Previous Titles from Keith McCarthy

The Eisenmenger and Flemming Forensic Mysteries

A FEAST OF CARRION

THE SILENT SLEEP OF THE DYING

THE FINAL ANALYSIS

A WORLD FULL OF WEEPING

THE REST IS SILENCE

WITH A PASSION PUT TO USE *

CORPUS DELICTI *

SOUL SEEKER *

The Lance Elliot Mystery Series

DYING TO KNOW *

* available from Severn House

This first world edition published 2010

in Great Britain and in 2011 in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2010 by Keith McCarthy.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

McCarthy, Keith, 1960-

Soul seeker. – (John Eisenmenger forensic mystery)

1. Eisenmenger, John (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

2. Pathologists–England–Fiction. 3. Serial murder

Investigation–Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

823.9'2-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6987-6 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-318-2 (trade paper)

ISBN-13: 978-1-7801-0008-1 (e-book)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

PROLOGUE

a rare kind of cancer

Dominic Trelawney coughed, the noise viscid, low and somehow threatening, as if he had swallowed a swamp monster. He was still not used to the sound and to the sensation of pain and burning deep in his chest; had never become even slightly inured to that strangely salty taste that his copious phlegm had developed. He had lived in Stroud with its wonderful valleys, its entrancing views of pastureland and its strangely irritating and odd inhabitants, for a long time. He had trained sixty years ago as a carpenter and joiner, then moved into the building trade, eventually running his own company employing six permanently, another ten on a pro rata basis; he had not made a fortune, but he had made a reputation for reliability and craftsmanship. The problems with his chest had started fifteen years before and had done nothing but progress ever since; at first the medics had thought it was bronchitis, but then the pain had started to bite, to eat him indeed; the breathlessness had increased and his weight had evaporated.

Cancer, they had said. A rare kind of cancer, one that is associated with asbestos, they had said. They had given it a long, fancy name that meant nothing to him, and he had come to understand that he was going to die of a thing that he could not name, because there is no proper treatment, they had said. He tried to tell himself that he did not care, but it seemed an insult to be killed by something he could not name, that was mysterious and shadowy to him. It made him feel diminished, unmanly.

His chest hurt and he felt more ill every day; every morning he awoke and in that moment of awareness, there was first an instant of normality, followed at once by the realization of his situation, of his destiny, that he had no future, only a past. He had lost Aggie, his wife of thirty-nine years two years before and his dependence on alcohol, until then contained and supported, broke free; it had shown itself to be a ravenous beast, one that had all but slain him; only the support of the few friends that remained and, until a few months ago, a voluntary group for those with a drinking problem had saved him, he was sure.

He did not have long to live, he knew, and his only reason for seeking help had been a plea from Daphne, his only child; now that she had died in a road traffic collision a year before, he saw no reason for continuing to try to abstain. Abstinence seemed to him to be a poor way to see out his life. He wanted the pain to end, although he had never articulated the thought to himself.

When the knock came on the front door of his small cottage at ten thirty-seven in the evening, just before he was going to bed, it was the first intimation that he was going to get his wish; it was also the time that he truly appreciated that one should be careful what one wishes for.

ONE

her scream, bouncing off the walls, outlived her

The world flooded in upon her, but gently and therefore deceitfully, because for a few moments she did not realize that this was not a nice world.

Not nice at all.

She was in darkness. She felt stiff, heavy-limbed, groggy; too groggy to appreciate that she had been drugged.

It was a cool darkness, but only slowly did she appreciate how very cold it was.

And then she suddenly realized that she was naked and, with that, came the terror; this did not creep up on her, but came all at once, a huge, chilling flood in which she all but drowned, a shock wave of sudden wakefulness.

Where am I?

Complete blackness. No vague outlines, no faint shafts of light, no variation in the density of the darkness around her. She could have been in a cupboard, could have been in an aircraft hangar. She was on a hard surface, she realized, and she had been there a long time, because she was numb. It was not cold, though; not metal. Perhaps polished wood? And she could not move her arms or legs; although she could see absolutely nothing, she came to appreciate that her wrists and ankles were held tight by some sort of clamps; they chaffed her skin. In her efforts, she craned her neck but . . .

Around my neck, too? The terror increased. What is this?

And her head. It did not feel right. Her scalp felt cold, too.

Just a moment passed before she realized that she must have had her hair shaved and this, more than all else that she had discovered before, terrified her, made her almost lose control of her bladder.

She thought about calling out, but something stopped her. Something more powerful than fear of the dark – fear of the one who had done this to her. He was out there, in the darkness. He was watching her, would be listening . . .

Oh, shit!

She had always enjoyed horror films – the Saw series, Hostel, the Cube films – but now it seemed as if she were being punished for this predilection, because now she was in one. She shivered and, despite the cold, it was because of fear and nothing else. She was naked and her legs were held open; he could be waiting there in the nothingness, looking at her, thinking about her.

She screamed suddenly. She didn’t want to, but it was not she who decided. It was a word that she only heard when it echoed from walls that she could not see, but that she could hear were cold and hard and maybe even damp . . . ‘Pleease!’

And her reward was nothing; no response and no change in the cold black. There was a silent yet piercing tone in her ears as the complete lack of sound got louder and louder by the second, until it seemed to split her skull, curdle her brain, stoke her fear.

Her heart was thumping . . . no, pounding . . . no, bursting.

She began to squirm, at first gently but then with increasing violence, and as she did so, she discovered something new. Her head was shaved – she missed the movement of her shoulder-length hair – but it was more than that. Someone had put something on her scalp, a sort of metal stiff net, she guessed. This was bizarre, a further dollop of inexplicability, and one that increased her fear exponentially. Nothing had resulted from her efforts, other than pain as she chafed her skin. Around her neck there was more room but that meant only that she bruised her neck as she moved with increasing violence to free herself; after a few minutes – she didn’t know how many (how could she?) – she gave up, breathless, aware that with every gasp she was perhaps pleasing some pervert looking at her through night-vision goggles.

For a moment she lay still, but that sound in her ears continued; no, it took advantage. It was an accomplice of whoever had done this thing to her, one that screamed in her ears, that taunted her and left her more frightened still . . .

A light came on, one that shone excruciatingly down into her eyes, the light that blinds, the light of the gods, that disables, not enables. The click disturbed the scream in her ears, made it vanish yet grow louder in her memories. Instinctively, she turned her head. To the left. Towards a camera lens.

What the . . .?

It was a big camera lens – the type that sports photographers use, that are hideously expensive and that produce a big cheer from the crowd when the ball smacks into them – and the light only produced arcs of reflection against dark, perfectly smooth convexity. It was perfectly inhuman, perfectly cruel.

She twisted her head away, to the right, where she expected relief.

She found another camera lens; it was identical.

Two eyes that watched her without eyelids, without emotion, almost without interest, at least without human interest.

She looked down at herself, saw electrodes on her arms and legs, on her abdomen – even, she saw with nausea, up between her legs.

She had nowhere else to go but back up into the light.

Which was when she saw more than the light, when she saw the wooden struts rising above her on either side of her head. They were a deep, dark red that seemed highly polished, beautiful and running up a groove on each inner surface was a rope; she had been brought up in a Victorian house and they reminded her of a sash window.

But it was a very tall, very narrow sash window, one that rose into the bright light above her . . .

One that disturbed her oddly.

She screwed her eyes to stop the pain that looking into the light brought, to try to see beyond the brilliance. In doing this, she made out . . . something.

It was angular and bright.

It was sharp.

It was a guillotine.

She began to scream, almost without thinking about it, once more thrashing from side to side, even though she knew that she could not break free. Her terror made her do it, was in total charge, stifling rational thought that had had its chance and lost. She was reverting to animal because there was nothing else left for her.

Something flickered to her right, catching her attention, stalling her panic. A large flat-screen television was suddenly alive, showing . . . showing what? For a second she thought that it was her – a naked figure, covered in electrodes, and strapped down on a table – but she saw almost at once that this was an elderly male figure. Like her, this man lay under the threatening blade of a guillotine and, like her, his head was shaven. There was no sound, but she could see him thrashing from side to side, his mouth opening in what was clearly anguished pleading.

What now? What was going on? Who was this?

She watched for long minutes, horrified and therefore fascinated, mesmerized despite her own situation.

The end when it came was shockingly quick. The man had quietened, gasping for air, clearly exhausted . . .

And then the blade fell.

She screamed.

The body convulsed, the head fell backwards, blood spurted once, twice, three times in dying arcs from the neck as the fading sight of the eyes looked directly at her.

‘Noooooo!!!’

Surely not . . . Please God, no . . .

She screamed again, screamed so that it hurt and somehow that pain was good, and the words were completely incomprehensible, even to herself. She thrashed and strained at her bonds, unconsciously a perfect imitation of what she had just seen on the screen.

Her eyes looked up at the blade just as it started to fall and the automatic shutters of the cameras caught every part of every second as her head came off.

Her scream, bouncing off the walls, outlived her. Far above, hidden in the darkness, five more high-speed cameras – one directly above, one in each corner of the cavernous room – concentrated on the head, watching long after the eyes had clouded and blood had ceased to pump from the neck and ooze from the head.

TWO

‘I’m afraid it got chewed up pretty badly’

Another day, another dollar, another head.

Acting Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton had had trouble raising enthusiasm when she had learned of its discovery – indeed, she had trouble raising horror, disgust, surprise or even boredom at it. It was not the first head that had come into her orbit, crying in mute enquiry to be reunited with the body with which it had been born; usually such unnecessary flamboyance was the work of gangs, related to turf wars over drugs, warnings to the cognoscenti and the innocent alike that there were people about who were not to be trifled with. The only exception to this rule had been a butcher who had been suffering paranoid schizophrenia and had become convinced that his wife had been a gorgon, her hair a head of snakes, her ugliness enough to blind (he took to wearing sunglasses when in her presence). Mr Bone – no, really, Mr Bone – had been sectioned but had absconded one day, swung by the retail establishment to pick up a few tools of the trade, and thus made Mrs Bone safe for family viewing.

She judged it unlikely that this case would be as macabre.

And not for the first time, she could not have been further from the truth.

Still, it was a job, although not an everyday kind of job, not a job that would suit many, not one that was particularly safe, either for peace of mind, or the body. She still felt the pain, the humiliation, the burning anger at what had happened to her just six months before; the violation, the feeling of humiliation and total subordination that she had endured as she had been raped. She still felt the pain and, make no mistake about it, it still hurt, but not enough to go in for the counselling that the medical officer had so strongly advised. She wanted to feel it; she wanted to keep it there, motivating her, reminding her of just how evil, how depraved mankind – a man – could be, and what she had to do to endure, to survive.

Survive, though, she would.

She had even profited. Promotion – temporary but with the hint of permanence, should she keep her nose and other bodily parts clean – had come unexpectedly with the sudden disappearance of Lambert; apparently a promotion for him, but superintendent in the Cinderford Station was not considered the cream of appointments and she guessed that it was one that Lambert would rather not have taken, had it not been politically expedient.

So she should be one happy bunny, she reckoned. Lambert had been her nemesis for so many years, an implacable foe, forever sneering, forever undermining, working tirelessly to ensure that she stayed down, cowed, that she suffered merely for being the kind of person he disliked. And now he was gone and, if he wasn’t gone forever nor gone a great distance, at least he was far enough away for her to begin to make some headway once more.

The car she was in pulled off the main Gloucester-Ledbury Road, running westwards into the small village of Bromsberrow Heath. The speed limit was thirty miles per hour, but the driver ignored that and she did not choose to reprimand him; they had an appointment with a disembodied head, which trumped the regular global emails from the chief constable droning on about ‘respect for all aspects of the law’, and ‘ensuring that we cannot be criticized for only obeying those laws which suit us’. It was a pretty village, she decided, as far as such villages went; having been brought up in an urban environment, she still looked on rural Gloucestershire as a strange land and she a stranger in it. Mostly bungalows, she noticed, and mostly well kept; biggish gardens but too much chintziness, too many garden gnomes, stone storks and wicker arches; too many called things like ‘Dunroaming’ and ‘Cherry Blossom Cottage’.

There was a distorted crossroads at the heart of the village with a village store and post office at one corner, a bus shelter at the other, then they were past and heading out into open countryside. Open farmland, a row of poplars to the right, a chapel converted into a home on the left. They swung sharp left just past this and continued along a road that became narrower and rougher, more and more like a track. Eventually one more turn to the left and they were approaching Home Farm. Approaching, too, she decided, the eighteenth century.

Gloucestershire, she had long ago decided, was a patchwork of times, ranging through the centuries from near medieval to near modern; not totally modern, mind, not bang-up-to-the-moment, so new it’s too hot to touch, but close. Most of it, though, was time-warped into a past that people thought ought to have existed, that existed in actuality only for American tourists and senior citizens, that was as fake as the wooden beams in most people’s ceiling. This farm seemed to have stopped somewhere around the time that Marie Antoinette had shown spectacular underestimation of her situation and opted for a career in dietary advice.

‘Who owns this place?’

She asked this not of the driver but the woman next to him – Detective Inspector Rebecca Lancefield. Looking over her right shoulder, Lancefield replied, ‘Owen Gardner. Sixty-seven years old, widowed, no children. Been farming here all his life. No convictions, except two for tax evasion on red diesel.’

Which, as far as Beverley was concerned, summed her up. Efficient, but efficient only to help herself; efficient only to gain a purchase on that oh-so-greasy, oh-so-high pole. Worse, she was nice. Beverley knew how to react to shitty – shitty was her currency, after all; she worked in shittiness almost every hour that she was awake, whether it be dealing with criminals or her real enemies, her colleagues – so she was well versed in it. She could close her eyes and recite shittiness without employing much more than one percent of her mental capacity. Niceness, though, required some thought; niceness was underhand because it might be genuine, might well be a subterfuge. Shitty people were straightforward, they did what it said on their tin; she was fairly sure that nice people split fifty-fifty down the middle, half being cunts, half being stupid.

She had yet to decide about the curly-haired, snub-nosed blonde who was looking at her now with wide-open, friendly brown eyes, but she wasn’t about to give her the benefit of the doubt. Accordingly, she was getting on extremely well with her new detective inspector.

‘Good work,’ she said and no one would have known.

They stopped in the middle of a farmyard that was no more than ten metres across; it was immediately obvious that Owen Gardner was of the breed of farmers who had no interest in aesthetics; animals made him money, but they also made faeces and if there was no need to clear it up, he wasn’t about to bother. Beverley waited in the car while the driver got out and fetched wellingtons from the boot; they weren’t Hunters, but she said nothing. When she stood up in the yard, her feet sunk into nearly ten centimetres of some sort of animal shit and the smell that had been permeating the universe since they arrived intensified. She found herself longing – and not for the first time – for concrete, tarmac and halogen lighting, for odours of Indian takeaways and car exhaust.

There were derelict pig-sheds on their left, open countryside to the right, the view broken only by a barn that was empty except for two ancient tractors, some tyres, a lot of barbed wire and a pile of sacks full of farm-type things. Straight ahead of them was a three-storey farmhouse in red brick; it was like a thousand others in the county, except that it was considerably more neglected than most; nine windows, each divided into twelve, and of the one hundred and eight panes, perhaps a quarter were broken and filled in with cardboard, while the curtains behind them (although poorly seen) seemed little more than dirty blankets. The paint could easily have been the original – although there was little left to judge by – and the small garden in front had become something akin to no-man’s-land at the battle of Ypres. There were three police cars and two unmarked cars already there, but no sign of human life, until a uniformed constable trudged his weary way around the right-hand side of the farmhouse. His progress was slow and, Beverley noticed, the suctioning effects of the viscous manure had produced its toll upon the blue serge of his constabulary trouser ware; his salute was tired and his tone equally so when he announced in a voice that was half respect, three quarters pissed off, ‘It’s round the back, ma’am.’

‘It’, she noted. Lancefield asked, ‘Has anyone touched it?’

Beverley found herself wondering how many times she had heard that question. The uniform – too callow, too scared-looking, just too bloody innocent, she thought – shook his head with the kind of nervous certainty that comes only from terrified uncertainty. ‘No.’

They followed him around the building. Beverley noted a kitchen through the windows, one that she recognized from costumed dramas on the box, and a small back parlour in which there were a widescreen plasma television and a big hi-fi system, items in a small pocket of the new millennium. Owen Gardner, then, was apparently not completely immersed in the wrong century.

One side was metal fencing with a gate in, opposite this was a concrete, prefabricated milking parlour, whilst across from the back of the farmhouse was a slurry pit. Beverley could think of nothing she’d rather see first thing of a morning when she looked out of her back door; it was a large one, too, almost full, a hazy kaleidoscope of various shades of bilious green, browns and greys.

It was also the centre of attention. A quick glance told her that there were four uniforms and three plain clothes police clustered around it, to all intents and purposes just aimlessly milling, ants without the queen to direct them.

As soon as Beverley appeared, one of them turned and came hurrying towards her; it was Fisher. Beverley was not a fan of obesity, in neither women nor men, whatever their age, but there was also a certain kind of thinness that she found disturbing; it was a sallow, unhealthy kind of emaciation and Fisher – newly promoted to detective sergeant – personified it. Clothes, no matter how small, seemed to hang off him, his collar touched his neck only ever at one point, his eyes peered out at the world from two moulded caves.

His expression was one of great relief. ‘Chief Inspector! Good to see you.’

Of course he would think it was good to see her. Until their arrival, he had been the senior officer and therefore in charge of the crime scene; responsibility sat on him rather as his dandruff did; it was a coating, nothing more, and something of an embarrassment. Fisher’s promotion had been a surprise, and not just to Beverley. He was not venal, nor was he lazy which, she supposed, put him about a fairly large distance above the competition, but he was thick. Beverley had long ago concluded that brains weren’t necessary for much of police work; indeed, in the execution of the overwhelming majority of tasks that the police were required to perform, brains were a positive disadvantage. No army wanted infantry that was intelligent, cannon fodder that could think and thus maybe decide that there was more to life than being in the front line and getting hurt. You’d only want brains in those giving the orders; evolution had decided for a very good reason that it was better to have the brains stored in the head than in the hands. She looked at Fisher, looked into his eyes, and suspected that he was a revolutionary dead end. The Sun quick crossword was his intellectual zenith, and that only rarely accomplished.

She said nothing, but then she didn’t need to; Rebecca Lancefield was already rushing to show her abilities. ‘Where’s Owen Gardner?’

‘In the farmhouse.’

‘And the dog?’

‘Muzzled and chained around the back of the cowshed.’

Beverley asked, ‘What about the dog?’

Lancefield said, before Fisher could even begin compiling his thoughts into his version of human speech, ‘It was the dog that found it, sir. I’m afraid it got chewed up pretty badly before Gardner was able to get it off her.’

Beverley raised her eyebrows. ‘And where did the dog find it?’

Fisher said brightly, ‘The slurry pit.’

She had somehow guessed that this would prove to be the case. ‘Where is it now?’

‘We bagged it,’ was Fisher’s bright response, one that produced a correspondingly depressing feeling inside Beverley. We bagged it. It was what the police now did; they no longer looked for clues and then deduced from them, they now bagged them. If they had made evidence bags big enough, they would be bagging the fucking bodies so they wouldn’t have to do any thinking about them. Fisher continued, ‘I ordered it to be put in the boot of one of the cars.’

She could hear by the way that he said ‘ordered’, that he liked reliving the event. She waited for him to suggest that it would be good idea to go and get it so that she might gain some purpose from her visit, but nothing was forthcoming.

It was Lancefield who suggested, ‘Perhaps you could go and get it so that we could examine it, sergeant.’

Fisher nodded, oblivious to the undercurrent, and trotted off. Had Beverley and Lancefield been better acquainted, they might have exchanged knowing glances – the secret messages of the initiated – but neither wanted to lower their defences just yet. Instead, Beverley said to Lancefield, ‘I think it’s about time that lot started to earn their wages, don’t you?’ She meant the crowd around the slurry pit. ‘First I want three of them inside searching the farmhouse – make sure there isn’t a cellar – and remind them to go into the lofts. The rest can go over the farmyard; not fingertip, but I want every nook and cranny investigated; if I discover that one of them has missed something, they’ll be sent to the dog-training school as live bait.’

‘What about further afield? This is a three-hundred acre farm.’

‘First things first, inspector.’

And Lancefield merely nodded, accepting the mild rebuke. She strode off to the assembled police officers, leaving Beverley looking at her back, her expression neutral, her thoughts anything but.

Fisher came trotting back, a human retriever not with a ball in his mouth but a human head in a clear plastic bag in his hand. He proffered it and she could see from the way that he did so that it was heavy; when she indicated that he should put it down on the bonnet of a nearby, apparently derelict tractor, it landed with a dull thud. The weather, until then gusty and only threatening rain, finally made up its mind and began to let forth a fine drizzle upon the just – and, she had a shrewd idea, upon the unjust, equally.

The head was difficult to see, even though the plastic was perfectly transparent, because it was covered in green and brown cow faeces that had smeared the inside of the bag. She could make little out other than it had been seriously chewed, and she was loathe to unseal it. Let the pathologist have that little treat.

Speaking of which . . .

‘Who’s the duty pathologist?’ she asked Fisher. God, she hoped it wasn’t Sydenham. Sydenham, who seemed to go on forever, rather like an inferior Wagnerian opera, or a scabetic itch.

But Fisher, for once not because of his incompetence, managed to surprise her.

‘Dr Eisenmenger, I think.’

THREE

a box of small treasures

Antonia watched Andrew trudging up the hill, pale-blue shirt open at the collar, showing sweat stains under the arms and, she knew, between his shoulder blades, a damp towel over his left shoulder. Ahead of him ran Josh and Harriet, their liveliness providing stark contrast with his lassitude; their shouts only emphasizing his breathlessness. Not that Andrew was old, she thought automatically, but at the back of her head was the realization that she had been saying that to herself for quite a few decades now. He was definitely showing tiredness, though; how could he not be? Thrust into a second bout of parenthood at the age of sixty, destined to miss out on the comparative ease of grandparenthood, all the while grieving for his son and daughter-in-law, bearing the curse of outliving his own offspring. The children burst into the kitchen giggling. They knew better than to let the door slam, but even so it was opened with a degree of energy that neither she nor Andrew would ever be able to match. Josh was eight years old, two months from being nine; he had dark, slightly curled hair and a rather asymmetrical face that somehow worked, that evoked a smile and a feeling of warmth in those who saw it. Harriet was halfway between seven and eight and, similarly, halfway between fates; Antonia could see that in a few years time her granddaughter would either be startling attractive, or plain. It was at the moment impossible to say which way the genes would fall, onto which path Harriet be lead.

