her mind that he’d seen many different reactions to his work over the years, but he’d managed hers with compassion and understanding. If asked, she’d have guessed that he’d have been the type to point her to the ever-present sick bucket, or worse, hand her a mop if she didn’t make it to the bucket.
His actions proved to her that people should never be judged until there was enough information to make an accurate assessment of their character. She’d had him down as a grumpy and thoughtless man and had been proven wrong.
‘Take a seat.’ He pointed at the plastic chair to one side of his desk.
Beth sat down and glanced round the office. It was pretty much as she’d expected it to be. There was a whiteboard bearing names in different colours, detailing his schedule, a filing cabinet and a few shelves that were laden with medical textbooks.
A calendar hung on the wall beside his desk and its picture was of York Minster. There was the obligatory photo frame on the desk alongside the telephone and a computer screen.
Though it was tidy, the office displayed the signs of being well used.
‘What else did you find?’
‘After coming to the same conclusions you’ve just reached, I consulted with a colleague in Manchester. She’s a specialist in burns, both pre- and post-mortem. I told her what I found and she agrees with our assessment. She’s drawn up a database of burns received from various accelerants and has consented to give me the benefit of her expertise. I’ve taken cross-section photographs of each trachea and sent them to her. She will examine them and then give her considered opinion on each one. I don’t know how much use it’ll be for you, but it may just give you a clue, or better, some evidence you can use.’
‘That’s very thorough of you, doctor.’
‘We have to be thorough. The dead deserve answers every bit as much as the living.’
‘What you said before, about Nick Langley’s epiglottis being scorched, have you any ideas on that?’
‘One or two. Do you have any yourself?’
Beth had some ideas, but she didn’t like them. If they were right, the implications for the victims were horrific. ‘I may be wrong – part of me hopes I am – but it seems to me that he’s learning as he goes. His first victim had the least burns, which suggests that he didn’t use enough accelerant to get his desired effect. That he’d more or less drowned Woman 2 with the stuff backs up this theory.’ Beth lifted her eyes from the floor to look at Hewson. ‘Would I be right in saying that it was only a lack of oxygen which prevented the accelerant from exploding inside her?’
‘You would. When I tested her organs, they were all showing signs of poisoning from the petrol. The two men – what are your thoughts regarding them?’
‘Horrific deaths. Agony. Calculated. Experiments.’
Hewson’s bushy eyebrows twitched as the words tumbled from Beth’s mouth. ‘Interesting that you used the words “calculated” and “experiments”. Can you expand on your thinking?’
‘Angus Keane had worse burns than Woman 2, so that suggests there was less accelerant used, but what was there seems to have burned better.’ Beth leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes in thought. ‘What if more accelerant was added after the first
flames died out? You know, either poured or squirted into his mouth and then lit, would that cause the burning you found?’
Hewson rested his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. ‘That’s what I was thinking. I’d even suggest he could have been using something like one of those plastic spray bottles to deliver the petrol. I’d say he only stopped after his victim’s heart gave out. For Man 4, on the other hand, the killer didn’t stop; I’d say that he kept going long after the poor bugger died.’ Hewson slid one of his desk drawers open, reached inside and pulled out an evidence bag. ‘I found this block of wood jammed between his teeth. It would keep his mouth open so that more petrol could be sprayed or poured in. The trachea was so badly burned that there’s no way our victim would have been able to breathe. He’d have died of suffocation due to a trachea that was either blistered or punctured.’ Hewson closed his eyes for a few moments. ‘Like the others, his death would have been inevitable and a release. However, I do think you’re right about the killer experimenting. He’s refining his methods to ensure the fire is breathed for longer.’
Beth tried not to revisit the cellar in her mind, did what she could not to picture Nick Langley repeatedly breathing fire. Not now that she knew the horrors that had taken place in there.
As a distraction from her thoughts, she fired more questions at Hewson. ‘What else do you have to tell me? Can you make a more informed guess as to how long the bodies were in that cellar?’
‘My initial impression was wrong. Woman 1 had been in there at least four months, but not more than eight. I’ll need to check some reference books, but I should be able to narrow that window down for you. Woman 2 was around four weeks give or take a day or two. Nick Langley was very recent. I’d say he was in there no longer than twenty-four hours.’
‘That ties in with what we’ve heard from his wife.’