‘Have you had a good swim?’ she asked them, a smile breaking her mood of unconscious melancholy. Of course they had; how could they not? The weather was good and the Parkers had a wonderful pool. Their hair glistened and there was a faint yet potent scent of chlorine. Whilst the children sat at the kitchen table and drank the orange juice that Antonia poured for them, Andrew came in. He smiled because he always smiled, but those decades came back to remind her that it was not as happy a smile as it once had been. She asked him, ‘Nice swim?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He meant it, but she could hear that his head was full of darker thoughts. He sat down and she went to the fridge and, forsaking the orange juice, she poured him some white wine. There was a large dark sweat patch on his back.

Harriet asked, ‘Can we have the television on?’ Eighteen months ago, when Antonia and Andrew had just been grandparents, the idea of a television in the kitchen was as peculiar as the idea of one in the bathroom. How things had since changed. She rose and went to the wall-mounted set without argument. It was a cartoon, of course, but she said nothing; she and Andrew had learned to blot things out and children’s TV was the least of them. After all, they had all but blotted out the events around the car crash that had killed their only son and his wife.

She picked up her own glass of wine and joined the family at the table; the children had become immediately and deeply entranced in the television. ‘How is Jane?’ she asked her husband.

‘Not there. No one was.’ Wallace Parker was often away, his wife, Jane, less so; even if none of the three children, now grown up, was there, it was understood that they were allowed use of the swimming pool.

‘Really? Jane didn’t say she’d be away.’

There was nothing Andrew could say to that and he didn’t try. Antonia liked to think that the Parkers considered them more than just neighbours, that they were friends, and friends, moreover, who were approximate social equals. He was of a different opinion: Wallace Parker had been the CEO of a major high street bank, of one of the better-regarded estate agency chains, and, most recently, of an international gas and electricity supplier. Andrew Barclay had recently retired as a general practitioner; not exactly a failure, but he was aware that he had been run of only a slightly esteemed mill. Antonia Barclay ate lunch; Jane Parker ‘lunched’, a wholly different thing. ‘Lunching’ was a verb that implied so much more than ingestion of food, it implied a way of life so socially elevated, so distant from the lives of most people that it might have been the group ritual of a different species.

It was not that they were treated in quite the same way as the inhabitants of the council cottages just down the road – the Redferns, Mrs Williams, the Carters and the Coles – who were regarded, he had observed, much as barbarians at the gates, it was just that they were not treated as members of the inner circle. They were merely ‘neighbours’ and, as the saying has it, one cannot choose one’s neighbours or one’s relatives. They were endured, he suspected, although that was better than the fate reserved for Tom Sheldon and Ellie Taylor, who just didn’t register on the social radar; Sheldon, because he was an ex-traveller who had no interest in observing the social conventions that the Parkers considered so essential; and Ellie Taylor because she had three children by three different fathers and never once a husband.

Josh finished his drink and, the television not to his liking, he began to torment his sister by trying to grab and squeeze her knee. She squealed and spilled her juice, causing Antonia to scold first her then, when Harriet protested, Josh.

‘Go up to your rooms and I’ll start running your baths in a moment. Give me fifteen minutes to relax with Gramps.’

They complied with her command, doing so in an energetic manner that she still found exhausting and thus demoralizing. Once more, she could not help realizing the difference there was between the two generations in the house, one that was twice as wide as was normal, perhaps twice as wide as was healthy. They waited until the door had closed – slammed, actually – before Antonia turned to Andrew. ‘How are you?’

He said at once, ‘Fine.’

He might have been convincing had she not known he was lying. ‘No pain?’

‘Not today.’

She eyed him. Being a doctor he was, she knew, a good liar. Eventually she decided that she could not tell whether this was the truth and so gave him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Good,’ she said with the best smile she could muster. She knew better than to press the point and the conversation continued in the easy triviality of a long marriage for ten or so minutes.

Upstairs, Josh and Harriet shouted cheerful insults at each other from their rooms, feeling a degree of exultation in life that they did not know was a precious, diminishing part of their lives. As she ascended the stairs and heard them, Antonia was once again struck by both joy and sadness, a mix that produced a kind of melancholic euphoria, as she exulted in their youthfulness whilst being reminded of what she had lost forever. She went to the bathroom and began running the bath, pouring in some bath bubbles; it was Josh’s turn to go first tonight.

She checked the temperature, swirled the water, dried her hand and then called for Josh.

She tidied his room as he splashed in the bath, listening with half an ear to make sure that everything was alright. Her back ached and had done so for a long time, although she wondered occasionally if it had got significantly worse, or maybe even changed, and if she should mention it to Andrew. There were so many things now that she never seemed to get around to discussing with him.

Josh was not an overly untidy child she now realized, although it had taken a good few hours of conversation with other parents at the local school to convince her of this. She was certain that she had not been so careless of orderliness when she was so young. She had tried to impress upon him the concept – so simple to her – of putting dirty clothes in the laundry basket, of folding and putting away clothes that he was hoping to wear again, yet neither he nor his sister, as bright as they were, seemed able to cope with this concept. She found herself constantly sighing as she performed this nightly ritual of tidying up after them.

And toys . . .

She and Andrew had looked in vain for Meccano, and the Airfix kits that they had found had left her husband deeply saddened, muttering that he had not realized that things had become so bad. Even Action Man – and she had moral qualms about the concept – did not seem to be quite as she recalled him; Lego, too, appeared to have changed, mutated, degraded. Still, Josh was showing a healthy interest in board games such as Junior Scrabble, Monopoly and Mousetrap, although he still seemed blind to the concept of clearing up after himself.

After fifteen minutes she had almost managed to clear the floor of pieces of toy, having succeeded in more or less reuniting the bits correctly. She got tiredly down on her knees – her left hip became bad tempered at this time of day – and reached under the bed. She brought out a box of small treasures. More Scrabble tiles, more small abstruse and highly coloured plastic parts from Kinder toys, Lego bricks and a small, tatty teddy bear that had once been Andrew’s. Then her fingers found his camera and, tutting at the careless way he treated precious things, she pulled it out. It had been his present not six weeks before; it was a ten mega pixel digital camera and he had been thrilled beyond words to receive it. Already, though, the casing was scratched. Telling herself she was not being unduly inquisitive, she switched it on as she sat on the bed, then scrolled though the pictures. Most were of her and Andrew, many were of his sister and an equal number had in them Darren from over the road.

She stopped and stared at one in particular, then sighed again, this time more angrily. She went into the bathroom where Josh was playing submarines and presented the camera to him. ‘This was under your bed.’

It was not obvious to Josh’s young mind that he had done anything wrong in leaving it under the bed, but his granny’s tone told him that it was. He looked guilty and the silence that was suddenly about them was huge. She waited; Josh was well aware, young as he was, that Granny Antonia was good at waiting. He said eventually, ‘Sorry.’

‘You’ve been in the grounds of the Grange again, haven’t you.’ This was a statement without the inflection of a question mark.

There was a hesitation but it was only minimal. ‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Josh, please don’t tell fibs.’ She showed him the photograph that was displayed on the back of the camera, the one that showed Darren making a silly face; close behind him was a chain-link fence and beyond that could be seen the upper, ruin storeys of the Grange. He looked surprised, then shocked, then crestfallen. He dropped his head.

‘We were only in the outer grounds, not the inner,’ he said by way of defence. If entering the outer grounds of the Grange was bad, entering the inner – and thereby potentially getting into the building itself – was akin to heresy.

She said severely, ‘It’s still trespassing, and that’s against the law. You don’t want to be labelled a criminal, do you?’ Before he could answer, presumably in the negative, she continued, ‘You were lucky the last time that it went no further when you were caught.’ Some months before, they had been caught trespassing there by Alan Somersby, the estate manager. He had been quite angry and gone on about health and safety, although, thankfully, Wallace Parker, owner of the estate, had taken a lenient view. ‘Please don’t do it again. Understand?’

‘Yes.’ His tone was as sincere as he could make it.

She looked long and hard at him, searching for a lie. Uncertain, but wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt, she nodded slowly. ‘Very well, Josh.’

FOUR

there was just too much shit

H e’s lost weight.

Beverley had no problem with slimming but John Eisenmenger, she judged, had gone too far. Her contact with pathologists had taught her the meaning of the word cachectic, and whilst he had not quite achieved this, he was looking worryingly thin. She could not blame him, however. Not for the first time, John Eisenmenger had suffered trauma in his personal life. The first time had nearly destroyed him and she had been afraid that this most recent event would do the job properly, but she was surprised and pleased to see that, whilst it might have marked him, it had not done its worst.

He was walking around the side of the farmhouse, following her path unconsciously, accompanied by a young uniform. He was wearing wellington boots that seemed too big for him and she wondered if this was another sign of his weight loss. When he caught sight of her, she saw that his eyes were more sunken than she remembered but, more than that, they were more distant yet seemed to see the world more acutely; it was as if they were unclouded by optimism and therefore saw more things. His shirt collar, too, had stretched, she noted, and his smile was real but weak.

‘Hello, Beverley.’

She felt almost like hugging him, but restrained herself. ‘Hello, John. It’s been quite a while.’ Which, of course, led only to painful remembrance for him so she had to say at once, ‘We have a head.’

He was surprised enough to lose the slightly lost expression. ‘Just a head?’

She nodded to Fisher who had produced the plastic bag with its curious and curiously heavy content, placing it on the bonnet of the car by which they stood. Eisenmenger’s face showed part interest, part surprise and part dismay at the accompanying manure. ‘Where was it found?’ She gestured to the slurry pit where various lowly constables toiled unhappily.

‘Over there. By the farm dog.’

He said, ‘Ah. Hence the teeth marks.’ Which, even though it was difficult to see exactly what had been done, was clearly something of an understatement.

‘We’re searching for the body, but no luck so far.’

Eisenmenger looked around at the fields that surrounded the farm. ‘Might be tricky.’ She didn’t bother replying and he asked, ‘Can I take a closer look at the pit?’

She shrugged; do what you like, John. She didn’t accompany him as he trudged to the slurry pit where three policemen in boiler suits were being supervised by DI Lancefield; supervised at something of a distance, he noted, and could not blame her when the miasmic stench hit his olfactory membranes. The slurry pit was clearly ancient and, now that the top layers had been disturbed by the less than enthusiastic shovels of the constabulary, the true viciousness of what decay does to all natural things was there to be fully appreciated by all. Eisenmenger felt a twinge of sympathy for the toiling policemen as he asked Lancefield, ‘Do we know how deep the head was found?’

She shook her head. ‘It couldn’t have been too far in, because the dog wouldn’t have smelled it out.’ Which, given the almost solid wall of odour through which he was moving, Eisenmenger felt unable to dispute.

The slurry pit was about half emptied, a growing lake of displaced cow faeces to its right which was being raked by two more constables, looking for anything and everything that might be significant. Eisenmenger had the feeling that all six of them were going to be disappointed. He turned and walked back to Beverley or, rather, the head.

He was loathe to open the bag until he got it back to the mortuary and therefore he could little more than peer through the plastic and the brown organic matter that coated both the inside of the bag and the head itself. Doing so did little to add to the sum of his, or indeed human, knowledge; there was just too much shit.

‘I’d better take this with me.’

‘Can’t you give me anything to go on now?’

‘Beverley, look at it,’ he replied. ‘Given the amount of faecal spoiling and predation by man’s best friend, and the fact that it’s been shaved, I can’t even be sure at the moment if it’s a man or a woman. Please be reasonable.’

Beverley was used to pathologists refusing to give her concrete and useful information but she did not have it within her to castigate John Eisenmenger as she might once have done. ‘I had a feeling you’d say that.’

Lancefield came back over. ‘There’s nothing in the slurry pit,’ she announced gloomily, as if she had been promised presents that had failed to appear. The policemen behind her just looked relieved to have finished their job.

Beverley failed to summon sympathy. ‘Then make sure that the search of the fields is going well, while I have a chat with Farmer Giles.’ To Eisenmenger she said, ‘Can I assume that I’m not going to have to wait days for you to get around to looking at that thing?’

He smiled. It was tired but appreciative. ‘No more than five, I promise.’

She nodded slowly and with a perfectly straight face. ‘Welcome back.’

FIVE

‘smack on the head; got a skull fracture’

Malcolm Willoughby had had his eye on the delightfully chubby Sharon Thomas for some weeks. She had the blonde curls and the slightly rosy cheeks that excited him; she also gave the sense that when she jumped, various parts of her continued to wobble for a very short time after they should have stopped, and he kind of liked that. Her blouses always seemed just a little too small, which no red-blooded male like Malcolm was going to miss, much less dismiss.

She usually came with a girlfriend, a scrawny thing with no figure and greasy skin who smelled of cold, greasy burger, but today he was to be surprised. As he made sure that he was out front, ready to serve them at their usual time, she came in alone. His heart did a double beat whilst his brain crowed a silent, Hallelujah!

‘Hello,’ he said brightly. He was good at brightly, because he had practised it a lot, but he didn’t need to act it that time.

‘Hello,’ she said with a small, polite, insincere smile; one that lasted little longer than a spark from a struck flint.

‘Usual?’

‘Please.’

He was already moving to get down the glass, then turned his back to fetch the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from the shelf at the back of the bar. He thought, She’s really asking for it, drinking alone.

She had the exact money ready for him, as she always did and, again as she always did, she was taking her first sip before the money was in the card-controlled cash till. She was about to go to her customary seat in the far corner of the pub when he said, ‘You’re Sharon, aren’t you?’

She paused. ‘Yes.’ The smile this time lasted longer, was less guarded.

Before she could ask, he explained, ‘Stan told me. You know him.’

‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ He had told Malcolm a lot more, too – an awful lot more – which maybe explained why she suddenly seemed bashful. She asked, ‘How is he?’

‘He’s fine. In the Algarve at the moment.’

‘Nice.’ She sipped her wine. Malcolm helped himself to a pint of Stella. ‘Should you do that?’

‘Oh, yes. Stan said I could have the odd one.’ It was his sixth of the day. ‘He’s a pretty easy-going employer.’

Her reaction suggested she was a bit surprised at that – as well she might have been, considering that Stan was well known to be a tight bastard – but she said nothing; it was no business of hers if this gawky, spiky-haired twat was rooking Stan; she had seen others who had tried to fool Stan, and generally they eventually learned. ‘You in charge, then?’

Malcolm thought about lying, decided not to. ‘The brewery got in a temporary landlord,’ he admitted.

‘Oh,’ she replied, her voice so bored it was almost asleep.

‘You work at the Nationwide, don’t you?’

‘I can’t get you a cheap mortgage, if that’s what you want to know.’

He laughed; he was quite proud of his laugh, thought it sounded really genuine, and sometimes it was. ‘Don’t worry. I’m renting for the foreseeable future.’

‘Spanner’ Spanswick came in and Malcolm had to serve him his usual pint of Strongbow, so Sharon was left alone for a while. She didn’t leave the bar, though, and he did not fail to notice this. When he returned, she asked, ‘You haven’t worked here long, have you?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘Is this all you do?’ This was in a voice that might have been sneering, might merely have been curious; Malcolm wasn’t bright enough to tell.

‘Oh, no,’ he hastened to assure her. ‘This is temporary, while I find my feet.’ Before she could ask what he was talking about, he gave her his usual line. ‘I’ve just been discharged from the navy.’

He was particularly fond of this lie; he was not unathletic in appearance and the various jobs he had had during his twenty-six years – mechanic, undertaker, hospital porter and steward on board a cruise liner – gave his patter a fairly realistic patina. Girls fell for it and, as everyone including Malcolm knew, all the nice girls love a sailor.

‘Why? Bugger the admiral, did you?’

It wasn’t a particular clever joke, but that didn’t matter to Malcolm; he laughed uproariously. ‘Nice one,’ he enthused. ‘No. I was invalided out. Smack on the head; got a skull fracture.’ He had perfected the precise tone of nonchalance to make this sound quite heroic. He had, in fact, had a skull fracture once, but it was when he had fallen off a skip whilst drunk, the result of a ten pound bet. It produced the required reaction, though. She was impressed.

A group of businessmen came in – they weren’t regulars and were slightly incongruous in the surroundings of The Grey Goose where standard dress was either work boots, shorts and builder’s crack, or overalls – and he was occupied for ten minutes serving them, by which time she had finished her drink. He gave her the next one gratis.

Over the course of the next four hours he chatted to her – or, more precisely, he chatted her up – and even managed to do his job. He discovered that the reason she was alone was because Deirdre, her companion, was unwell (actually hung-over following a birthday bash), Sharon had no immediate boyfriend because the last one had just been remanded for falsifying MOT certificates, she no longer watched Britain’s Got Talent because she thought Simon Cowell was a twat, and she was allergic to strawberries and goat’s cheese. Occasionally, the temporary landlord came through – he demonstrated an enviable ability to delegate and an insatiable appetite for soap opera – but Malcolm always managed to look both sober and busy every time he did so.

Sharon managed neither. She became very drunk but also, he knew, very willing; it was with a practised eye that he judged this, and it was with a practised tongue that he suggested how the evening should proceed. There was perhaps a moment when heworried that he had misjudged the cast, but only a brief one; her smile this time was altogether different, a thing of crass coquettishness.

Malcolm had to do all the clearing up after hours while Stan’s replacement indulged his passion for TV quiz shows; normally he would have been done by half past midnight, but Spanner had thrown up in the gents and not told anyone, and someone else had pulled the condom machine nearly off the wall, so he was half an hour late for his rendezvous with Sharon; he missed her by five minutes.

What he didn’t miss was the cosh on the back of the head, the one wielded by the man who had been watching him, when he could, for four days.

SIX

‘a very capable psychologist, so I hear’

The next morning and Eisenmenger had taken his unusual baggage to the mortuary, where the senior mortuary technician, Clive, was his old friend. Clive had seen most things and a head that had been badly chewed by a dog, was covered in cow faeces and put in a plastic bag held neither surprise nor shock for him. He was a short, stocky man with a devilish yet attractive grin, and hands and a face that were grizzled, as if he had sailed the seven seas, or perhaps just done a lot of living.

‘That’s some hand luggage, Doc. Try getting that on an aircraft.’

Eisenmenger had arranged for Scenes of Crime to attend in an hour’s time, giving him and Clive time to drink black coffee and chew some fat. As it was a Sunday, there was no one else around to disturb them. Clive, a bluff but kind man, knew all about Eisenmenger’s recent history and his conversation was accordingly tactful. ‘You coping these days, Doc?’

‘It’s not too bad, Clive.’ They were eating digestive biscuits, a staple of Clive’s mortuary for all the years that Eisenmenger had known him. ‘Not too bad.’

Clive was plugged into all the gossip going in the department and Eisenmenger knew it. He was well aware that no one did or said anything without Clive becoming fairly quickly aware of it; he was well aware also that approximately seventy percent of what Clive learned was completely untrue. He wondered what Clive had heard about him, but was not about to ask him.

‘You sure you’re looking after yourself?’

‘I think I am.’

Clive was delving in the bottom of the biscuit barrel, looking for the broken ones. He didn’t raise his eyes as he pointed out, ‘I’ve been meaning to say, you’ve lost weight.’

To which Eisenmenger replied smoothly, ‘No bad thing, Clive. I was getting podgy.’

Clive didn’t respond directly. After dunking half a digestive in his coffee, he said a propos of nothing at all, ‘You’ve got to send that heart off, don’t forget.’

‘I won’t.’

A small, not to say microscopic, pause before: ‘Only Dr Sherman’s secretary rang yesterday, wondering how things were going.’

He was referring to the death of a man with advance cancer of the maxillary sinus who had been about to undergo radical facial surgery; Charlie Sherman had been the clinical psychologist who had been talking him through the ramifications when he had been found dead in his bathroom. The question was, was it suicide or was it natural causes? Eisenmenger’s initial post mortem examination had been inconclusive and the results of toxicology on the autopsy were eagerly awaited. Clive knew well that Eisenmenger and Charlie Sherman were seeing each other socially and knew that they would have discussed the case. ‘I expect she is,’ Eisenmenger observed drily. He kept a straight face, knowing that Clive was on a fishing expedition and quite happy to swim around the bait and wait.

Clive nodded. The fax machine in the corner began to chirrup and then to disgorge a message. ‘Settled in nicely, has Dr Sherman,’ he said eventually. ‘A very capable psychologist, so I hear.’

Eisenmenger did not bother to reply, thinking to himself that he found it unlikely in the extreme that Clive and others he came into contact with would ever have occasion to discuss the merits of a clinical psychologist.

The buzzer announcing a visitor at the main door interrupted their jousts and feints. When Clive returned it was with the Scenes of Crime officer, replete with obligatory metal briefcase and the weak but unmistakeable odour of fried onions.

Antonia’s back was aching. She knew that if she told Andrew he would shake his head and say that the back was the most difficult area of medicine, that they had made more progress in curing cancer than they had in curing backache. Symptomatic relief was all that could be done in most cases; which was all very well, but paracetamol had long since failed to work and even the strongest painkillers she could get off prescription had only a slight and short term effect. So why didn’t she go to their family doctor? She could not answer this, but supposed that it was a combination of the lethargy of old age, a suspicion that he would not be able to help much, and . . . something else, something that she could not define, but something that felt very like fear.

She would have to stop gardening for a moment and rest on one of the garden benches that gave a view of the entire lane until it bent sharply to the left some half a mile away. She would have to start thinking about Sunday lunch soon, anyway. From here she could see the council houses, the School House and away up on a hill, Keeper’s Cottage where that strange man, Tom Sheldon, lived. She had tried to get to know him, but he had resolutely, and not always politely, resisted all efforts to integrate or be integrated into the village. There was undoubtedly something shifty about him, although she tried not to listen to the sometimes lurid gossip that circulated; she had a fundamentally forgiving and tolerant nature, one that yearned for harmony, and until she saw concrete evidence that he was anything more than unfortunate in his manner and tongue, she would give no credence to tittle-tattle.

She even had time for Ellie Taylor, who was regarded by most of the people in the area as some sort of anti-Christ, or at least a white witch. And, in their eyes, why should they not? She was determinedly an earth mother, who loudly railed against conventional medicine and who picked herbs and plants to brew her own nostrums, who was forever to be heard damning the church, who had been seen wandering through the woods of the estate late at night, some said naked, others naked and painted. Of course, Antonia knew that much of this was exaggeration, that she might not believe in organized religion and the risen Christ, that she preferred to find her own paths through illness, and could see that she was just a very independent young lady who had strong views and liked others to know them. True, she was not particularly well-educated, and she lived entirely off the state, but Antonia had been reared on caring – she had been a nurse when she had met Andrew and one, moreover, that felt she had a vocation – and refused to see superficialities.

The children were, after all, quite nice. Two of them were of ‘mixed race’ as she had learned she was now supposed to call them, and the youngest was forever being beset by urinary tract infections and boils, but she did not dislike them because of this. The oldest, Darren, was Josh’s age and they had struck up a friendship, which she had encouraged because she was aware that neither she nor Andrew was a substitute for contact with close family life, even if that family did not necessarily conform to social convention.

She had been resting for perhaps fifteen minutes – time seemed to pass so much more quickly these days – when the door to the School House opened and out came Ellie, dressed as usual in a tie-dyed smock and patched cardigan with brightly coloured tights. The children followed, clearly bickering as usual, but it seemed to Antonia that it was in a friendlier, less aggravating way than her own grandchildren did.

‘Hello, Antonia.’ Ellie had a nice smile, one that charmed her. She seemed to Antonia to be at base innocent, mistaken in her beliefs, but fundamentally harmless. Antonia stood up with a small effort. ‘Ellie. How are you?’

Whilst the children played around Ellie, she talked over the garden fence with Antonia. ‘Where’s Josh?’

‘Andrew took them for a cycle ride. They’ll be back in half an hour.’

‘Darren was hoping that Josh would be able to play later on.’

She hesitated. ‘After tea,’ she said eventually. Then more certainly, ‘I’m sure that won’t be a problem, as long as they’re not out too late. Back before nine?’ She knew that Ellie often allowed Darren out until well after Josh’s ten o’clock bedtime.

‘Oh, yes.’ Antonia heard something that might have been insincerity in the reply but she was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Eisenmenger was not a natural showman. He could gain a modicum of pleasure from lecturing and from demonstrating, but it was merely compensation, a small morsel of comfort to help him through the experience. He did not like the idea of making an idiot of himself in front of others, felt always that one or more of them were just waiting for him to suffer a pratfall. Of course, his level of anxiety was inversely proportionate to the knowledge base of his audience and so his not infrequent tête-à-têtes with the police tended to be relatively stress-free. They listened and they accepted, but they rarely argued. This time, though, Beverley, however, was not interested in merely being a passive receiver of his pearls.

‘How can you be sure?’ she demanded. ‘That bloody dog has made such a mess of it, I’m not even sure it’s human; it could be Neanderthal.’

They were back in the mortuary, standing around the head that had been placed on one of the three dissection tables; of the four of them – she, Eisenmenger, Lancefield and Clive – he felt that only Clive was on his side. ‘I know enough anatomy to be sure of the species, Beverley.’

Eisenmenger had removed the brain and examined it, taking samples but not expecting much to come of this. The only sign that anything had been done was a line of stitching at the back of the scalp.

‘But the gender?’

She had a point. Fido had chewed away most of the right cheek and much of the flesh around the right orbit, including the eye itself. On the left side of the face, there were numerous deep teeth marks and areas where the dog had made tentative bites so that small gobbets of flesh were gone. Eisenmenger admitted, ‘The damned dog must have been hungry.’

Lancefield said with some disgust, ‘Gardner all but starved the poor mutt. Most of the animals on the farm are neglected, some appallingly so; we’ve informed the RSPCA.’

‘I don’t see how you can be sure that this is a male head,’ insisted Beverley. ‘The hair has been shaved off, the nose is quite fine, and there’s no sign of stubble.’

‘There’s no sign of stubble because he had recently shaved, or perhaps been shaved. The hair follicles are definitely of a male type and in a male pattern on the lower face. Add to that there are no ear piercings, the eyebrows aren’t plucked and there’s no make-up, so I think we can safely assume this belongs to a male of species homo sapiens, even if he wasn’t built like the proverbial.’

Lancefield asked, ‘You said he had been recently shaved. He died in the morning then?’

Eisenmenger said, ‘He died after recently shaving or, conceivably, being shaved. That could have happened at any time of the day or night.’

‘Age?’

‘Roughly late fifties, perhaps early sixties. Terrible dentition – the maxillofacial guys are coming in tomorrow to take a formal record. I’ve plucked hair for DNA so you might strike lucky with the offenders’ database.’

It wasn’t much; not much at all. Beverley asked, ‘How long has he been dead? How long was the head buried before the dog discovered it?’

She knew what his answer would be – an exemplar of obfuscation – but she had to ask it anyway. He shrugged. ‘Not long.’

‘Which means what? Ten minutes, an hour, a day . . . what?’

In a perfectly reasonable tone, he pointed out, ‘I don’t know. I might not be up on the literature, Beverley, but I don’t think anyone’s ever done the experiment of burying heads in cow shit for differing lengths of time.’

She played her part, asking tiredly, ‘An estimate then?’

He allowed her a smile. ‘Not long at all. Less than a day, possibly less than six hours.’

She let the bone go, but picked up another one immediately. ‘Anything else?’

‘He’s been beheaded,’ pointed out Eisenmenger.

Lancefield’s expression was quite clear. No shit, Sherlock. Beverley asked, ‘Anything we don’t know?’

‘Beheading people is not as easy as you might assume; cutting through the cervical vertebra can be tricky. One of the reasons it was abandoned as a form of judicial execution was because even the best of axemen tended to take two or three strokes to separate body and head. Clean, single stroke beheading was rare. Similarly, most modern day beheading – that done by terrorists, for example – is not done with a single stroke but with a see-sawing action.’

‘But this wasn’t?’ guessed Beverley.

At Eisenmenger’s request, Clive grasped the head in glove hands and turned it on its side to expose the neck structures. With a biro that Lancefield fervently hoped was going to be soon thrown away, Eisenmenger gestured and explained. ‘This is a single, clean cut. There is no indication of trial cuts; just the one that did the business. Also, examining the edges of the cut structures under a dissecting microscope suggests that the blade was travelling anterior to posterior.’

Lancefield was lost. ‘Meaning?’

‘Front to back. He was looking up as the blade fell.’ Lancefield felt sick, whilst Beverley blinked and breathed deeply and slowly. They tried to picture what might have gone on but did not want to. Lancefield asked, ‘And he might well have been conscious, or at least alive?’

He shrugged. ‘Possibly. There’s not much I can get for tox from this, Beverley. Hardly any blood and most of that was contaminated. I’ve kept some brain, though. They may be able to use that. And we’ll hopefully get something from the body when it turns up.’

What he meant was, if it turns up, and everybody knew it.

SEVEN

‘Are you sure the head belongs to a man?’

Over quite a short time, Josh and Darren had struck up a close friendship, one that had become important to them in the way that is unique to children of their age, that subsumed their whole existence, that was the first and therefore the strongest bond they thought that they would ever form. They were unaware of the eddies and undercurrents around them, of the turbulence caused by friendships and love affairs that crossed the boundaries of invisible yet ever-forceful social strata. Yet, like all such juvenile friendships, they had their secrets; indeed, their relationship was almost built upon them, cemented it, both enabled and imprisoned them within it; liberated them and yet put them happily in chains to it. Thus, their language was shot through with unvoiced messages to each other, non-verbal communications and in-jokes so obscure they were encrypted beyond human ability to decode. When they came together, they entered a world – and that world varied from day to day – that was solely theirs. Unless it was sport – football, cricket, perhaps just catch – usually it was a world of war, or sometimes one of monsters and aliens, occasionally one of police and robbers; they had never thought to play cowboys and Indians, a sign of their times. And they had a wonderful canvas on which to draw their imaginary world, one that consisted not just of their back gardens, but also of the countryside around them.

Their appreciation of ‘the estate’ was unformed. They understood that it was bounded by fencing, and that it was not common ground, but they did not think of it as ‘forbidden’, as ‘private’, despite the notices proclaiming otherwise that were planted around its perimeter. It was part of their environment, and they had still to understand that one’s environment is not necessarily one’s personal playground. They did not have qualms about climbing over one of the many stiles and then dodging into the undergrowth, running between copses, shooting and dodging bullets, rolling and leaping ravines, replica guns firing or Super Soakers streaming water. They did not have qualms, but they realized that it was a secret between them, not to be divulged to adults and all the better for it.

During their months of playing together on the estate, they had discovered many secret places to play, in which to be themselves as opposed to what school, or their loved ones, or everyone else expected them to be, and their choice of any such place on any given day was reached by means unknown to them, driven by chance, by desire, by capriciousness, by joy, by last night’s television, by yesterday’s play, by the latest film, by . . . anything.

It was, as so many childhoods are, a wonderful time to be alive, one of total innocence, one of total omnipotence, and one of total vulnerability.

When Malcolm failed to turn up for his shift the next morning, the temporary landlord cursed him but was not surprised. It had not escaped him that the little shit was helping himself to the stocks, and he had every intention of reporting this behaviour to Stan when he called up from the Algarve to check up on things.

Lancefield took the call and went straight to Beverley. ‘A headless body has turned up.’

Beverley had been compiling a report for the chief superintendent on the reasons for the sixteen percent decrease in the clear-up rate of violent crime over the past twelve months; it was, she knew, another exercise in shit-passing; the chief constable of this fair county would, she knew, be getting flack from the Ministry of Justice and from the press, so he in turn shouted at the chief superintendent, who in turn . . . She had become adept at the jargon, the talk that obfuscated, that deceived as it appeared to inform; the excuses and the meaningless statistics, the hot air that caused the inaccuracies and downright lies to shimmer like a mirage of the truth. She was delighted to be distracted by such news. ‘Where?’

‘Newent.’ Lancefield’s tone was not as pleased as Beverley might have expected; indeed, she appeared to be worried.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m not sure this is good news.’

‘Why not?’

‘We’ve got some more searching to do. Not all the body parts have turned up yet.’

Beverley didn’t know what Lancefield meant. How could she? She was talking garbage. They had one head and one body. End of story. ‘Why do you say that?’

Lancefield sighed. ‘Because this is a female body.’

Three hours later, Eisenmenger was in his office, dictating his findings when his phone rang; it was his secretary to tell him that Chief Inspector Wharton was on the line. She had left no more than ninety minutes before.

‘Beverley?’

‘I thought you’d like to know, we’ve found a body.’

‘Where?’

‘In a wheelie bin outside a house in Newent. Upside down and naked. Mrs Abricot, whose bin it was, is in Gloucestershire Royal suffering from shock.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘Unfortunately,’ continued Beverley, ‘it’s the body of a woman. Are you sure the head belongs to a man?’ She knew he was, though.

This was met with silence for a moment until Eisenmenger said, ‘I’d better come out and take a look, then.’

Malcolm came to with a head that ached in between throbs of agony. He was very groggy but it did not take him long to understand some unrelated observations.

He was cold. He was incredibly thirsty. He was sitting but could not move . . .

He was in a padded cell.

He twisted around slightly when this jumped into his brain, but not only were his hands and feet restrained, but so was his head.

What the hell . . .?

There were leather straps on his wrists, but he could feel that the one around his head was different; it was metal. And he was covered in wires – wires on his head, on his wrists, on his neck . . .

The lighting, until then low, suddenly became brighter as spotlights flicked on in the corners and he could see that the padding on the floor was covered in debris and dirt through which rats moved. He could see other things, though, that worried him even more.

Like the cameras that looked at him, one in front, one to his left, one to his right, and the large television screen directly in front of him.

Like the electric chair that he was sitting in.

Betty Williams watched Reverend Pilcher as he got out of his battered red car and walked up the uneven path that ran through the untidy garden of the unkempt house in which Tom Sheldon lived. She was in her front garden which gave her an elevated view of the road and, although her eyesight was worse than her glasses could compensate for, she still managed to see much of what went on around her house. She was old enough at seventy-nine to remember Sheldon’s house being built although, oddly, she did not now recall how or when it had managed to become so dishevelled. She assumed, as did most of the village, that it had been Sheldon who had brought this decadence with him, although she could not truthfully give much detail as to how he had done it. This did not matter, though, not in a village like Colberrow, where impression was all that mattered, where there was no room for objective consideration. Sheldon did not conform with what most of the inhabitants regarded as ‘normal’; he was neither poor and communal, nor rich and aloof; the rules of his game were not obvious and thus he was a thing of suspicion. Rural communities such as Colberrow had strict conventions and strict penalties for those who transgressed them.

Not that Marcus Pilcher had exactly endeared himself to the village, she thought with a short, sharp laugh. She had lived in the village all her life, in the same house, with the same furniture and the same outlook; she had seen perhaps five vicars come and go, and most of them were seriously flawed in one way or another. Not that that had bothered her; indeed she had liked that about them, because it made them equal with the flock they sought to lead, because the whiff of hypocrisy levelled them. She thought of Jonathon Wheeler, who had had an eye for the ladies (an eye for Betty Williams, if the truth were ever to be told), and Aubrey Sinclair, who had once fallen from the pulpit during Evensong because of his overenthusiastic communion with wine, and (going even further back) of Edward Peterson, who had been the most caring man of the church they had ever had in Colberrow, but who had disappeared one night having embezzled most of the collection plates for the past six years.

Marcus was modern, though; he brought new ideas. Not that she thought of herself as entrenched in the past; she accepted that her grandchildren cohabited, that few people saw the need or the desire to go to church of a Sunday; she watched the television and did not mind (too much) the swearing and the sex. She even used the digital radio that her youngest son had bought her for her birthday two years before. No, her problem was that Marcus Pilcher represented ideas that were just not right, not suited to a place such as Colberrow. He wanted to allow same-sex marriage, female clergy and tolerance of divorce; he wanted not change but revolution. Change, Betty considered, happened without notice and was safe, whereas revolution occurred in front of her eyes and was dangerous.

Take Mr Sheldon. He was never going to become part of the village, would only ever be a visitor. He didn’t seem to mind, though. He used the village shop but rarely spoke other than to request ham or milk from the cold cabinet, never passed the time of day; he carved odd statues – not at all to Betty’s taste – and tried to sell them from the roadside outside his house. He rarely succeeded, but this did not surprise her considering the prices he demanded. She thought him rather grubby, too, with a certain swarthiness that she could never come to like. Occasionally there had been burglaries in the village and she had heard rumours that he had had something to do with them – if not actually breaking in, then perhaps supplying information to some of his former friends about who was in, who was out, what was worth the risk.

Sammy Carter came out of the front door of the cottage next door having just has his lunch; he was dressed in green overalls and heavy, dirty work boots, and he carried with him an orange flask of coffee, his refreshment for when he was working on the tractor that afternoon. She was close to Sammy, as close as a son; he appreciated what she had done for him when his wife, Carol, had died fifteen years before, and now he always had time for her, making sure that she was OK when the weather was bad or she was ill. He had even agreed to having an alarm fitted in his house that she could set off by a bell push if she became unwell. And all this despite his own problems with that feckless boy of his, forever in some sort of trouble or other. She supposed that it was not surprising – she had noticed that he had been a mummy’s boy from right off – and that was always going to mean trouble. Her cousin. Arthur, had been a right mummy’s boy, and no good had come to him.

‘Afternoon, Betty.’

‘Sammy.’

‘Nice day.’

‘It is, that.’

‘You all right for everything? I was going to the supermarket after work.’

She shook her head. ‘Thanks for asking.’

He went on his way, striding up the lane, swinging the flask from its handle and whistling. Such a good man, she thought. It made her proud to think of what she had done for him, or at least tried to do for him. It just went to show that a man was a product of nurture more than nature; neither Carol nor Sammy had a bad or lazy bone in their bodies, yet Shaun had not turned out right, not right at all. He had always been argumentative, always ready to find a reason not to do what ought to be done, forever keen to start something else before a task was done. Not ugly, not handsome either; he had his parents’ features – and they were both considered a fair catch in their time – yet it had somehow not worked for him. It was, she had long ago decided, the look about his eyes; there was something in the depths that disturbed her.

EIGHT

a huge but obscene practical joke

Mrs Abricot lived in a cul-de-sac of bungalows, a relic of the Sixties, one that ought to have settled Eisenmenger’s nerves and made him feel relaxed by nostalgia, but that merely made him feel uncomfortable, as if he had suppressed memories of something awful happening behind net curtains such as these, as if this eerily restful rural road was just too nice, too quiet. He could imagine awful atrocity lurking underneath the plaster coving, terrible abuse whimpering beneath the cover panes. Her house was not hard to find, partly because there were only seven houses in the road, partly because there were three police cars and seven policemen doing what policemen do at a murder scene. As was usual on these occasions, there was an audience, this time an aged one, easily kept at bay by the burly sergeant who menaced them at the garden gate.

Eisenmenger was allowed access to find a long tidy garden sloping up to the house. He felt as if he had breasted Kilimanjaro by the time he reached the bungalow and was then directed to the back garden. This was slightly shorter and thankfully on a level; most of the activity was centred at the very rear of it. Beverley was sitting on a low wall, although Eisenmenger noted that she was actually in contact only with a copy of the Daily Telegraph; Lancefield was supervising a fingertip search of the garden, looking worryingly enthusiastic, in vivid contrast to those in her charge – who were actually doing the hard work – who were on their hands and knees.

Beverley, by contrast, merely looked detached; she was sitting beside a white tent, rather like one in which knights would once have sat in between jousts. When she saw Eisenmenger, her face brightened noticeably and she stood and went to him. Without greeting him she began, ‘The refuse is collected from a track that runs around the perimeter of the cul-de-sac so that the bins are at the ends of the gardens, which means there would be no one around to see the murderer dump the body.’ Through an open gate in the back fence, Eisenmenger could see the unmade road that was being carefully searched by three uniforms and a woman he knew to be from forensics. Beverley continued, ‘The bins are usually emptied first thing Monday morning so Mrs Abricot come up to put it outside the gate. She found her week’s rubbish had been emptied out and . . . and, well, something substituted.’ She gestured at the tent.

Eisenmenger went over to it, entered. It contained the wheelie bin, the cover of which had been hinged back; when he looked in, he saw a naked corpse, folded into a foetal position, head – or rather neck – down. There were a few smears of dirt and rotting vegetable juice on it, but it was otherwise surprisingly clean. He said, ‘I assume that this has been photographed?’

The woman from scenes of crime was already in the tent and she now showed him the digital images on the camera screen that she had taken. Satisfied, he said, ‘We’d better take it out, then.’ Which, in the end, merely meant tipping it out unceremoniously on to a clean plastic sheet. Beverley, Lancefield, the scenes of crime woman and a chap from forensics joined him in the small tent, making a rather intimate gathering as he looked down the body. No one said anything for a moment while Eisenmenger went about his business, measuring, probing, squinting and considering, until he said in a tone that sounded half bemused, half intrigued, ‘Mmm . . .’

At which he turned abruptly away to leave and put on a white all-in-one suit and thick disposable rubber gloves; without being told, the SOCO began taking photographs and the forensic man began taking samples from the inside of the bin. When Eisenmenger returned he had a briefcase that he opened and put down by the corpse. Then he knelt down by it. He had on his left ear a small microphone into which he spoke. ‘Female, young – no more than forty, I’d say, and possibly much younger. Severe abrasion around the wrists, ankles and neck, almost exclusively on the anterior surfaces. No other obvious abrasions, lacerations or ecchymoses.’

Fisher had come up unseen and asked suddenly, ‘What’s an eckymosis?’

Beverley was about to fire up the flame-thrower but Eisenmenger said without looking, ‘Medical jargon for a bruise, sergeant. You’re quite right, it’s unnecessary persiflage.’ He carried on at once, ‘The elbows, knees and hips have been traumatized after death, presumably because rigor had set in and the murderer had to do some bending to get the deceased into the bin.’

Fisher asked, ‘Doesn’t that mean you can tell us when she died?’

‘With error limits that are so wide and so contingent upon environmental factors that is practically useless.’ He went then to the neck, examining it closely, causing shivers to go up Lancefield’s spine when he touched the wound, even put his fingers in what she guessed was the gaping windpipe. At one point he got from his case a torch and shone it down into the tunnel. ‘Completely clean, completely smooth decapitation. No signs of any more than a single stroke.’ At this, he took from the briefcase a metal tape and proceeded to measure the width, breadth and circumference of the neck. After this he stood up and said to the SOCO, ‘A few of the neck, please.’ When that was done, he asked the forensics man, ‘Can you help me turn her over, please?’

This was achieved without difficulty. Eisenmenger gently wiped rotten vegetable material from the skin and uncovered, on the small of the back, a tattoo. Beverley knelt down beside him. ‘Maureen.’ She frowned. ‘Her name?’

‘Presumably,’ he said non-committally. More photos were taken, at the end of which Eisenmenger’s only positive conclusion was that there were no positives. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve done all I can do here. She can go back to the mortuary.’

Whilst he was stripping off the oversuit, Beverley came up to him. ‘Any idea how she died yet?’

‘Unless she was poisoned, I’d say it’s odds on that having her head cut off did it for her.’

‘Shit.’

He said thoughtfully, ‘And a very professional job, too.’

She practically gaped at him. ‘You are joking, aren’t you, John? There are no professional executioners any more. Certainly not in this country.’

He shrugged. He had put the oversuit into a small bin liner which he then handed over to forensics as he said, ‘I would say that people used to hefting an axe or some such ought to be considered. It’s no easy job to produce such a clean cut as that.’ Even as he was speaking, he trailed off, caught in the current of another possibility. ‘Unless . . .’

‘Unless what?’

His head bobbed from side to side, then he said almost apologetically, ‘Unless they used a guillotine . . .’

Malcolm woke with a start. His mouth was completely dry, his head was splitting with pain, he felt aches in every part of his body. He had had to urinate, but that was now dry, so long had he been there. His throat was sore, both through dehydration and through the long hours of shouting, pleading, questioning and just plain screaming; and it had all been to no avail, with no reaction. Through all this, the camera lenses continued to look at him without blinking, without emotion, almost without interest.

What the hell is going on? He asked this for the thousandth time of himself and for the thousandth time he could not answer it. How had this happened? Why had it happened? Who had done it? He was in an electric chair, for God’s sake. Surely they couldn’t seriously be considering . . .? That would be madness.

And the fact that nothing had happened for so long, must mean that this was a huge but obscene practical joke. It had to be that. No one would be so insane as to kidnap a man and then . . . and then electrocute him. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve this, but he was one hundred percent, totally, completely, no-doubt-about-it certain that he had done nothing that merited being fucking electrocuted.

But something told him that this was no joke. This was serious. This was perhaps the most serious thing that had ever happened to him. The panic in his head went from zero to maximum in the space of a few moments at this realization. He began to pull at the straps again, although he had been doing that for what seemed like hours already. He kicked at the restraints around his ankles so hard that he gave himself stomach pains; he jerked his head time and time again against the head strap. He tried to rock the chair, throwing himself from side to side, and crying out nonsense syllables, but the chair was bolted to the floor and wouldn’t budge a millimetre.

Eventually he subsided again, exhausted, aching and raw. Trembling so violently he felt almost beyond control, he had to stop, tried to collect his thoughts back into a semblance of rationality.

I mean, who gives someone the right to do this? This is England, for Christ’s sake. We haven’t had the death penalty for at least a hundred years and we never fried anyone. Hanged them, and beheaded plenty, but no ever got given the juice in this green and pleasant land.

He forced himself slowly to calm down, reason overcoming panic. Whatever was going on, it was not his death by electrocution. Some weirdo getting his kicks by filming his fear; some sort of psychological experiment, perhaps. He had heard about scientists doing that kind of thing.

Yes. That was what it was.

The television screen came alive and of course he looked at it, his whole life programming him always to look at it. It showed him a naked woman strapped down on a table; it might have been Malcolm’s idea of pornographic heaven, except for his own situation. Her head was almost in darkness, but he could see that it was between two rising posts, their tops in darkness.

What now?

He saw her head was shaved, saw it turn to her right, as if she, too, were watching something.

Is this a movie?

He had a feeling it wasn’t, but that would mean it was real . . .

The beheading came at the precise moment that the tingling in his body began.

NINE

‘I’ll ring you when I’m done’

Beverley sat behind her desk and Lancefield sat opposite her while Fisher, feeling very much like a novice, perched on the window sill. Behind him Lansdowne Road was quiet in the Sunday evening sunlight; Fisher had a hot date in the Strand at the top of the High Street and so his excitement at sitting in on his first murder conference was somewhat tempered by sexual frustration.

Beverley said, ‘Tell me what Farmer Gardner had to say.’

Lancefield consulted her diary. ‘His background you know. Regarding discovery of the body, he says that it was just a normal Sunday right up until about eleven in the morning; he’d milked the cows and fed the pigs, then spent a few hours moving the sheep to another field. He came back to the farmyard to discover the dog, Sally, with a new toy.’

‘Did she often go into the slurry pit?’

‘He says not.’

‘Had he noticed that it was disturbed at all?’

‘Ditto.’

‘Is he lying?’

Lancefield thought about this. ‘I get the impression he’s going to give us the minimum help he can, but I don’t think he’s telling deliberate lies.’

‘What did you find in the house?’

‘It’s a mess, like the rest of the farm. His wife died twelve years ago and I think it all but destroyed him; he’s kept the farm going, but it’s just a lifeline, nothing more. I don’t suppose he’s touched most of the rooms in that house since she died; he lives in a room just off the kitchen, barely eats and certainly wouldn’t be interested in feeding the dog regularly. He does the minimum for the animals, too.

‘He’s shot, chief. He won’t deceive us intentionally, but he doesn’t care enough to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but.’

In Beverley’s experience, this was true of most witnesses, for whatever reason. ‘Eisenmenger estimates that the head hadn’t been in there long. Chances are it was dumped during the night. What does Gardner do with the dog at night?’

‘Chains it.’

‘Would he hear it barking?’

Lancefield shook her head. ‘His hearing is none too good and there were a fair few empty bottles in his bedroom. My guess is he has several large nightcaps before turning out the lights.’

‘So anyone could have come in and buried it.’

‘He must have a strong stomach,’ pointed out Lancefield.

‘“He” is beheading people; I think we can put “strong stomach” into his psychological profile without much argument,’ replied Beverley as dry as an old man’s skin.

Fisher, who thought he should contribute something if only for his own self-esteem, said, ‘Or she.’

Beverley didn’t waste energy moving her neck muscles to look at him. ‘Fisher, if you think I have concluded that this killer cannot be a woman, then the rumours about you having brains smaller than your gonads must be correct. I have better things to do than keep talking about “he or she” every time the subject comes up. Got that?’

Fisher mumbled, ‘Yes, chief.’ He decided that his self-esteem was best served by silence.

Satisfied that Fisher was back in his small, sergeant-sized box, Beverley said, ‘Check the missing person’s files for anyone with the first name Maureen. Apart from that, I don’t see there’s anything else we can do at the moment. Do either of you?’

Neither did. As they got up to leave, Lancefield said thoughtfully, ‘It’s odd, though . . .’

‘What is?’

‘The only thing we know for certain so far is that one male and one female have been killed. Pretty odd for a serial killer to switch genders like that.’

Beverley pursed her lips. ‘That was worrying me, too. Makes me wonder . . .’

But she didn’t continue the thought and Lancefield knew her boss well enough by now not to press her.

The headless torso had come into the mortuary two hours before. Eisenmenger had half-heartedly suggested that, as it was now five o’clock in the afternoon, he might delay the post-mortem until the next morning, but Beverley had insisted and he could not blame her, not with two deaths to investigate, both clearly the work of a single individual. He had therefore to change his plans for the evening

‘Charlie? It’s John.’

‘Are you done?’ She sounded sleepy and that excited him.

‘I’m afraid not. Another corpse has turned up. I’m going to be at least three or four hours.’

‘Oh . . .’

‘Sorry.’

‘No problem.’

‘I’ll ring you when I’m done. Maybe we can at least get out for a drink, if not a meal.’

‘If it’s not too late.’ He was fairly sure that she wasn’t happy. It brought back bad memories of previous relationships; relationships that had failed because of his profession.

In the event, it took a little under three hours to complete the autopsy. Before an audience comprising two SOCOs, Beverley, Lancefield, Fisher and a coroner’s officer, he performed a full examination, including a subcutaneous dissection. He took samples of heart, lung and liver, as well as aliquots of blood, stomach contents and urine, and swabs from the abrasions, from under the fingernails and the inside of the windpipe. He also scraped the wrists, ankles and neck after examining these areas with a large magnifying glass. His initial macroscopic examination had shown no evidence of a natural disease process of significance, nor evidence to suggest significant trauma other than the rather trite observation that she had no head.

He said, ‘There are no signs of refrigeration or undue heating, so she died within a time span of between ten and thirty-six hours before being found.’ Lancefield opened her mouth to say something but Beverley cast her a look: No point. Eisenmenger had never been particularly taken by estimates of the time of death from autopsy examination. He continued obliviously, ‘The lungs aren’t particularly congested or oedematous and there are no signs of asphyxia. These signs aren’t foolproof – and we’ll have to wait for toxicology, of course – but I would lay a small sum of money that she was fully compos mentis when the blade fell.’

He made most of the audience shiver with these words, but he had entered into intellectual mode and didn’t notice.

‘Age?’ asked Beverley.

‘In her thirties. She was nulliparous and had had no surgical interventions.’

Fisher had no idea what ‘nulliparous’ meant but kept quiet.

‘And that’s it?’ asked Beverley.

‘One other thing. It’s a bit odd, actually.’

Beverley was at once interested. ‘Tell us.’

He held up the corpse’s hand. ‘There’s something odd smeared on the skin around the wrists, ankles and neck.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know. It’s slimy; some sort of gel.’

‘Is it significant?’

He smiled but said only, ‘I’ll let you know what the tox guys say.’

Outside, Fisher took Lancefield to one side. ‘What does nulliparous mean?’

She looked at him pityingly. ‘Look it up, sergeant. That’s if you can spell it.’

She walked on, leaving a thoroughly chastened newly-promoted detective sergeant, whilst fiercely reminding herself to take her own advice as soon as she got back to the office.

‘PLEEEASSE!’

His throat felt like fire but he no longer cared; even had it been real fire, it would have been preferable to that tingling, the one that had been filling his body for what seemed like hours now, that was slowly but inexorably intensifying, that he knew would carry on intensifying until . . .

Nothing else had changed. The light was just the same, the temperature had not changed, the silence remained; the lenses merely continued to stare impassively and at the same time menacingly. The tingling, though, increased; it became stronger and at the same time spread throughout his body, extending tendrils into every organ, every limb, eventually every cell.

TEN

when her head fell off

Clive had been a senior mortuary technician for over twenty years and those years had seen his routines ossify into things of resolute inflexibility; things in Clive’s mortuary were done as Clive wanted them done, and in no other way. Since he was good at his job and intelligent, this was not necessarily a bad thing; the paperwork was always exemplary, the cleaning was well handled and the pathologists could never complain that he was not a useful man to have around; he eviscerated quickly and quietly, he reconstructed immaculately, and he occasionally spotted things that they had missed. The downside was that he did not welcome change, or those who sought to introduce it; woe betide any manager who thought to suggest that Clive’s way was not the best, and any junior mortuary technician was liable to experience something not unlike being scalded if he questioned the rituals he was expected to perform. Most of the time, a quick tongue-lashing was all that was required to restore the status quo, occasionally, two or three were required; thereafter, because for most of the time Clive was a charming and amusing man, they acquiesced. Only once, and quite recently, had these tactics failed to work, and the experience still rankled with Clive.

This particular morning he did as he always did, rising at six, taking his dachshund for a walk (he had only bought the infernal thing to impress a rather attractive married woman some four years before; it had worked – in that he had made a conquest – but this was the unfortunate and rather irritating residue), then cooking himself a fried breakfast. After three rashers of bacon, two sausages, two fried eggs and a round of fried bread, he felt somewhat better disposed to the world. He thought about writing the birthday card for his grandson, six on Wednesday, then decided that he would do it that evening; if he put a first class stamp on, it should arrive in time. He got on his bicycle, and made the short journey from his home in Whaddon to the mortuary in good order, arriving at his customary seven thirty.

He opened the big red double doors, wheeled his bike into the vestibule and thought about the day to come; it would be a busy one, especially as he was for the time being on his own until they could appoint a replacement for Shaun, but he was not particularly bothered by this. He had supreme confidence that he could handle things, just as he had had to on many occasions in the past. He was better off without that wanker, Shaun, anyway. Just remembering his name made Clive’s blood become slightly hotter, his heart beat slightly faster. How dare that little shite tell him what to do? What did he think he was up to, telling Clive that he knew a better way of dissecting the middle ear bones, and that Clive’s reconstruction techniques ‘belonged in the ark’? It wouldn’t be the first time that Clive had had to run the mortuary single-handedly for weeks on end, including all the on-call, and the prospect had long ago become little more than an irritant.

This day was definitely going to be hard, though. He had four coroner’s post-mortems being performed by Ben Gosling in the morning, then he had the dentists coming in to identify a body pulled from a local lake. In between, he had to shift some bodies out to undertakers or else he would run out of space, and he would undoubtedly have junior doctors coming in to view bodies for the purposes of the statutory cremation documentation (and also undoubtedly badgering him to pay them their cremation fees). Still, he had a good hour before Ben Gosling came down to identify the bodies for his two autopsies, so he would first of all have a cup of coffee and a quick cigarette out the back of the mortuary, using the viewing chapel entrance. Accordingly, heavily sweetened white coffee in one hand, bunch of keys in the other and rolled-up cigarette behind his ear, he opened the door and stepped outside into the cool but sunny morning air.

He almost tripped over a huddled figure leaning against the brick wall. It was dressed in thick clothing that was muddied and frayed, what looked like an old duffel coat; the head was slouched forward, chin on chest; this, together with the black fedora meant that he could not see the face. It was not unusual to find down-and-outs here; it was reasonably sheltered and they were unlikely to be disturbed during the night. ‘Time you were on your way, mate,’ he said cheerfully, then passed on down the short flight of steps to the pavement, there to sit on the low wall as he always did. He put his coffee cup down, transferred his cigarette to his mouth and fished for the lighter in his pocket. It was by far from his first cigarette of the day, but it was one of the best; now, in a sort of interlude between the strain of getting up and the hardships of the day to come, he could really appreciate the pharmaceutical effects of nicotine and caffeine.

He stretched the experience out for as long as he dared, then sighed; time to get back to the shithole. The down-and-out was still there. Clive had a viewing booked for two o’clock and he did not want Cheltenham’s finest putting on a display for the grieving relatives. ‘You’ll have to go soon, I’m afraid.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, but there it is.’

The next four hours were busy indeed. Ben Gosling was thorough but slow and, much to Clive’s discomfort, he had a liking for silence; no radio was allowed when Dr Gosling was working. He rarely spoke and, when he did, it was on purely technical matters; Dr Gosling did not gossip and did not obviously have an interest in popular culture. Whilst assisting him, Clive also had to see to a steady stream of undertakers, as well as field calls from the coroner and the police regarding arrangements for John Eisenmenger’s forthcoming forensic autopsy. He managed no breaks and was therefore fairly dry and unnicotinned by the time that noon came and things, temporarily at least, became calmer.

In order, therefore, to bring inner calmness to this outer calmness, he made himself an even sweeter coffee than usual, rolled an especially fat cigarette, and repeated his morning ritual. His state being one of tiredness and agitation, his reaction when he saw the tramp still in exactly the same position was not one of carefully considered entreaty.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’

He walked forward and prodded the form with his clog.

Nothing

‘Come on, my man. On your way.’ He repeated the action, this time with a little more force.

What happened then was forever jumbled in his memory, a series of disconnected sights and impressions; his surprise in realizing that it was not a man but a woman; his astonishment that she should be so deeply asleep that she should fall to the side without complaint . . .

His stomach-churning shock when her head fell off.

Josh and Darren had become firm friends over the course of only a few months and, since then, had rarely had disagreements but, when they did, they were usually serious, about such things as what game to play, whose was the best team (Man U for Darren, Chelsea for Josh) and whether Doctor Who was better than Star Trek. Josh was only taller than Darren by three centimetres, but that is a lot at their age; Darren’s feeling of inferiority was compounded by his birthday trailing seven months behind Josh’s. Josh, too, was aware of these advantages and – perhaps subconsciously, perhaps with a glimmering of artifice – played upon them, always implying that he was the natural leader. In consequence, Darren was vehement in holding his side of the debate, something that was enhanced by a slight advantage in musculature. They had never come to blows, but that did not mean that their arguments were not passionate and therefore bruising.

The most important argument that they ever had did not seem as such at the time and, inevitably, it was related to play; more specifically, about where to play. It was Darren who had discovered it – many months before Josh arrived – but it was Josh who had seen the potential, who had wanted to claim this place as their own – their own battlefield, their own alien planet, their own kingdom . . . their own universe.

There were problems, though.

‘We mustn’t. Granny would go berserk if she found out.’

Darren, too, was in awe of Josh’s grandmother, but to him she was at one remove and her ire was accordingly less of a deterrent to him. ‘She won’t find out,’ he assured Josh, unknowingly paraphrasing the empty words of every felon in history.

‘There’s lot of other places we could play.’

‘But not like the Grange.’

Which was true. Here was a huge abandoned building, decaying in a sort of romantic yet mysterious verdancy; with four storeys of dark windows, many broken, that they somehow just knew had high ceilings, with dust on the floor, cobwebs in the doorways . . . and ghosts. They knew – as in complete, total, pure, concentrated certainty – that there were ghosts in there. Their eyes might not actually see apparitions, or their ears hear eerie moans, or feel their flesh crawl as icy fingers clutched their hearts, but in their minds, these things would happen, and such an imagining would be better than reality, would be enhanced, more intense and somehow multidimensional, a hyper-reality.

The problem was that everyone knew that it was strictly out of bounds. True, they did not understand why it was so – they were too young to appreciate fully that decayed, abandoned buildings were not wise places in which to act out the realities of childhood fantasy – but they were old enough to comprehend that there was a scale of wrongdoing, that some things were mere misdemeanours, whereas others were felonies

And playing in and around the Grange was definitely felonious.

Yet it was dangerously close to irresistible, and so Josh had to yield the debating point to his colleague. ‘No . . .’

Darren sensed an advantage and, with cunning that he had not learned but had been given as an inheritance, said, ‘Think of what we could do in there, Josh.’

He had to say no more, for Josh was already thinking of such things. He imagined space battles with laser beams in the long corridors, sword fights in the decaying, dusty, darkness of the empty bedrooms, perhaps cricket in the long sun-stroked corridors, perhaps just simple hide-and-seek in and around the grounds. As fortune – or perhaps misfortune – would have it, a few spots of summer rain began then to fall, warm but still wet. Darren looked up at the sky and murmured perhaps to himself, perhaps to no one, perhaps to his friend, ‘It wouldn’t even matter if it was to rain . . .’

ELEVEN

‘the more bodies you have, the more evidence you get’

Beverley was used to being one of the star performers, had the experienced actor’s unconcerned awareness of being constantly observed, a confidence that she would only look good and would not slip up, fluff her lines, trip over the scenery. Even though the body had been enclosed in a temporary marquee within an hour of Clive’s call, word had soon spread of the finding and, even though Orrisdale Terrace (the road in which it lay) had been cordoned off, the barriers held back nearly fifty people, some holding mobile phone cameras aloft in an attempt to gain some saleable footage of the event. Not only were there stalls, though; this particular theatrical event had a circle in the form of the upstairs front bedrooms of the houses opposite the mortuary. Every window presented a picture of peering faces, a differing study of human salacious curiosity.

Inside the mortuary, Clive sat in his office, for once not in charge, for once very much in a subordinate position as Beverley and Rebecca Lancefield questioned him and Eisenmenger looked on. He did not enjoy being in this situation and became somewhat short as the interview proceeded; despite this, they were able to establish the main facts and chronology of the finding. To his not inconsiderable irritation, Clive was then dismissed from his own office in order that the two police officers and Eisenmenger might confer. He sat on his customary wall and smoked a thicker than usual roll-up with considerably less sangfroid than his morning smoke; he knew now that the day was a long way from over.

Inside the mortuary, Beverley asked of John tiredly, ‘Please don’t tell me that this is an entirely new head and body.’

He shrugged and smiled; he had gone beyond worrying about what the police wanted of him. ‘Until the body is stripped, who knows? In any case, I can tell you what you want to hear, or I can tell you what I find; your choice.’

She said nothing, although her face was expressive enough. Lancefield put in, ‘It has to be the missing head and body.’

Beverley was scathing. ‘It doesn’t have to be at all, inspector. If we’re lucky it is; if we aren’t, we have another two deaths.’

Lancefield, chastened, hoped that the flush she felt could not be seen. Eisenmenger, perhaps aware that there was embarrassment in the air and, in an ill-judged tone of jocularity designed to lighten the atmosphere, said, ‘I was always taught that the more bodies you have, the more evidence you get.’ He didn’t wait long, though, before he continued, ‘I’ll get on with it, then.’

Charlie had not answered when Eisenmenger rang her and he had known at once that it would mean trouble to come. He left a message telling her that their planned meal for the evening would have to be postponed and that he wouldn’t be finished until late, probably very late. He apologized – grovelled, if anything – and promised to make it up to her, but he knew that this would not make up for standing her up. He was well aware that this was the second time in a row that he had put work before this new and still developing relationship; well aware, too, that he was effectively on probation and not doing too well at it either. He had to put that to the side, though; now, he had a job – a long and possibly very difficult job – to do; two forensic post-mortems that were possibly, and bizarrely, on three different people.

TWELVE

‘the male had mesothelioma’

‘Well?’ Beverley’s tone was not abrupt or unfriendly, but it was urgent.

Eisenmenger had to pull himself out of something that might have been sleep. ‘Intriguing, Beverley. Definitely intriguing.’

‘What the fuck does that mean?’

‘The good news is that the head fits the body from the garbage bin, and the body fits the head from the slurry pit. It’ll have to be confirmed by DNA, but I wouldn’t be too concerned about that.’

Beverley murmured, ‘Thank God for small mercies.’ She looked less than delighted, although Lancefield at least found a smile. ‘Anything else?’

She asked this more in hope than expectation, but Eisenmenger surprised her. ‘Yes.’

‘Really? What?’

‘The male had a mesothelioma.’

If he expected generalized swooning and adulation, he was soon a wiser man; there was nothing but consternation. It fell to Beverley to seek enlightenment. ‘Which is what?’

‘An exceedingly rare tumour, only occurring in people who have been exposed to asbestos.’

‘How rare?’

‘Very. And he’s had a biopsy. He’s been in hospital and will have medical records. He may even have missed outpatient appointments.’

Lancefield said at once, ‘I’ll start checking straight away,’ but Beverley stopped her.

‘Don’t bother. You won’t get anywhere, not if I know medics. They’ll clam up, claim patient confidentiality, all that crap.’ Of Eisenmenger, she asked, ‘Won’t they?’

‘I expect so,’ he admitted.

‘But you could find it,’ mused Beverley after a moment. ‘You work at the hospital. You have access to biopsy results.’

‘Oh, no,’ he said at once. ‘Data Protection Act and all that. I’ve signed confidentiality agreements.’

‘I’m not asking you to tittle-tattle on every patient with this type of tumour. You said it was rare, so there can’t be many to find; all I want to know is if you can identify who this might be. If you can, he’s dead, so no confidentiality problems.’

It wasn’t as simple as that, though. He knew that he would be pushing dangerous, mined boundaries. ‘I’m not authorized to access medical records except for legitimate professional purposes.’

‘These are professional purposes, John. My profession is finding the sick bastard who’s doing this, and I need to know the identity of that body and I need to know as soon as possible.’

Still he hesitated.

‘John . . .’

He shook his head. He was not a born subversive. ‘Let me think about it, Beverley.’

He knew that she was about to coerce him, so he said immediately, ‘Apart from that, nothing much. He had cirrhosis, although without complications so far. He had as much coronary atheroma as you might expect—’

‘So nothing useful?’ she interrupted.

‘Sorry.’

THIRTEEN

could he yet call it love?

Eisenmenger did not dream of Helena – for so long his lover so recently dead – as he had once dreamed of Tamsin, a child he had barely known in her life but had known so well as she burned to death. He did not need to. She remained with him in a far more constant, continuous way than merely odd visitations in the night-time, vague ghosts in the darkness, flitting reminders. Even after Helena had fallen out of love with him, he had not stopped feeling for her in exactly the same way he always had done, this emotion tempered only by consternation that it was no longer mutual, disbelief and grief. This amalgam of emotions remained with him, would do so forever, only fading, never vanishing.

And, recognizing this, he had made a conscious effort to move away from this episode in his life, this interlude that could never be relived; move away, mind, not move on; it was a compartmentalization of the memory, not a journey beyond it. It was still within him, only now it was in a room to which he had shut the door; shut it but not locked it. He did not want to lose the joys of having known Helena, and would therefore endure the sorrows that were their conjoined twins. It had been difficult to persuade himself that this was not the wrong thing to do, that he could love his memories just as strongly while finding new joy in new relationships, but he had known that it was a stupidity he had to defeat; failure would mean only entrapment in his own history.

Of course, his attachment – could he yet call it love? – had come from a direction in which he was not looking. He had originally been attracted to a gynaecology cancer nurse specialist, finding her vivacious irreverence for the lunacies of the NHS refreshing, her genuine feelings for the women in her care, touching. Yet it had not developed beyond mutual liking and, whilst he was discovering this, Charlie had come into his ken when a relatively young woman had come into the hospital with torrential vaginal bleeding. It had been Eisenmenger who, examining the tissue biopsies under the microscope, had diagnosed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma of the endometrium, a very rare condition. She had developed severe psychological problems, including obsessive-compulsive symptomatology and some self-harming; Charlie had treated her, attending the multidisciplinary team meeting, at which Eisenmenger was the pathologist, to outline the progress she had made.

She was eight years younger than him, but cheerful and optimistic, open-hearted and ebullient, something that he seemed to have been missing for a long, long time. She was single, having separated from a long-term partner eighteen months before, but the mother of a twenty-one-year-old son, Paul, who was reading computer sciences at Durham; she was not keen to enter into another long-term relationship, but he was not sure that he was either; they found the middle ground mutually reassuring and had just been taking it from there, at least until the last few weeks. Now, though, he suspected that things were changing; now, his life as a jobbing forensic pathologist was beginning to bite. The death in a fire of an elderly couple in Upton St Leonards followed in less than a week by the death of a seventeen-year-old girl from some heroin she had been given by her father; the headless corpse and unassociated head, and now another head and body, portending as they did the long haul that serial killings usually entailed, were an unwelcome addition to this litany. He could see in Charlie’s eyes that she was beginning to wonder.

His muscles were twitching uncontrollably, beginning now to go into long painful cramps. He was intolerably hot, sweat soaking his clothes. He had almost lost his voice and could only now croak odd, tremulous words – ‘Pleeassse . . . For fuck’s sssaake . . . Oh, G-g-god-d-d . . .’ The tingling had long since changed from a tickling sensation through an uncomfortable pattern of pinpricks to sharp, incessant stabs of razor-thin agony, all over his body, within every cell. He had long ago lost control of his bowels, and his heart he could feel was bouncing around inside his chest, careering off his ribs and, he was certain, beginning to miss beats.

The camera lenses continued to stare, blind to his pain.

FOURTEEN

‘this is your case, no one else’s’

The summons to Braxton’s office was both expected and unwelcome, and was so in equal measures. They had tried to keep the finding of headless bodies and unrelated bodyless heads quiet, but inevitably, given the sensational nature of these discoveries, things had leaked and the press were sniffing; thus the police needed to coordinate a public relations strategy. Beverley hated this side of her newly refound promotion, because it meant telling lies by telling part of the truth, misinforming by informing, being as mendacious as the scum she had to swim through every day. She found the mutually parasitic relationship of the media and the police to be somehow less honest than that between the police and the lawbreakers, in which at least there were some truths exchanged from time to time, and in which neither side was pretending to have respect for each other.

The worst of it, though, was that she actually liked Braxton, a unique feeling for her when it came to her relationship with her superiors. He had never given her the impression that he was sexually interested in her, indeed she suspected that he looked on her from a purely pastoral, purely paternal standpoint. He did not see her as a rival (he was due to retire in less than five years anyway) and consequently did not feel the need to denigrate her, insult her, patronize her or actively plot against her. She judged that he was able to look above the office politics and career ladder to concentrate more upon what, after all, they were all supposedly there for – the solving of crimes. Not that she underestimated him; his manner was mild, his voice was relatively cultured and his smile warm, but the corollary was that he gave these expecting respect and diligence in return, and woe betide those who failed to appreciate this.

His door was open when she climbed the stairs to the top floor and before she could knock he bade her come in and be seated. ‘I’ve read the reports,’ he said without preamble.

His tone, she assessed, was that of a man who was not impressed and, accordingly, she said, ‘They don’t make good reading.’

‘No.’

His monosyllabic reply gave her nowhere to hide and she had to continue. ‘We’re going through the routine – missing persons, DNA, dental records . . .’

‘I know that, chief inspector. I can read, you see . . .’ A trace of sarcasm but, like all the best cooks, he had added the perfect amount, especially when combined with a small smile and an almost imperceptible emphasis on the word chief. Stung, she was momentarily lost, unsure of what to say, and it allowed him to add with a sad but affectionate sigh, ‘Beverley, you haven’t got the faintest idea what is going on, have you?’

What could she say? ‘No.’

Lambert would have exploded, or been excoriating, or just incredibly angry, but Braxton no longer had any interests beyond the furtherance of the investigation. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised. Neither do I.’ His smile, momentarily gone, returned and was broader but sadder. ‘Relax, please,’ he suggested and the atmosphere became at once easier. He got up and went to a filter coffee machine on top of a filing cabinet, came back with two mugs, handing one to her; it was black and unsugared, as he knew she liked it. Then, as he sat down: ‘I don’t envy you this one, Beverley.’

Which conveyed sympathy at exactly the same time as it smacked her in the face with the realization that he was hanging her out to dry; solve it or else. Perhaps, she thought, she had underestimated his capacity for viciousness; she had been perhaps naive to assume that anyone could rise to his level without being a hard-hearted bastard. She sipped her coffee, deciding that it was too weak and possibly, the greater crime, decaffeinated. ‘Can you offer any assistance?’

‘Of course,’ he said quickly; too quickly. ‘We have to catch this one, especially now it’s public.’

She knew better than to take this at face value. ‘How can you help me?’

‘Manpower and other resources . . .’ Of course there had to be a caveat, though. ‘Within reason.’

She supposed with the bitter cynicism of experience that it was about as much as she could expect, but it was hardly a blank cheque; it could mean anything from an extra car to a promise of half the Gloucestershire Constabulary under her command; it was likely, she suspected, to be closer to the former than the latter. ‘And I could appreciate the benefit of your experience. Have you ever come across anything like this before?’

He looked momentarily astonished, the coffee cup arrested on its journey to his lips. ‘Like this? Good God, no.’ He didn’t quite laugh in disbelief at the stupidity of the question, but it was a damned close-run thing. ‘Mix-and-match body parts?’

A stupid question, she saw, but could not find embarrassment within her, so persisted. ‘Serial killings, though . . .?’

He did not seem to understand. ‘You’ve been involved with serial killers before now, Beverley. I don’t see what I can contribute.’

‘But surely . . .?’ She saw afterwards that she was being dense in not understanding right away, but dense she was, at least until she saw him shaking his head.

‘Beverley . . .’ He paused, then almost winced, as though a sudden spasm ran through his gut. ‘You must understand. It has been suggested to me that this is your case, no one else’s . . .’

She had not finished her coffee, but she put the cup down very carefully, realizations sparking around her like fireflies. ‘Oh, I see.’

Do or die. This is your very last chance, and you will not get another one. Nor will we help you.

He grimaced. ‘I am sorry, Beverley. Not my decision, but one that I cannot influence.’

She left his office, sadder and, if not wiser, then at least better informed.

‘PLEEEASSE!’

His throat felt like fire but he no longer cared; even had it been real fire, it would have been preferable to that tingling, the one that had been filling his body for what seemed like hours now, that was slowly but inexorably intensifying, that he knew would carry on intensifying until . . .

Nothing else had changed. The light was just the same, the temperature had not changed, the silence remained; the lenses merely continued to stare impassively and at the same time menacingly. The tingling, though, increased; it became stronger and at the same time spread throughout his body, extending tendrils into every organ, every limb, eventually every cell.

Back in Beverley’s office, everyone was in identical positions, it could almost have been a deliberate re-enactment of their last meeting, only this time in morning sunshine, and this time DCI Wharton was feeling even meaner.

‘Have you made any progress at all with missing persons?’ she asked of Lancefield.

‘We’ve gone back a month. In that time frame, there are thirteen possible females, eight possible males.’

‘Anything from fingerprinting the body?’

‘She’s not known to us.’

‘And I take it the DNA samples have returned no hits on the database?’ Of course they hadn’t; she would have known about it. ‘Have you shown photos of the head to the next of kin of the missing males?’

Even Fisher, who had the sensitivities of a male baboon on steroids, thought that was worthy of surprise. Lancefield asked, ‘Are you joking?’ which was probably not particularly tactful.

Beverley didn’t react. ‘No.’

‘What are we going to say if we get a positive ID?’

‘If you like, you can tell them the truth. Tell them he was beheaded.’

‘Don’t you think that’s a bit brutal?’

Her DCI frowned, shook her head as if slightly unbelieving. ‘Not at all. They’re going to find out eventually.’

The pain now so huge, so corrosive that he had lost almost all conscious thought. He was nothing but that excruciating agony, and because of that he could no longer smell his flesh burning, feel his body thrashing, hear his last few whimpers. His eyes were jerking around in their sockets but it didn’t matter because the proteins in his lenses and corneas were cooking and coagulating like egg whites.

From somewhere his dying screams came, but he did not hear them.

And still the current increased . . .

And increased . . .

And increased until his heart gave mercy, gave him relief from the excruciation, and began to fibrillate.

He was dead and at rest at last.

FIFTEEN

bad dreams in the night

The first time he had met the Reverend Pilcher, Joshua had been so scared he had run crying from the room and had had bad dreams in the night. Marcus Pilcher had understood, though; he told Antonia with a tired but tolerant smile that he was used to the reaction. Antonia, embarrassment almost consuming her, had been rushing to apologize so that she barely heard his words of reassurance; she had been determined to express her shame and anger that Joshua should be so rude. Only after a few moments of patient explanation from Marcus Pilcher, BA, had she come to appreciate that he did not mind, indeed had half expected it.

‘I am rather a shock to the sensitive soul, Antonia.’ She had hastened to deny this, politeness overcoming her strict Christian upbringing as she lied through her dentures, but he had said nothing, a most effective way to silence her. Eventually he had pointed out, ‘I am six foot seven inches tall, I am almost hairless, I am not the most handsome of men, and I limp slightly, the result of a rugby injury. Of course Josh is slightly taken aback; shows he’s got brains.’ His smile was huge and warm as he said this, and Antonia fell slightly in love with this gawky giant with a harelip, who wore a dog collar and who, inevitably because he was Church of England, smelled slightly of damp.

And, as the months had gone by, Joshua had come to realize that looks weren’t everything. Marcus Pilcher had soon shown himself to be an exemplary vicar, one with a keen interest in the pastoral care of his parishioners, one who, moreover, had a sense of humour. He had even managed to increase the congregation slightly, although the base was so low as to be subterranean; Antonia and seven others, and she was the youngest by a good five years. He had introduced a children’s service every month, one to which Joshua and Harriet were taken regularly despite their mute (and sometimes not so mute) protestations. It had attracted quite a few regular attendees; those who, Antonia judged, were normally put off by the slightly austere and more ceremonial services of the Church. She felt in two minds about this, fearing that the Church was ‘dumbing down’ to attract the lower common denominators, rejoicing to see some life returning to the thirteenth-century, eternally cold, eternally dark St Barnabas Church.

And Marcus had become a family friend. He was divorced, had previously had a parish in Gloucester, and only been ordained for four years. Prior to this he had been an ambulance paramedic. ‘I saw such violence,’ he told Antonia and Andrew one evening. ‘Such terrible evil and hatred, that I felt that merely caring for the physical side of the injured and dying wasn’t enough.’

They had finished dinner on a cold and blustery night in November. The room was brightly lit and all three of them now felt comfortable with each other. Marcus replied, ‘And before that I was a prison warder.’ He smiled at their surprise. ‘I had quite a chequered career before I came to appreciate what I should be doing. What I’ve told you tonight is only a small sampler.’ He paused, then leaned forward in a conspiratorial way. ‘For a long time I was an alcoholic.’

Antonia, being an experienced hostess, did not let her shock show, although she did not wish to hear more; Andrew, though, was his usual equable self. ‘Were you really?’ he asked, as if the priest had just told them he used to be world heavyweight boxing champion which, in truth, his frame suggested was quite possible.

Marcus nodded, apparently oblivious to Antonia’s distress. ‘I had a huge nervous breakdown and used alcohol as a prop to get me through it.’

‘Gosh,’ said Andrew. He indicated the half-full wine glass in front of his guest. ‘You’re OK now, though?’ he asked with a smile.

Marcus nodded and returned the smile, ‘All things in moderation.’

‘All things?’ asked Andrew mischievously.

They all laughed politely and then Marcus said, ‘Which is why I have a particular interest in helping other alcoholics. I used to run a group in my previous ministry, I still undertake visits, and I run a chat room.’

They were impressed and they all drank to his charitable work.

Anthony asked, ‘What part of the country do you come from, Marcus?’

‘I was born in Suffolk. Quite remote – Walsham – but it was a wonderful place to grow up in. When I went to university, it was as if I was discovering a completely new world.’

‘Is anyone else in your family in the Church?’

He laughed. ‘Oh, no. I am unique.’

Whilst Antonia was clearing the plates, she asked, ‘What did you read?’

‘Theology, although I dabbled in the life sciences.’

‘Really? Aren’t they slightly antagonistic?’

Pilcher laughed heartily. ‘Good grief, no. They have much to learn from each other. You have a fool for a priest if he dismisses science out of hand.’

‘And vice versa?’

Pilcher nodded enthusiastically, his hands clasped as his elbows rested on the table; it was a characteristic pose. ‘Bravo! Science doesn’t know everything, and never will, but faith, by its very nature, knows hardly anything.’

‘And a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?’

More delight from Pilcher. He said at once, ‘Well said, Anthony. Well said.’ They toasted this aphorism with the remains of the wine after which Anthony got up and fetched some port.

SIXTEEN

a night of happy, lager-fuelled debauchery

Mr Len Barker had had a stroke six months before that had taken from him his ability to speak, much of his ability to move, his independence and his taste for life. He now lived in sheltered accommodation, some woman or other coming in three times a day to get him up, or to prepare his meal, or clean, or, most humiliating of all, to ‘clean him up’. He had served as a police sergeant for twenty-four years, then as a prison officer until his retirement two years before. He had always been active – boxing as a lad, then some rugby and cricket in the force, more recently golf and bowls – and had always had good reports from his medicals; no diabetes, no hypertensions, no obvious problems with his heart. And then this. Out of the blue. He had hardly been exerting himself, had only been enjoying a couple of pints in The Russell Arms, his then local, situated at the very top end of Cheltenham High Street; it served a decent pint and looked like a complete toilet, which acted as a fairly efficient way of deterring all but the initiated. One moment that had been nothing unusual – the lighted gloom, the general chatter pulsed with bursts of laughter, smells of stale alcohol, smells of even staler, but somehow now delectable tobacco smoke – the next, everything had changed. Or rather, his perception of it all changed; everything lost colour, lost tone, lost meaning; everything became disconnected. Then it all faded.

Then he faded.

And now here he was, Bromsberrow Heath, a village to the north of Gloucestershire; he had always been a town boy, had hated the countryside. It was three months later, unable to speak properly, unable to write, attending rehabilitation three times a week at the stroke unit, barely able to get himself to the toilet and clean himself up afterwards, spending most of his time in a wheelchair, watching the television and, when that paled, the view from the window of his living room, the only one worth attention. The view was of a small garden, one laid purely to lawn and the end one of four. Because beyond the far fence there was some dense woodland, the small bird table – the only feature of the garden – was well frequented, although he had no idea what he was looking at, a deficiency that summed his life up quite neatly; in short, everything was now shit. Beyond the farther chain-link fencing – so like a prison wall to him – was some scrubby woodland and beyond that, his carers had told him, was another fence, the perimeter to a quarry, although he could not see this directly. It would not have mattered to him, anyway. There was no life here, no bustle, no atmosphere. And in that there was no life in this place, he saw his own death in it.

He could no longer raise any enthusiasm for the exercises that the physiotherapists put him through, for the interminable and pointless games that the ugly speech therapy girl forced him to play, for the visits from the overweening and slightly pungent district nurse, and for the occasional condescensions of whichever doctor he saw in the hospital outpatients. Part of him knew that it was all hopeless, some of him suspected that he was making some – and slow – progress. After all, he was learning painfully to write left-handed, and was learning to speak again – if lipless groans and tongueless grunts could be described as speech. And there was also his most personally satisfying success, that he had achieved a degree of independence; he could now transfer from his bed to the wheelchair, and back again, without aid. It cost him dear in exhaustion, but he exulted in the small degree of self-confidence and pride he earned. No longer did the carers have to put him to bed like a baby or a retard, although they still insisted on helping.

And recently, in a gesture he knew of defiance, he had taken to rising in the middle of the night when he now habitually awoke, and making the arduous transfer to the wheelchair and then to the small, stuffy sitting room where, when the early-morning television became completely intolerable, he just would sit and stare out into the darkness of the garden, the light off so that he could see better, although he didn’t particularly know what he was seeing. Just to be there was in some way significant, even magnificent, to him.

Thus it was he saw the white van backing up into the woodland towards the quarry. He wondered what it was doing, his policeman’s instincts aroused.

She was seriously drunk, but she was perfectly confident that she was in control. She had not planned to be travelling home alone that Friday night but, as her father had always told her, shit happens. Sometimes she struck lucky, sometimes she didn’t. Mandy – lucky bitch – had left her twenty-five minutes before, arm in arm with a tall and chirpy Afro-Caribbean, clearly hoping for a night of happy, lager-fuelled debauchery. Her only slight sniff had been a spotty juvenile, short but stocky, who clearly fancied himself with no obvious evidence to support that conclusion. He had even insisted on buying her a drink, even though a blind man could have seen her body language which was displaying in neon letters a metre high: I would rather fuck your dead grandfather.

So here she was, getting off the night bus with still half a mile to walk to her parents’ flat on Hester’s Way and, as she did so, she stumbled, fell to the ground. Bloody hell, I must have really gone overboard tonight. But, even as she was thinking this, she knew that she hadn’t. Three, maybe four lagers, then a few vodka shots – surely no more than half a dozen; nothing out of the ordinary. She had been becoming groggier and groggier as the journey had gone on, but suddenly her legs weren’t working and she felt slightly sick.

‘You alright?’

A figure was leaning over her, wearing a hoodie, the face in shadow. Hands reached down to help her up; they were gentle hands and her head was woolly, so that she was just relieved not to be on her own. When she was upright, however, her head stopped being woolly, started revolving. She staggered. ‘Oh! Oh, shit!’

The hands tightened around her upper arms, took her weight. ‘I don’t think you are, are you?’ The words were cheerful.

She breathed, ‘No. I don’t seem to be.’

‘No probs. I’ll take care of you.’

And the sedative took full effect, and she awoke twelve hours later to find herself strapped into an electric chair, watching Malcolm Willoughby being slowly cooked to death by an imperceptibly increasing current.

SEVENTEEN

‘It looks as though this one’s been cooked’

Dr Charlotte Sherman had been a clinical psychologist for four years. During that time she had acquired a reputation as a competent and hard working professional and she had turned a few heads, although she was not a stunning beauty, being somewhat short, with longish, auburn hair, a rounded face and severe short-sightedness; when she had her glasses off, there was something about the narrowed eyes and distorted face that John Eisenmenger had found utterly enchanting. When he had discovered that she had recently separated from her long-term partner, he had found himself in the unaccustomed position of having to take many deep breaths and expose himself to possible rejection. It had not happened and six months later, they were settling into a relationship. Neither of them was keen to advertise this, although they were well aware that the rumours were beginning to circle, like buzzards; he tried to avoid the unfortunate corollary of this, that the liaison was a corpse.

Eisenmenger’s primary job was as a consultant cellular pathologist – coronial and hospital autopsies, together with surgical pathology – which meant that he worked as close to regular hours as it was possible for a doctor to do; Charlie, likewise, had fairly regular hours. She had problems, though, with his second profession – that of forensic pathologist – and in that Eisenmenger saw trouble ahead, for he had been there before; his marriage had ended because of it. When he was on call – and he was quite frequently – he could be called out at any time and was likely to be away for several hours; because forensic pathology was not paid for by the NHS but by the Home Office, he had to pay back the time to the hospital when he was called out, meaning that he was not infrequently at the hospital at the weekend and late into the night.

And now that they had a murderer with a penchant for beheadings, he knew that the hours owed to the NHS were only likely to increase, which meant that today’s lunch with Charlie was especially important to him. He could tell that she was still disgruntled that he had not been able to make their date earlier in the week because of the autopsy on the body, and hoped that this would make up for it. He had booked a table at Brasserie Blanc, next to the Queens Hotel in Montpelier for one thirty, had picked her up in a taxi at twelve thirty, then been as cheesy as possible by ordering champagne; Charlie, who was a connoisseur of fine cheese, had loved it. They sat in the bar at the front of the restaurant, looking out on regency buildings, enjoying some relaxation, enjoying each other, enjoying doing nothing but drinking champagne, talking about nothing and seeing the world around them with eyes that were relaxed and happy.

Charlie had a deep, husky voice and it had been this, together with eyes that were of the palest blue, that had first attracted him to her. The colour was not deep, yet he could not penetrate beyond the surface although she herself seemed to see deeply, almost too deeply. She had been greatly hurt, he knew, by the break-up of her marriage, but he, too, had been seriously affected by the end of his relationship with Helena, made worse by events beyond his control. He felt it slightly unfair that she should not feel the need for comfort from him as much as he yearned for it from her.

‘How’s Paul?’ Eisenmenger had found immediate rapport with Charlie’s son. He was gangly and thin, with a sense of humour that chimed with Eisenmenger’s.

She nodded. ‘He’s good.’

‘Steady girlfriend yet?’

She smiled. ‘He hasn’t told me if he has.’

‘Would he? If he had, I mean.’

‘No.’

‘But it’s going well for him? Up there?’ He was aware that he was making Durham sound like a geostationary orbit.

‘He’s really enjoying it. He’s working on his final year dissertation.’

‘Yes?’ It was only politeness that made him ask, ‘What’s it on?’

She frowned, hesitated. ‘Deep surfing?’ she answered hesitantly.

Which meant as little to him as it clearly did to her.

And then the waiter came over – Australian, in starched, white shirt and black trousers so creased and straight he had trouble bending his knees – so they followed him over to their table at once, ready to eat, and had just settled down to peruse the menu when Eisenmenger’s mobile phone went off.

It was with a feeling of huge depression that he answered it. It was Lancefield. ‘We’ve found a body.’

Shit. A third killing. ‘Where?’

‘A quarry. In a small village in the north of the county – Bromsberrow Heath.’

He’d never heard of it. ‘Can you give me a postcode for the satnav?’

She did so, then added, ‘There’s something about this one . . .’

Eisenmenger had seen most things that could be done to a human being and was not about to be frightened. ‘Go on . . .’

‘It looks as though this one has been cooked.’

Wallace Parker owned twelve hundred acres, an estate he had inherited from a widowed spinster aunt over twenty years before. It was given over to sheep, cattle, arable and vineyard; he had a well-paid and extremely efficient estate manager who took care of most of the day-to-day running, whilst Wallace continued his time conducting an extremely remunerative career in the City. He met with the estate manager once a week and they planned strategy together (or at least Wallace approved the manager’s plans), so that he could say with a degree of truth that he ran the operation; he saw himself as chairman, the manager as CEO and this analogy pleased him.

Inevitably, his wealth and power in the community led to hidden but nonetheless occasionally palpable resentment. Much of the village depended on the estate, which meant that they did not like it, and they did not like Wallace, although no one would ever have said so to his face. Wallace, though, believed that he was the beloved leader of this rural community and that they cherished him. He was Chair of the Parish Council, sat on the Parochial Church Council, was training to become a Justice of the Peace, and was Chair elect of the Conservatives; in his eyes, who could not be endeared by him?

Those who were not beholden to him – and therefore were not resentful of him – acknowledged that he (or at least his estate manager) had done good things. The Colberrow Estate had been looking distinctly rundown when Wallace had inherited it, but over the years the fencing had been largely repaired, new signs had been erected, hedgerows had been regrown and the styles renovated. Wallace might have been acquisitive and selfish and a tad monomaniac, but he had a vision of what a country estate should be, and he had the money to achieve it. He wanted rolling acres of tidy grazing for sheep, lakes, ordered fields of waving wheat and beet, and ancient woodland, and he felt in his bones that he was slowly achieving this.

In fact, it was the woodland that gave him most pleasure. He loved tramping through the outer reaches of his land, through trees that had been there for hundreds of years, listening to sounds that were completely human intervention, smelling sweet odours of decay and growth, catching glimpses of hidden wildlife. Of the many such copses and woods on the estate, his favourite – the one, in fact, that he let no one else enter – was Topper’s Drift, in which was situated the Grange. At over one hundred and seventeen acres, it was one of the largest, most unspoilt, and oldest areas of woodland that he owned, and he had plans for it. He made sure that it was fenced off and that only he and his estate manager had a key to the single gate.

EIGHTEEN

Sorry about lunch. XXX

The quarry’s gates were closed although not locked; a police car parked across them and two policemen stood in front of it. They did not have to keep back the rampaging hordes, who consisted merely of a dozen people of all ages and sexes, for they contented themselves with peering hopefully past the official presence whilst murmuring a lot but not actually looking at each other. It was a very British crime scene. Eisenmenger showed his identity and was allowed through in his car, driving over the uneven ground.

The quarry was about two hundred yards in diameter, and reddish brown in predominant colour. Its walls rose ahead about forty feet and, on either side, perhaps thirty; to his left parked in a row were four JCBs next to a Portakabin; to his right at the far end of the quarry and tucked under the cliff was the centre of everyone’s attention – the inevitable small marquee, around which were two marked and two unmarked police cars together with at least ten people. Beverley was there, together with Lancefield and Fisher, the three of them forming a small huddle around the bonnet of one of the cars. As he approached, all eyes turned to him and he thought he felt something in their looks that he had never seen before on such an occasion; he thought he saw distress. He stopped the car and was getting out just as a forensic scientist was coming out of the marquee; the look on his face was enough to make Eisenmenger pause; he was pale and sweaty, almost trembling, almost ready to cry, it seemed.

Beverley came up to him. ‘This is bad, John. Really bad.’

He had started to suspect. ‘Any identification?’

She shook her head. ‘Like the headless corpse, he’s naked, and getting an ID is going to require dental records or DNA.’ Which was no great shakes to Eisenmenger; a lot of bodies had gone beyond the state in which it was possible for anyone to recognize them.

He went to the boot of his car to get out his briefcase and his all-in-one suit. Beverley said, ‘It really is bad, John. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

He paused in the act of putting the suit on. ‘Is it a child?’ She shook her head and he said, ‘Shouldn’t be a problem, then.’

She said nothing, although he was somewhat disconcerted by her expression as she nodded slowly.

Jesus wept.

He wasn’t sure whether he said this aloud or merely thought it, so taken up was he by the sight that met him in that small tent. The deceased lay on his side, his hips, knees and elbows flexed at almost perfect right angles, a curious posture and one that was enshrined by rigor mortis. There were post-mortem abrasions – some of them quite deep – all over the body, and most of them were covered in dust and grit that had clearly come from the quarry. It was the body of a young white male, although the age was difficult to determine; Lancefield had not lied when she had said that it looked as though he had been cooked. The smell was one of overcooked meat; not the sickly one he knew well from the incinerated remains of car and air crashes, but an altogether more pleasant, and paradoxically more nauseating, one; a perversion of the emotions evoked by a Sunday roast.

The body was desiccated and browned, the skin turned to a hardened, leather-like consistency, like badly made crackling. The eyes were open, but they were no longer eyes by any normal measure; merely cream-brown orbs with a round dark-blue smudge where the corneas had once been. His mouth was open, his expression even in death, one clearly of agony. There were darker areas – burns, Eisenmenger quickly discovered – on the wrists and about the forehead. His hair had become brittle, blackened, while his fingers and toes were mummified. When he looked into the mouth, the jaw nearly broke, and the tongue was a charred lump.

He did not remain long, merely checking for external injuries without attempting to turn the body. Emerging from the marquee, he saw that the inevitable close-order search of the quarry floor had commenced. He joined Beverley and Fisher at the car bonnet, Fisher having been told to supervise the search of the quarry. Their eyes were nothing but curious orbs as he approached, although they said nothing and it was left to him to speak. ‘I haven’t found any evidence of traumatic injury, so he was either poisoned and then heated, or just heated whilst alive.’

Lancefield looked slightly shocked at his refusal to show emotion; Beverley, who knew more of the man, could see that he had been affected just as much as the rest of them. She asked, ‘You think he’s been in some sort of oven, then?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ She had never yet met a pathologist who didn’t use that word at least ten times a paragraph. Then he surprised her. ‘I think the body was thrown down the cliff face. I’d concentrate on looking up there.’ He indicated the chain-link fence and undergrowth behind it that was about ten metres above them. Before they could ask, he explained about the post-mortem abrasions covered in quarry dust. Beverley said to Lancefield, ‘You and Fisher concentrate up there first of all. If we don’t find anything, then we’ll go back to the rest of the quarry.’

Lancefield left and Beverley said then to Eisenmenger, ‘You OK?’

He nodded. ‘No problems.’

She almost believed him, but she could tell something was bothering him and she wondered what it was.

Sorry about lunch. Xxx. Charlie looked at it and did not know what to think, whether or not to be angry or frustrated, or angry and frustrated. John Eisenmenger had done it again.

As a qualified psychologist she recognized the type; she met them every day, counselled them, helped them through their self-imposed labyrinths. John Eisenmenger was full of positives: he was clearly of an affectionate nature, and undoubtedly believed that he was in love with her, yet – her own feelings notwithstanding – she was unconvinced that he truly was. Her training told her that fact and faith were often unconnected, that a human being was capable of the greatest self-deception, that John Eisenmenger might think that he was in love with her; was more likely to be in love with the idea of being in love. One of her lecturers had once told her that human beings liked the idea of love, but couldn’t cope with its effects. Love, she had said, was as corrosive as hate, as destructive of the self as jealousy, as deadly and as addictive as heroin. In John she saw such a man; she saw someone who needed to love but did not know how to be loved, who forever sought – and was forever afraid of – the grail of the perfect symmetry of devotion, the idealized, romanticized and ultimately fictionalized love affair as told in Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Tom and Jerry . . .

And then there was the barbed question of whether she loved him. If it was hard enough to be objective about John Eisenmenger’s psychology, it was infinitely more adamantine to be objective about her own.

NINETEEN

‘three hundred lambs going to slaughter’

Everyone who was privileged to be invited agreed that the Parkers gave such wonderful parties. They were wonderful hosts, having done the job at least once a week for perhaps thirty years, and having done so for the good and the great, new money and old, the shakers and movers, the shaken and moved. Wallace moved amongst his guests and talked with them in a small talk, a language that was as difficult to learn as Hungarian and in which fluency was as difficult to come by as it was in Ancient Greek. His gracious wife, Jane, was equally gifted in this strange tongue, always smiling, always laughing quite convincingly at the right moment, forever remembering guests’ names, their children’s names, their illnesses and their recent successes, no matter how small. They had three sons – Will, Greg and Harry – all of whom had attended public school in Cheltenham, albeit with greater or lesser success, three Labradors and a live-in housekeeper. Wallace had been a successful London financier even before he had inherited the estate; prior to that he had been a captain in the First Parachute Regiment, seeing action in the Falklands and even being slightly injured (by a British jeep running over his left foot). He had filled out slightly since those heady days, although he still considered himself to be relatively svelte, an opinion not damaged in its righteousness in any way by his sons’ sometimes ribald comments.

He loved his sons, could see little wrong with them. Harry, the youngest, was just down from Cambridge, due to go on to Imperial College to complete his medical degree in a couple of months. Out of their three sons, it was Harry who had always worried Wallace and Jane. Cold, almost worryingly so, and prone to rages, there had been times when they had seriously considered seeking professional, psychological help although, thank God, that had not come to pass; he had mellowed and Wallace could see that medicine was a good career choice, not only because he had the brains but because he also had the temperament for it.

Greg was nearly twenty-five, completely different in temperament; he had read art at college and was now working as a freelance web designer, although not, as far as Wallace could tell, with much success. Yet he had a lively sense of humour and, despite the worrying choice of career, was blessed with charm and charisma; it gave Wallace a sense of vicarious pride when he saw how the girls reacted to Greg.

Will, at twenty-nine the eldest, was the star, though. Tall, although without the charm of his younger brother, he was eager to take over the management of the estate in the not too distant future, serious and committed; he had just left the army having seen service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wallace felt an extreme peace in the knowledge that the future – the long-term future, he felt – was assured.

Although he worried somewhat about the short and medium term . . .

Still tonight there was another party to give and to enjoy, acting like an amnesiac balm on his irritating money worries. There were this time ten guests. Two local farmers and their wives – Wallace did not particularly like them, but he knew very well that it was in his best interests to court them, even if he was by far and away the biggest land owner in the area; the Reverend Pilcher – an interesting man, Wallace thought, and undoubtedly the most humane priest he had ever met; his mother-in-law, who endured and whom he endured; Allen Somersby, his farm manager, and his wife; and Andrew and Antonia Barclay, a couple that Wallace had no problems with, although Jane thought that they were just social climbers. Still, the perfect host, Wallace did not let these feelings hinder the proceedings. His sons, all home for the summer, moved amongst the guests and made sure that their glasses were never empty, their free hands never without a vol-au-vent or olive, and they never looked bored; boredom was almost as much a sin as public eructation in Wallace’s view.

He approached Somersby, bottle in hand, ready to ply, but his farm manager covered his glass with his hand. ‘Got to be up early tomorrow, Wallace.’

‘Really, why?’

Allen Somersby knew better than to betray his feelings and said mildly, ‘Three hundred lambs going to slaughter.’

‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ He vaguely remembered Somersby had mentioned this at their last meeting and he had OK’ed it. To cover his embarrassment, he said, ‘You know everyone here, don’t you?’

Somersby gestured with his glass towards the Barclays. ‘Everyone except them. I’ve seen them around, but can’t place them.’

‘Andrew and Antonia Barclay. He’s a retired GP. They’re bringing up their grandchildren. Quite a tragedy.’ With this telegraphic resume, Somersby was brought up to speed; the tone in which it was transmitted gave him added context; Wallace did not consider them ‘one of us’. Whilst he was digesting this, Wallace said, ‘We need to discuss the Grange.’

‘What about it?’

‘The surveyor’s report was quite damning.’

Somersby said neutrally, ‘I seem to remember it said that it would require considerable capital investment, and that we could only expect reasonable revenue income after some years.’ He paused and then added for emphasis, ‘Twelve million of capital investment, I recall.’

‘And projected revenues of a quarter of a million in the second year, half a million in the second and third, but a million and climbing by year four and thereafter.’

‘But a long time to wait for a decent return.’ Somersby knew that he was pushing his luck by pursuing this, but it wasn’t the first time he had lived a little dangerously. ‘Even assuming no hold-ups with the redevelopment. And that doesn’t include the interest charges on the loan.’

Wallace had a round, slightly greasy and pale face with the perpetual impression that he needed a closer shave. These slightly doughy features now assumed an expression that was partly sorrow, partly angry; Somersby knew from experience that it was the sorrow he had to be frightened of. ‘Allen, you are a good and competent estate manager; make no mistake that I appreciate that. That does not make you an investment manager. We are a good team because we each do what we are good at; please do not fight me on this.’

The sorrow was as disquieting as it was heartfelt and Somersby, a man who had managed to get fairly well on in his career without pushing things too far, said nothing, despite his concerns that this was a vanity project that did not make financial sense. He was saved from further comment by the arrival of Will with more canapés. Whilst the plates were being refilled, Wallace said to his son, ‘What’s your opinion, Will? Should we risk a little now in order to reap a fine harvest later on? What this area needs is a decent, top-notch hotel and I think that the Grange could be that hotel.’

‘Oh, sure.’ Will had a broad grin and, Somersby could appreciate, the air of the confident; he could persuade men to follow him into battle. As far as Somersby was concerned, that only meant that he had the ability to make people forget the consequences of their actions, no matter how foolish.

Wallace pressed him, knowing the answer he would get, with Somersby knowing that he knew. ‘And? Do you think it’s a winner?’

‘Absolutely.’

It was said with total conviction. Allen Somersby found himself wondering what an inexperienced junior officer just discharged from the army – under dubious and unexplained circumstances – would know about anything.

Wallace turned back to him. ‘You’ve been against redeveloping the Grange from the start, Allen. Why would that be?’

He shrugged and said as disingenuously as he could, ‘It’s my job to advise you as to how to best manage the estate. I just don’t think that it’s the best use of funds at present.’

‘What, and leave a hundred acres of the estate all but unusable and therefore non-profit making? You think that’s in my best interests? I can’t knock the place down because of the listed status. What else can I do?’

Somersby had no reply to that and knew better than to continue the argument. Parker let it go, but he was curious as to why his estate manager seemed so attached to the Grange.

TWENTY

‘I don’t suppose you saw anything anyway’

Lancefield took a party of four to look around at the top of the quarry’s cliff where the body seemed to have been thrown, and then to conduct house-to-house enquiries. She had with her Fisher and two uniforms, neither of whom she knew particularly well, but who Beverley assured her were sound. They examined first the fencing around the quarry; concrete posts with chain-link fencing; they were angled at the top with a barbed wire tiara for more than decoration. They found immediately where a right-angled cut had been made in the fence, a rough door made and then bent inwards. The undergrowth had been trampled down on either side at this point. There was also evidence of tyre tracks leading away from this out onto a nearby lane. Lancefield said to Fisher, ‘Get forensics up here.’

Having pulled them back to stop them trampling on whatever evidence there might be, Lancefield looked around a little further afield. The trees and shrubs around the fence were only about twenty feet deep; a low wooden fence then formed the boundary to some small gardens at the back of a terrace of modern maisonettes, all pale yellow bricks, angles and small windows. Someone looking out of their back windows might have seen something . . .

They split into two teams, she with Fisher, the two uniforms together; she took advantage of her senior rank to take the properties closest to the quarry’s edge, sending the other team to knock on a scattering of houses further back along the road that led past the quarry’s edge to open countryside; it was possible that people in these might have seen something, but unlikely and so it would be a tedious and fruitless exercise. There was a distinct chance that she and Fisher would strike lucky, however.

She started off with high hopes but these were almost immediately destroyed when it quickly became clear that these were warden-controlled flats, and most of the residents were not going to be perfect witnesses. The tone was set by the first one, the maisonette nearest the quarry’s edge. The door bell sounded – a cheap, trilling thing – after which there was a brief pause before the door opened (with difficulty because damp had warped the frame) to reveal a large woman of Far East Asian appearance dressed in a pale green housecoat; it was noticeably stained.

‘Yes?’

She looked bad-tempered, but Lancefield had the impression that this was nature not nurture. She looked no happier when Lancefield and Fisher showed their warrant cards. ‘Do you live here?’

She looked incredulous as if she had been asked an indecent question. ‘No.’ Her accent was nearly thick enough to asphyxiate the meaning. She added, ‘I am one of the carers.’ There were indignation and pride in her tone, as if she were shocked that she should be mistaken for what she considered a lower form of life.

‘Who does live here?’

‘Mr Barker.’

‘Could we have your name, please?’

She had probably looked happier in her life, although neither of them was going to lay a large amount of money on it. ‘Mary Lavoisier.’

‘And you care for Mr Barker?’

‘I said so.’

‘Full time?’

Her expression didn’t change, perhaps because it had already plumbed the depths of contempt. ‘No. We come in on a rota.’

‘And how long have you been here?’

‘About twenty minutes.’

‘How many carers does he have?’

‘We come in four times a day.’

It was an answer, although not to the question that Lancefield had asked. She asked, ‘Can we talk to him, please?’

Mary Lavoisier snorted. ‘You can talk to him,’ she said sourly, ‘but he won’t talk to you.’ The undercurrent was one of flippancy, but it was laced liberally with hostility. When she saw their looks of uncertainty she said brusquely, ‘Come on,’ and turned away. They stepped in after her, immediately aware that the atmosphere was hot and dry, that there was a fusty smell around them. She led them to a sitting room where, among thirty-year-old furniture that was no longer of any use to him, sat Len Barker in his wheelchair.

He looked at them with an expression that was unreadable. Lancefield approached him and knelt down. ‘Mr Barker?’ His eyes had followed the two police officers as soon as they had entered the room, the only sign of animation until that moment; now he nodded slowly and a soft grunt came from the back of his throat. Lancefield made a face of sympathy that Len Barker was beginning to know and detest, then turned away from him back to Ms Lavoisier. ‘We’ll need the names of the carers who have visited in the past two days.’

‘What’s going on?

‘Suspicious activity in the quarry. We’re looking for witnesses.’

Before the delightful Ms Lavoisier could answer, Lancefield’s attention was drawn by an urgent sound from Len Barker. He was agitated, with spittle coming from the corner of his downturned mouth, and he was waving his right hand about feebly. Curious, Lancefield glanced across at Fisher and then at the carer, who said carelessly, ‘Oh, don’t worry about him. He hasn’t come to terms with his condition yet. It’s very common for them to become seriously depressed.’ She might have been speaking about an old pet dog.

‘No one else lives here?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s a widower.’

Lancefield looked again at Len Barker; he was looking directly into her eyes, shaking almost. Was he trying to tell her something? She asked, ‘Can he still write?’

‘’Fraid not. He was right handed and that’s the side that has been paralysed.’

Lancefield sighed. ‘Never mind.’ To Len Barker she said, ‘I don’t suppose you saw anything anyway, did you?’

TWENTY-ONE

he had never done a post-mortem like that one

She had lost it completely to hysteria long ago. She had screamed, she had cried, she had begged and she had sobbed. She had wrenched at the restraints, badly abrading her wrists, and now she was exhausted, and whimpering, terrified but unable to do anything more active. She was just wondering when she would begin to die . . .

She had watched as someone had been slowly electrocuted in a chair identical to the one she was sitting in; she knew that it had not been a movie, that it had been real, that she had really been a witness to a horrible, prolonged death. She knew too that it was going to happen to her.

And no one had responded throughout all her entreaties; the cameras in front of her and to her sides continued to stare without comment, the dark corners of the padded cell slept, the television screen remained blank after showing the horrible, hideous death of the unknown man, after she had seen him twitching, and smoking, and distorting.

When would it come . . .?

She found herself almost wishing for something to happen.

She wondered what it would be like.

When it started, though, she had no time to think about it as the current surged through her body and agony ripped her apart, as every muscle in her body went into spasm, as her eyes twitched upwards almost turning around in their sockets, and as she bit her tongue off with barely perceived pain; twice more it came, the current each time incremental, until she was dead despite the twitching that persisted for a few seconds afterwards.

He had never done a post-mortem like that one and it was many years since doing his job had affected him as that one had done. Yet this was not surprising, because this corpse had been cooked. The skin was crisp, darkened but in a way the sun could never do; the eyes were milky and yellowed, those of an ancient blind man; the hair was fragile, almost carbonized, the tongue was like a desiccated gobbet of ham. The changes seemed uniform, except for the wrists and around the head; there the skin was blackened, blistered, and the flesh charred.

When Eisenmenger had first cut through the abdominal wall – a virgin cut – there had been no blood and the feel had been more solid than he was used to; it had been a curious sensation and not one he enjoyed. It had a grey, greasy texture, one that he could not stop himself from comparing to belly pork. When he had the breast plate off and the whole of the torso’s contents exposed, there was not the usual palette of colours to gaze upon – the grey speckled pink of the lungs, the brown of the liver, the green of the guts, the ruddiness of the heart – for everything had a greasy, brown sheen; the smell, too, was wrong. Eisenmenger knew well the scent of a freshly open corpse, the dank, acrid smell that was not pleasant, but that wasn’t disgusting either; this, in contrast, forced him to take deep breaths to stop himself vomiting, because this corpse smelled of cooked offal. ‘Oh, shite,’ he whispered to himself.

Normally, dissection of the organs is a fluid thing, lubricated by blood and tissue fluid, yet this time, it was dry, greased only by fat. Normally, though, the victims of fire were completely different; they were charred to nothing in places, barely touched in others; often the organs, although clearly subjected to great heat, had been protected to an incredible degree from the musculoskeletal system. Not in this case. Other than at the head and wrists, everything had been heated through uniformly. He had eaten steaks and roasts and steamed sponge puddings that were less evenly cooked.

And there were those burns quite specifically at two places, burns that, now he examined them more carefully, were suspiciously sharply edged . . .

‘Well?’ demanded Beverley after he finished, after he had stripped off the uniform, become something approaching – in shape if not spirit – a human being, but before he could begin to consider himself once more a dues-paid, bona fide and self-assured member of the so-called civilized humanity.

‘It depends on the tox—’ he began, but Beverley nearly exploded.

‘Fuck that crap, John. I know that you can’t say for certain, but I need a pointer. I need something now, not in a week’s time.’

He had known she would say that, but he had thought to try anyway. ‘Two possibilities in my head; he was cooked, but he wasn’t roasted, not as he would have been had he been bound and then the room set on fire. The way he was heated through leads me to conclude . . .’ He paused, unable to believe that he was about to say what he was about to say.

‘What?’ Beverley voiced it but both Lancefield and Clive clearly could have done.

He sighed. ‘That either he was put in a microwave oven, or he was electrocuted very, very slowly.’ There was a stunned silence.

Beverley whispered in something that was almost fright, ‘You can’t be serious, John.’

‘Oh, yes, I am. He’s heated through too evenly for it to be an external source of heat. There are burn marks on his wrists and around his head which makes me think it more likely that it was slow electrocution, but if he had metal manacles and some sort of metal head band, a microwave oven – a large microwave oven – would produce a similar appearance, I think.’ He smiled. ‘Of course, I’m not an expert in this area.’

‘Do they make microwaves big enough?’ asked Lancefield.

‘Good question.’ His tone suggested that he didn’t particularly care.

Beverley did not want to look at the corpse, but found she could not stop. It was almost as if in a dream that she asked, ‘Is there anything to identify him?’

She didn’t expect anything, but he said tentatively, ‘Possibly . . .’

He took them back to the head of the corpse and beckoned to Clive to grasp the shoulders and lift them so that they could see the back; Beverley remembered that Eisenmenger had asked for it to be photographed. When they crouched down, they saw a large area of blackening, only just visible because of the effects of heating. Beverley peered at it closely but couldn’t make anything of it. ‘What is it?’

Before Eisenmenger could respond, Lancefield said, ‘It’s a tattoo.’

Eisenmenger said, ‘I’ll biopsy the skin to check, but I think so.’

‘What is it?’ demanded Beverley. It spanned the back from shoulder to shoulder, ran up the nape of the neck. There was a faint hint of dark greens and blues.

Lancefield twisted her head from side to side as she tried to make out some detail. ‘A bird? An eagle, perhaps?’

Eisenmenger shrugged. ‘I can’t be sure. I’ve had it photographed, so you can decide at your leisure. In any case, it might prove useful.’

Beverley turned to Fisher. ‘Go through the missing persons’ file first thing. We might strike lucky.’ Of Eisenmenger she demanded, ‘Is that all?’

‘Liver’s slightly fatty, and there’s a lot of anthracosis in the lungs; he may even be developing emphysema.’

‘But nothing that can help me?’

‘Doesn’t look like it.’

Josh and Darren spent that evening playing in the grounds of the Grange, which had rapidly become their favourite place, their secret place, where no one bothered them. Although they did not fully appreciate it, they had something that all children seek, for it was a place that they thought only they ever entered, that was walled, that was strange and mysterious, and that was not encumbered with adults and therefore with reality. Anything and everything was potential for imagination, for play, for excitement and for wonder; nothing was beyond the possible; it was as it should be for children.

Nor did they fully know where they were, had no geographical or topographical references, knew only that it was reached by climbing over a five-bar gate not far from their houses, then a walk of fifteen minutes to the stone wall; that the stone wall was five feet high and topped with broken glass was not a problem for them, not when badgers had made a run under it; it was artfully hidden and only a child playing on his hands and knees near it would have discovered it. What they had on the other side was ancient woodland, untended for thirty years, but they saw only wilderness, a tabula rasa, a hidden garden. To them it was huge, a circular universe, as uncharted as the one through which the planet itself travelled.

But it was not as they had once hoped.

It was in one plane infinite, but in others limited. At the outer boundary there was the stone wall, at the other, inner boundary, there was a high fence of black iron railings. A gravel road ran through this, their desmegne, from the stone wall to this fence, bounded at the outer perimeter by a high and solid, heavily padlocked wooden gate, at its inner by one of wrought iron. Beyond this latter the road led on, curving away and overhung by sycamores, until it disappeared into woodland. And above the trees could be seen their true, spiritual home, the Grange, the place where they really wanted to be. It appeared as tall chimneys and decaying roofs clad in black slate and pockmarked with jagged holes. They fantasized that it might be some sort of castle, perhaps an ancient manor house, perhaps even a citadel on an alien planet. That they could not reach it only made it all the more irresistible, and their desire for it had increased with every glimpse over the weeks, until it became in their minds something completely mythical and therefore something wondrous.

They had learned to live with their disappointment; indeed they had incorporated this faraway citadel into their adventures, much as stage decorators used well-painted scenery. After all, they had enough space to play in, it was still summer, and they were not adults. This particular evening, they were using home-made bows and arrows that they had made the day before and, after uncountable attempts, had succeeded in hitting a tree so that the arrow – a small wooden garden cane, a supply of which Josh had misappropriated from his grandparents’ greenhouse and then whittled to a point – actually stuck in rather than bouncing off. They were both elated but, as luck would have it, the tree was on the other side of the railings. Exhausted, they stood and looked through the fence; it seemed to them almost a sign of the magical nature of the world on the far side of it.

But it was still a world that was beyond their reach.

Josh said, ‘Let’s get back to base.’

It was getting dark and, in their enthusiasm for their new game, they had stayed out later than they should have, but the fine balance between their thrill of excitement and their fear of retribution was settling in favour of the former; they would be told off anyway, so why not make it last a few minutes longer? They had brought with them some coke and some oriole cookies and it seemed fitting to finish these now, in celebration of their achievement.

And perhaps there was a little bit of magic – possibly, though, black magic – that made Darren then look to his left and spot for the first time a tree (it was a walnut tree, but neither of them recognized it as such) that was easily climbable and that overhung the fence; the limb that did this was stout, easily able to take their weight.

Darren turned to Josh, pulled at his T-shirt and pointed excitedly. ‘We can get in!’ With this he rushed to the tree and began to climb the low slung limbs easily. He knelt on all fours on the thick branch that led out over the railings. ‘See? We climb along here and then drop down.’

Josh was built of more thoughtful, perhaps more timid, substances. ‘How do we get back?’

Darren frowned; he was not of a far-seeing nature. The question was a tricky one, even he could see that. ‘Well . . .’

He had in his head ideas of piling up stones to form a mountain to climb up, but when he articulated this, the look on Josh’s face told him he had failed to carry his friend with him. He thought again. ‘There’s bound to be something we could use in the Grange,’ he said eventually.

‘Like what?’

This was harder. Eventually he said, ‘They’ll be some steps or something. Bound to be.’

He was not hopeful that this would be enough and Josh’s expression at first gave him little encouragement. He pressed his case. ‘Come on, Josh. It’s not that high. All we need is a chair or something, and there’s got to be something like that left behind.’

More hesitation, to which Darren responded with, ‘We can’t wimp out. It’ll be so much fun!’

And slowly, Josh began to nod. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘It will, won’t it?’

He did not appreciate it, but Darren would have had a great career ahead as a salesman.

TWENTY-TWO

the smell of vinegar

‘Usually, when you are dealing with serial killers, half the work is done by the profilers; a serial killer has an idea in his head and his crimes tell them what that idea is and what kind of head it’s in. They establish a pattern that allows you a way into catching them.’

Beverley and Eisenmenger were sitting outside Taylors, a pleasant, ivied town centre pub in Cheltenham. It was not a bad way to spend an hour of an evening and perfect for people-watching. ‘But not this guy?’ he guessed.

‘The profiler is completely lost. Apart from the fact that this guy clearly enjoys killing, he hasn’t got a clue about who or what he might be.’ Eisenmenger’s opinion of profilers stayed silent in deference to politeness. She went on: ‘A serial killer operates within his gender and socio-economic class.’ She said this as if she were reciting by rote. ‘They use the same method of killing, indulge in the same fantasies. They have a pattern, and move solely within the confines of that pattern. Usually, their motivation is sexual.’

‘Just because I can find no evidence of genital interference doesn’t mean these aren’t sexual killings.’

She was momentarily interested, then a soft snort indicated her considered opinion. ‘You think he was jerking himself off whilst watching some unfortunate fucker die by slow electrocution? I don’t think so.’

‘Just an idea . . .’

The look Beverley gave him started as contemptuous, but rapidly dissipated into one of resigned concurrence. ‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘And I’m precious short of those right now.’

The silence of contemplation and sociability landed on them for just a moment as they each took a drink. As the glass came down upon the beer-ringed green shamrock of the cardboard mat, Beverley asked of him plaintively, ‘Where’s the fucking pattern, John? It’s not fair. Serial killers have a predictable MO, yet this one doesn’t; different sexes, different ages, different ways of killing . . .’

Inside the pub, the large TV screen was showing BBC News 24, a warehouse fire in Hertfordshire seen from a helicopter. It was a warm evening and Eisenmenger’s lager was rapidly becoming tepid, and he hated lager that wasn’t ice cold. He drew a pattern in the condensation on the glass, a cross in a circle and found himself wondering what that meant. He murmured almost to himself, ‘Execution.’

‘What’s that?’

He came to, almost had to draw himself together as if deep contemplation had allowed his bones to separate slightly. More brightly, more aware of his surroundings and what he was saying, he repeated, ‘It strikes me that beheading and electrocution are means of execution, that’s all.’

For a moment, he saw that her expression was one of wonderment, but then that mutated into a frown. ‘Our most recent victim was cooked, not electrocuted.’

He made a face and rubbed out the symbol in the condensation on his glass; through the window he had made he examined the bubbles rising through the lager. ‘I suppose so,’ he said thoughtfully.

Despite her objections, she found herself intrigued by the notion. ‘Although there have been occasions when they botched the execution,’ she said slowly. ‘The condemned was to all intents and purposes cooked on a few occasions.’

‘It was just a thought,’ he explained.

Beverley was enthused and he saw in her the fervour of the convert. ‘But you could be on to something, John.’

But he found himself less than wholly convinced now that he had voiced the conjecture. ‘Maybe. But if that’s the motivation, then presumably these poor sods have done something to deserve it, at least in the eyes of the executioner.’

‘So we’re back to identification; unless we find out more about these people, we’re stuffed.’

He took a drink. ‘Wasn’t it always so?’

‘Nothing ever really changes, does it?’ She sounded wistful.

He laughed. ‘Human beings are afraid of change and hate it, but they would die without it, Beverley.’

Eisenmenger had the intellectual freedom to deal in such philosophizing and, had she not been perhaps in love with him, she might have lashed him with her tongue. Instead she just drained her glass and he went to the bar to get fresh drinks. As he did so, he looked at his watch; he reckoned he had time.

They were on the point of leaving when Eisenmenger admitted plaintively, ‘On this one, I really need to know the tox result, Beverley. Not out of academic interest. I just need to know that he was unconscious when he died, so I can sleep well at night.’

The boys crunched the biscuits busily for ten minutes, the darkness bringing with it a chill that they did not notice, talking through this, enjoying the delight that they had actually made a bow and actually made it fly, and that (unspoken) they might actually be able to kill something; they did not know how atavistic this feeling was, and knew only that it was good.

‘We’d better go,’ said Josh at last, who was well aware that his grandmother was considerably less easy going than Darren’s mother.

‘I guess.’

They stood up and with the minimum of preparation began to make their way through the undergrowth; there was just enough light left in the sky ahead of them to light their way. They had not gone far when they heard sounds coming from behind them and they stopped, suddenly afraid of discovery. They had been well aware that this world was not solely their property, but until now they had not come into proximity of those they shared it with. They did not know the identity of these others, but knew that they were adults and therefore inimical. Without saying anything, they crouched side by side, staring into the darkness behind them. The sounds – metallic and harsh – were slightly wet in the damp air, and Josh noticed a slight scent in the air that, for a moment, he could not place. They waited and the faint sounds of an engine came to them, then more metallic sounds. Within a couple more minutes, the engine was revving, becoming louder until it passed them; they could not see what was making the noise for thirty seconds more and even then only in the distance through the trees. They saw something white pass perhaps two hundred yards away, then come to a halt a little ahead of them at the padlocked gate in the stone wall.

They waited, heard a door in the van open, then only the wind in the trees and the sound of an engine idling until there was a faint clanking. The wind died, leaving only the engine to whisper into the dusk for a moment before the peace was destroyed by a door being shut quietly. The engine revved gently and the white shape moved forward for a perhaps five seconds; they heard it quieten, before there was more clanking and, eventually, the same sound of a door closing followed by the engine noise moving off into the descending night.

It was another minute before they dared to move forward to their escape from this hidden world, happy that they had not been seen, wondering what they had been listening to. Suddenly, Josh placed the scent, the realization bringing with it memories of fish and chips; it was the smell of vinegar.

Back in her flat, Beverley found herself to be oddly happy, yet strangely dissatisfied; it was the complete inverse of her normal state, and therefore uncomfortable to her. She felt as if she had an ache in her bone, as if she were sickening for something, on the verge of perhaps flu or some other virus. She had achieved in her professional life a small but significant victory – Lambert was gone, and she had finally been given a chance, without his malign influence, to redeem herself, to show that she was not just a whore, not one of the many makeweights in the CID, but an intelligent, hardworking and reliable copper, one who had what it took to make it big. So why, then, this unease?

She sat in one of the cream leather armchairs that she had recently bought and that seemed to consider themselves far too good to be sat in, a glass of Chardonnay on the small table to her left, stereo system singing something softly in the background. Her social life had been uncharacteristically quiet of late – or at least that was the phrase she used when she phoned her mother – but she knew that it was not this that was the source of her discomfort. She was not, as Lambert and some other of her superiors believed, a nymphomaniac; she enjoyed sex, but she did not crave it, although she admitted freely both to herself and others that she used it – it was, after all, an exceedingly powerful tool – to achieve what she could not achieve by other means. It was perhaps this, she suspected, that had given her a reputation, although she was cynical enough to believe that there was also a considerable amount of envy and jealousy that had gone into the making of it.

No. It was this present case, she suspected. This was her first big investigation, one that could be the making or the breaking of her, and she had enough experience to appreciate that it was going to be a bitch. She did not believe in God, did not even have time to be an atheist, really; God – indeed, any god – was irrelevant to her because she took what came at her and handled it. Thus she told herself that this, therefore, was not a test set for her; it was merely the way things had fallen.

Not that this viewpoint helped. Whether this case had been presented to her by a cosmic deity who kept constant tabs on her, or by a blind, uncaring, inconstant universe based on constantly roiling probabilities, it did not matter. She had to succeed, to prove that the quantum of faith that had been shown in her was not misplaced, to show Lambert and the others that she was more than just a vagina with legs, that she was worth a little more than a quickie in the back of the Jaguar with beery breathe and sweaty brow, and as much technique as a special needs gorilla.

But what a case!

She could already sense that here was no ordinary serial killer. Most such people were sad, grey little things, forgotten by life, forgotten by the world, forgotten even by themselves. They killed and only then did they consider what to do about the consequences of the act; their sole aim was killing, for in doing so they satisfied whatever urges preyed on them, This one, though, thought beyond the act, thought through the thrill of killing, and that made him special (and she knew it was he, despite what she said to others), that made him a wilier, more dangerous opponent.

This one had a motive she could not yet even guess at and, without knowing the motive, she feared she would have little chance of catching him.

TWENTY-THREE

‘There’s no need. She won’t recognize you’

Rebecca Lancefield had embraced the news of her transfer to Cheltenham, and of the opportunity to work with acting DCI Beverley Wharton with something that was considerably less than enthusiasm – dread, despair, desperation, dissatisfaction, disgruntlement, disaffection and disbelief, perhaps – but nothing beyond those. It wasn’t so much the rumours of her easy virtue that seemed forever to circulate around her, nor the stories about a less than rigorous adherence to the strictures of PACE and subsequent legislation formalizing policing procedures; no, it was the whispers that Beverley Wharton did not do well by her colleagues, especially if said colleagues were female. She had gathered that those who crossed Beverley Wharton, or even those that looked as though they might, were sometimes mysteriously treated by the Fates; she had also been led to believe by those same whispers that attractive female colleagues were also prone to this destiny.

Not that Rebecca Lancefield made the hubristic mistake of believing that she was strikingly beautiful; she was, she knew, too short and from that came the impression that she was chubby; also she had a slightly lopsided smile and teeth that came within a whisper of an overbite, and sometimes the freckles became not curiously alluring but curiously off-putting. Yet she was far from ugly and had not gone for want of boyfriends, some quite serious, some whom she had even loved and, she was certain, had loved her. Would that be enough, though? Would DCI Wharton take one look at her and decide that, though she might not be the very essence of pulchritude, she was still enough of a threat to warrant some form of action? She had the impression that her new boss was almost pathologically jealous of all potential sexual rivals, in which case she would only have been safe if she were a practising lesbian or a direct descendant of the gorgon.

And that was not all. The whispers spoke also of DCI Wharton’s ambition, a thing that ran her sexuality a close second; Beverley Wharton had sharp elbows and no compunction about using them when it came to displacing people from the greasy pole. She was aware that if she appeared too good at her job, too liable to eclipse her DCI on intellectual grounds (even if she were in her shade on those of attractiveness), then her position was liable to be no less hazardous. To make it worse, she was fairly sure that she was superior to Beverley Wharton when it came to the job; she had already noticed that she seemed able to anticipate her commands, already to have thought of matters before the DCI had her brain into gear. The only area of their profession in which she felt herself deficient was that of experience, and only time could give her that; indeed, she was confident that time would give her that.

But only if Beverley Wharton allowed her to gain it.

TWENTY-FOUR

all relationships end

Len Barker was becoming increasingly angry. He had been angry from the first moment of coming round following his stroke, but that had gradually died to dull, despairing discontent, a cold, corrosive resentment that he should have been felled so unjustly, that a punishment had been meted out upon him for no crime, no misdemeanour, no wrongdoing worse than any other human being’s; why should he be like this when he looked out of his window for hours on endless end upon his neighbours and saw people no less craven, sinning and unworthy than he?

Now, though, events had transpired to surmount this low-level inquietude; Lancefield’s patronizing words still lived, cruelly, within his head, still resounded with mocking disdain. I don’t suppose you saw anything anyway, did you. Bitch! She had looked on him and seen only a cripple, a wreck, a disease with connotations of uselessness and helplessness, a thing and thing, moreover, with a past but no future. He had not slept that night, the hot shame admixed with an even brighter anger; he would show her.

Worse, one of the carers, that withered old bitch-hag Lavoisier, had started storing his wheelchair in the sitting room at night, so that he was effectively confined to his bed during the night. She had hoped to crush him that little bit more, he knew, but he would have the last say. He would overcome this fucking affliction, this cunt of a stroke, and he would let them know what he had seen. His old instincts told him that it was important, that this was a piece of information that might be small but that was as essential as the keystone in the arch, and only he could provide it. From this he sucked some drops of dry and bitter sustenance for his bleeding, limping, dribbling pride.

Charlie Sherman had pale skin to match her pale blue eyes; she believed that she had too many freckles and too many curls in her auburn hair, believed, too, that she was just slightly too chubby. She was intimidatingly bright and far too insecure for her own good; the combination of insecurity about her own looks and a brain that would not stop analysing, would never accept that some things are best left unexplored, was a dangerous one. She had for a long time accepted that all relationships end, that the best she could hope for was as little pain as possible, and this was a self-fulfilling prophesy; she knew this, yet she could not, as bright as she was, change it. She was amused that she recognized that trap that she was in and that all the brains in the world were of no use in it. In a strange way, she found it reassuring to be forever confronted by her own shortcomings, to be properly reminded that there are many different types of intelligence and that in most of them she was below average.

The signals she was getting from John Eisenmenger played into this complex matrix of emotions and doubts and false certainties. He had caught her on the rebound from a relationship with a fellow psychologist at her previous hospital but she was not, she had hoped, feeling especially vulnerable, nor desperate for male company at whatever cost. And Eisenmenger had seemed to tick most of the right boxes for her; true, he was a little cold, a little reticent, but she had never been particularly interested in macho types, nor in men who mistook monologues for conversation. Nor had he appeared frightened by conversing with an intellectual equal, perhaps an intellectual superior, something that was a refreshing change; he did not seem to mind that she could sometimes complete the crossword or Sudoku that he could not, and she suspected that this was genuine, not mere politeness.

If, though, there was criticism to be levelled – and she was worldly wise enough to know that it was inevitable that there should be – then it was that he apologized too much, that he seemed forever to see himself in the wrong, was always ready to accept without question that he was the one who should be sorry. Whilst she would have abhorred a man who never admitted his faults, this constant and continuous apologia she found at times irritating. It was made all the worse because of recent times, he had had more than usual to be contrite for. She had known that pathologists who did forensic work – autopsies on suspicious deaths, employed by the police – had necessarily disrupted social lives; her own job did not require her to be on-call at all. But just recently, every single plan that they had made to spend time together seemed to have been destroyed by yet another death; and when Eisenmenger was called out, she knew that he would be gone for many hours, unlike her own on-call commitments which not infrequently required only advice over the phone. She was beginning to wonder if this was to be a perpetual cost of knowing him, and if it was worth paying.

That afternoon, when she had learned that yet again he would not be able to make their date, she had had to fight the anger, dissipate the frustration.

Damn it, John.

She had not yet started to cook, but she was not about to go to the trouble of preparing anything special just for herself; tuna salad and a glass of white wine would suit her just fine. Also, it would give her a chance to chill out in front of some mindless television, and then get an early night. Yet, despite trying to suck compensation from these prospects, she remained unhappy and changed her mind.

No, she decided. Damn you, John.

Beverley called a meeting in her office with Lancefield and Fisher for seven the next morning. Braxton, too, attended, and listened in silence as Beverley told him of Eisenmenger’s findings. When she had finished, he merely asked, ‘What do you think?’

Beverley wasn’t certain whether she was being tested or he genuinely didn’t know either. ‘We have three deaths, but no identities yet. Two of them were killed in the same way, one by a completely different method. One was a woman, two were men; all were white and, as far as we can tell, they fit no particular age group. The bodies have been left in different locations throughout the county. On all three there is evidence of restraint at the ankles, wrists and neck, and all three were naked when found.’

She had run out of facts, aware that she hadn’t been speaking long, although Braxton didn’t seem perturbed. He said, ‘I assume you’re looking through missing persons reports?’

‘We have been, but up until now we haven’t had a whole body to go on, so I’m hopeful we’ll strike lucky now.’

‘We have to have hope,’ agreed Braxton drily, and it came across as something of a rebuke.

Before Beverley could repair the damage she thought the remark had done to her, Lancefield put in, ‘It’s all wrong.’

Braxton turned to her and perhaps missed Beverley’s expression. ‘What is?’

‘The disparity of the victims.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Go on.’ He gave the impression that he was already aware of what she was thinking, but maybe he was just good at appearing so.

‘We’ve had two males and one female for a start. That’s odd, since most serial killers confine themselves to one sex.’

He appeared to consider this learnedly which gave Beverley the chance to say smoothly and completely convincingly, ‘And, of course, there are the methods of killing. Apparently two different kinds, completely different.’ She did not look at Lancefield, but was fairly certain that her inspector was not a happy inspector at that moment.

Braxton nodded. ‘Yes . . .’ he said thoughtfully. Beverley had not missed the glance that Lancefield had given her, had enjoyed it rather, although her eyes were on Braxton and her expression was neutral. Fuck you, Lancefield.

Braxton asked thoughtfully of the room, ‘Are you suggesting there might be more than one killer?’

Beverley looked across at her junior and asked interestedly, ‘Is that what you think?’

Lancefield found herself under a bright and very hot spotlight. Her demeanour, normally very confident, very self-contained, had become somewhat more frayed than was usual. ‘Well . . .’ Then: ‘It’s a possibility . . .’

Beverley said at once, ‘Two serial killers working together would be unique.’

Braxton nodded. ‘That’s what I was thinking.’

Lancefield wasted no time in undertaking a total withdrawal from the field of battle. ‘It was just an idea.’

Beverley was magnanimous as she nodded sagaciously and said, ‘And worth considering, too.’ That she immediately turned from Lancefield only underlined the disdain. She continued, ‘We should get the first of the toxicology reports tomorrow from the samples taken at PM. That might give us something.’

‘Have forensics given us anything?’

She shook her head. ‘Not so far.’ He went back into his slightly distracted state; they waited, unsure of whether or not to speak, then he suddenly awoke, seemed almost to shake himself. ‘Until we find out who these poor sods are, you don’t stand a hope in Hades.’

The subtle shift in pronoun again. She suspected he did it unconsciously, much as a chameleon changed colour. His next words did little to give her confidence that she was part of a team and could count on support.

‘This is one of those cases, Beverley. It’ll either make you or break you.’

He smiled as he said this, perhaps hoping to make her see the positive side.

Strangely, he failed.

TWENTY-FIVE

the pudding was a butterscotch tart

The beef was tender, although for Eisenmenger’s tastes it was a tad overdone; he was not enough of an epicure to note this down as a mark against Charlie and, anyway, she was clearly enjoying it, as was Paul. The potatoes were definitely out of the top drawer, though; Helena’s potatoes had sometimes been a little too firm for his liking, although he had never dared say as such. The horseradish was excellent too, sourced – so Charlie had explained when he had commented – from a delicatessen in Leckhampton.

Paul was down for the week and Eisenmenger was not such a blind idiot that he could not see she was happier than she had been for some time; this observation, unlike most of those that he made, caused him pain. Despite such a promising beginning, he could see this relationship going the same way that all his others had done, that it was becoming scarred and flawed by circumstance, experience and misunderstanding. There was a feeling of consequent depression in his head as he laughed at the small talk, appreciated the company and the vivacity of Charlie’s small house, drank the wine that Paul had brought with him. He was very afraid that unless he did something, and did it soon, the canker would grow and it would sour all things that he touched, as it had done so many times before.

Why?

He found himself continually repeating this enquiry until it became almost a beat within his head, a pounding yet peculiarly wimpish sound in the background as he watched mother and son engaging in easy conversation, aware of his relative ignorance, and effortlessly including him when they had to.

Why? Why did it always seem to go wrong for him in such matters? What the hell was wrong with him?

He knew that he was not particularly gifted as a social being, that he by nature needed solitude on occasion, that he made few friends and those with difficulty, and that his demeanour was frequently mistaken for arrogance, but he was forever hoping that these were barriers that were surmountable and, once surmounted, were of little consequence. Yet it never came about as he wished; forever he was climbing the barricade only to find potholes, gin-traps, unforeseen catastrophes, it seemed.

Try as he might, his fate did not seem to be his own to command.

Why won’t you listen, you fucking old bitch?

Len Barker’s face did not mutate from its frozen attitude of idiocy and the thin line of spittle did not pause or deviate as it ran down the rivulet formed by its antecedents from the right-hand corner of his drooping mouth. The scream was silent but was to him deafening; Mary Lavoisier carried on her desultory dusting, no longer bothering to attempt to converse with him, treating him increasingly as a piece of furniture, and one she didn’t particularly like. He watched her from eyes underlined by drooping lids, his hatred for her smouldering, a living, writhing thing that he found almost invigorating. She was the carer that came most often and she was the carer who angered him most; she was sloppy, insolent and dirty. They were supposed to give him whisky every evening and sometimes she did and sometimes she didn’t, depending on her whim; he suspected she helped herself liberally to his whisky, and who was there to tell on her? He found himself so deeply enraged at being powerless to stop her entering his flat, his tired eyes watered constantly and his left hand, the hand that he could raise, shook. Mary Lavoisier took this merely as another sign of his weakness. Her eyes held only contempt as she watched him lift the hand and grunt in yet another effort to communicate to her. She had long ago given up saying anything in response, even something hideously patronizing, and now contented herself with a smirk that suggested she thought him of a different, lesser species.

And he had to communicate in some way because by now it was an article of faith to him that his information about the white van was pivotal in the investigation; it was he and he alone that would break the investigation. He had seen on the television news about the dead body in the quarry and its likely links to previous murders, although the details had been scanty; from his experience, he knew that this dearth of data was deliberate, that there were things the public were not supposed to know. This was an important case, and he was determined not to fail in what he still saw as his duty. He could not speak and, since he was right-handed, he could not write easily either. He was convinced that he could have scrawled something reasonably legible, but there was never anything around that he could use, neither to write with nor to write on; the fools had tidied it all away and he could not tell them to do otherwise. Hour by hour, day by day his frustration had grown, eating into him, tensing his nerves, acidifying his stomach, bringing him to the point of an agonizing spike of frustration.

The pudding was a butterscotch tart, happily redolent for all of them of primary school meals and therefore of false memories of happiness, innocence and a mythic time when there were no concerns. As Paul poured cream over a second slice, Eisenmenger asked him, ‘You’re writing a dissertation, then?’

Paul nodded. He was tall and thin with curly, slightly reddish hair and thick-framed glasses that gave him an automatic look of academe and, although Eisenmenger had yet to meet him, he had seen photographs of Paul’s father and could see the resemblance. He asked, ‘How’s it going?’

More enthusiastic nodding. ‘Really well, thanks.’ They did not know each other well enough for Paul to use Eisenmenger’s first name naturally.

Not out of an expectation or desire to learn, but out of politeness, Eisenmenger asked, ‘What is it on?’ He had declined seconds of the tart, perhaps subconsciously (he wondered) worrying that his paunch was proving a bar to a perfect relationship with Charlie.

‘The Deep Web.’

Eisenmenger’s curiosity was not peaked beyond more than polite interest. ‘Right . . .’ He nodded, was suddenly aware that he might look as though he knew more than he did, and asked, ‘Which is . . .?’

Paul was an archetypal academic and a young one, to boot. He was enthusiastic about his subject to a point that left the audience bobbing helplessly, not to say drowning, in his wake. ‘It’s something so few people know about . . .’ he began.

Eisenmenger was enjoying the wine; it was the second bottle and the one he had bought; he thought it rather good.

‘Most people don’t realize that when they “surf” the web, they are literally doing just that. At least ninety-five percent of inter-computer traffic is hidden, certainly not reached by standard Internet search engines.’

‘Defence stuff? Commercially sensitive information?’ suggested Charlie. Eisenmenger knew her well enough to suspect that, like him, she was pleasantly relaxed and it was good to see. Compared with recent experience, she seemed almost deliriously happy.

Paul shook his head and even this was animated, even passionate. ‘Nothing like that, Ma.’ This salutation was an affectation to which Eisenmenger had yet to become accustomed. ‘It’s the “Darkweb”; it’s not official in any way; far from it. This is where you find criminals conversing, serious pornography, political subversion—’

Charlie said at once, ‘It sounds very unsavoury, Paul.’

He hastened to provide filial reassurance. ‘Don’t worry, Ma. I’m not becoming polluted.’

Eisenmenger was intrigued. ‘So how do you access this?’

‘You need specific software to access it, but there’s no problem getting hold of it – it’s called Freenet. It’s been available for years.’

Had Eisenmenger not been the man he was, he might have appreciated that Charlie was becoming unsettled; as it was, he was intrigued, and that had taken hold of him. ‘But surely the police know about this? I mean, if there’s criminal activity going on in there?’

Paul finished his extra of treacle tart. ‘This is the cyber equivalent of the wild frontier. In the first place none of the conventional search engines are configured to do anything other than skim the surface and, secondly, we are talking about people who don’t want to be found and take very special care not to be; the Internet and search engines that we all know work on the principle that a website wants to be seen. The authorities know about it, but they can’t actually police it.’

Charlie asked, ‘Have you finished, Paul?’

He had. Eisenmenger stood up to help her clear. ‘I never realized, Paul.’

Paul showed some pleasure. ‘There’s some seriously deep shit going on in there . . .’ He ignored, or did not see, his mother’s look. ‘Snuff sites, that kind of thing.’

Charlie had piled the dessert plates and cutlery, was balancing them on one hand whilst she took the remains of the tart out, but she stopped in shock as he said this. Eisenmenger, cruet and cream in hand asked disbelievingly, ‘Really? Are you sure they’re not just good simulations?’

Paul also was standing. He was clearing the cloth napkins and mats. ‘A lot of them, but a lot of them clearly aren’t. Really sick, perverted stuff. People being killed in all sorts of weird ways.’

‘They’re foreign, though, aren’t they?’ asked Charlie anxiously, as if that kind of thing couldn’t possibly happen in this green and pleasant isle.

But her son could not give her that reassurance. ‘They’re from all over, Ma. Even this country.’

And something clicked in Eisenmenger’s head.

Thus fate intervened in Eisenmenger’s life.

TWENTY-SIX

provided one asked no questions

‘Ignore all that for now.’ Eisenmenger had struck Beverley as uncharacteristically tense since he had first come into her office and this was undoubtedly a command, issued in an abrupt tone. She looked up at him, then caught Lancefield’s eye just before her junior said something. ‘Scroll to the end,’ he told her. ‘You’ll find some hyperlinks at the end. They’re what you’ve got to see.’

And so Beverley did what she was told.

Allen Somersby knew that he had landed a good job. He had worked for Wallace Parker for six years now, coming from an estate in Scotland, one that had been five times bigger and that had been owned by a man who had been brought up to own land, who had been constantly on his back, asking why this had not been done, why that had been done that way, why his profit margins on the arable were so small, why they were getting through so much diesel . . . Finding Wallace Parker’s estate – Wallace Parker, who was rich and knew a lot about city trading and therefore thought he knew a lot about managing an estate – had been like finding paradise. Life was so much easier now. There were so many ways in which to make a bit of money on the side, and Somersby could see no wrong in that; Parker was not the most generous of employers and, accordingly, Somersby was of the opinion that such tightwads were right for the picking. It was a game that had been played from the beginning of time: the employer paid the minimum; all that did was to maximize the ingenuity of the employees, and if that ingenuity was employed in private enterprise, then that was surely only the order of the world.

Thus over the years Somersby had entered into several lucrative but quite unofficial business dealings, although it was only the building itself – a vast, decrepit but impressive early Victorian monstrosity of four floors and many rooms – that interested him; the hundred or so acres that it sat in were just more woodland that he had to manage and that were therefore part of his official duties. A large, derelict and completely isolated building had so much more potential, so much more of interest, provided one asked no questions.

‘Jesus-fucking-Christ.’

The blasphemy was barely a whisper, and more of a plea for mercy than an attempt or desire to disrespect any God. In any case, no one reacted to Lancefield’s uncharacteristic lapse into profanity; not now, not when they were looking, transfixed, at what was unfolding on the computer screen before them.

They were clustered around Beverley’s desk – Beverley in the centre, Lancefield to her right, Fisher to her left; Eisenmenger was behind her, his head leaning against the wall, his eyes looking up at the ceiling. He had been up all night, helped by Paul, searching this terrible place that Paul called the ‘Deepweb’. It had taken until nearly dawn and he had almost given up before he had come across this website and, when he had done so, he had been almost paralysed by the turmoil of his sense of triumph and his sense of shock at what he saw. Having seen this show on one occasion, he was certain that it would suffice for at least one lifetime, perhaps even a dozen or more. He had to listen, though; he still had to hear the sounds, which was perhaps worse.

It was bad. Bad enough to make him feel sick, make him sweat, make him wish that tears were not such a private thing, that he could let them flow down his cheeks as they should, instead of remaining welled in his eyes, dammed by his lids. He could not stop thinking about Helena, about how she had gone; he thought, too, about Tamsin and he had not thought of her for a long time. Tamsin, who had died in his arms of the burns that her mother caused her, who had given him dreams, who had been within him for so long after her death, who had taught him – a pathologist who knew all about death – something about dying. It was his first real experience of the process as opposed to the consequences, and it had been a salutary one; yet here was his second lesson and, beside it, the first paled into a mere sickly pallor.

At last it finished, yet it left stains, foetors, tastes.

TWENTY-SEVEN

‘a glimpse of hell’

After thirty years of growing vegetables, and not infrequently winning prizes at the Bishop’s Cleeve Flower and Vegetable Show, Arnold Dearlove had now passed beyond the competitive phase of his gardening career, and looked on his allotment as more of a social thing, a place to come to garden, yes, but more importantly to pass the time with his comrades who, like him were veterans in the never-ending battle against ragwort, couch grass and bindweed. There was something that stirred his soul when he looked up from digging or pruning or sowing to see the wide sky above him, the buildings and houses far away, the suggestion that the works of man were somehow being kept at bay and, in this small area of twenty acres, nature was allowed at least some play. Having retired fifteen years before from a long career as a small shopkeeper (hardware – he had always had the best gardening tools at trade prices because of this), he had had no fears of languishing, knowing that his beloved allotment would be his saviour. And when Grace had died seven years ago, it had come to his rescue again; the routine of daily labour, of nurturing the seedlings, tending to the fruit trees, caring for soil, combined with the support of his friends had been vital – literally vital – to him. How could he not consider himself to be a happy man?

Every day, as he arrived at eight thirty, there was something to see. The weather varied both on a diurnal basis and on a seasonal basis; autumnal light was so different from that of spring; the smell of rain in the air brought him as much joy as the heat of the sun on the back of his neck; even snow and fog had their beauty, adding something mysterious and alien, yet reassuring to the landscape. Only torrential rain, when the allotments tended to turn to quagmire because of the clay base, and a frost so severe that he could not dig, ever kept him away from his love, and turned him into a man without a cause.

On this particular day, when the air was heavy and hot, and humidity dragged at his feet and at his chest, it was his first day for ten days, as he had only just recovered from a bout of influenza complicated by an irregular heartbeat. The allotments were unusually empty because of the same influenza, and there were only three others working as he arrived, although others would undoubtedly drift in as the morning progressed. He waved as they looked up from their labours and saw him, but none were near enough to talk to; there would be time for that later, when he stopped to have tea from his Thermos and to eat his customary digestive biscuits. He therefore walked at once onto his allotment, past the bonfire, the potatoes, asparagus bed (now tall ferns with developing berries) and the parsnips, to his shed. He felt in his pocket for his key to the padlock, hoping he hadn’t forgotten it again, but he hadn’t. He grabbed hold of the lock and found to his shock that the hasp came away from the door; that, in fact, it had been forced, with clean, untreated wood splinters falling to the soil. He had been robbed again!

He found himself experiencing a mix of anger and sorrow; robberies from the allotment were becoming such a serious problem, and the police never seemed to take them seriously. They asked routine questions in a desultory tone, poked around as if they were bored, then gave him an incident number to use for insurance; he knew, and they knew he knew, that they weren’t going to do any actual police work. And every year his insurance went up; some of those who worked on the allotment were now being refused any insurance at all. He felt it was as much a crime as the burglary itself.

With a sigh and leaden heart he pulled open the shed door to make an inventory of what had been taken, finding to his surprise that nothing had gone. In fact, something had been added, for sitting on his camp stool – and looking for all the world as if it lived there – was the naked body of a dead woman.

‘What the fuck was that?’ asked Beverley, her voice sounded small and distant, even in her own ears.

Eisenmenger was still making eyes at the ceiling; outside the window, Lansdowne Road continued, the weekday morning rush hour dissipating imperceptibly, the sunshine already becoming yellow and hot. There was a long pause before his voice needled into the shocked silence and answered her question. ‘That was, I believe, a scientific snuff video.’ He found it difficult to control his voice as he would want, as he always did; found it difficult to be the detached professional, ever ready to give a considered opinion, to be cold and clinical, to be the oracle.

Lancefield’s frown caused black lines on her face that were frighteningly sharp against the waxen bloodlessness of her flesh. She said slowly, wonderingly, ‘But that was nothing other than a glimpse of hell . . .’

To Lancefield’s observation, Eisenmenger said only, without changing his body position, ‘“Hell is other people”.’

Beverley demanded, ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

Eisenmenger said nothing to that, for in truth he did not really believe the aphorism. They were entering shock, but he was deep in it, for he had had a few hours to consider what they had only just seen. When he had loaded the software and gone to the precise address that Paul had given him, he had found himself drawn into what had been on show. His emotions had flowed from curiosity tinged with disbelief, through disbelief tinged with curiosity, all the way to shocked unbelief mixed perfectly with despair.

The site was presented as a scientific paper, perhaps something out of the New England Journal of Medicine. It was dry, austere, objective, without illustrations, or gimmicks, or advertisements, or even anything other than black text on white. A First Report on Visual, Physiological and Neurophysiological Observations Made During the Moment of Dying.

Just as in all legitimate scientific papers, the text was divided into an Abstract, an Introduction, a Methods section, Results, the Discussion and then Conclusions; there were even references cited throughout and then listed at the very end. As a parody, it failed because it was too good.

The Abstract explained that: ‘Despite the advances in medical knowledge regarding the physiological parameters that are prognostically significant in determining survival from serious disease or trauma, and similar advances made in understanding the biochemical changes that occur shortly after death, there has been little study into the phenomena that occur precisely at the moment of death.’ It was that italicized word that chilled, that hinted softly that here was no mere money-for-hire scientist hack; here was a zealot.

It went on: ‘It is the intention of this series of experiments to fill this lacuna. The hypothesis that is being tested is that there is a soul, that death is not merely an absence of electrophysiological functioning and a breakdown in internal homeostasis, that there is a separation between body and soul, and that life is not merely a consequence of biochemical functioning.’

The introduction went into further detail on this hypothesis, quoting work that Eisenmenger did not recognize. It was the section headed ‘Methods’ that led the reader into the regions of madness, however, where reason slipped from the page and left a blankness that only insanity could fill. It informed those interested that the EEG readings, the blood pressure, the temperature, the oxygen saturation levels, the ECG findings, the jugular venous pressure, and even the electrical resistance of the skin, had been measured before, during and immediately after death.

And it was at this point that Eisenmenger had found he could read no longer and was forced by a compunction borne of fear, horror and even an irresistible salaciousness to turn to the hyperlinks at the end of the paper. Which was where the real awfulness had begun. It was these hyperlinks that had just finished on Beverley’s office computer, that had presented the ‘visual’ results of the experiments . . .

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘worrying news’

Neither Tom Sheldon nor Allan Somersby had said anything for several minutes, but neither minded this silence between them; a tractor had driven past the cottage, and there was the dry sound of a crow in summer, but apart from that the room had been quiet. There were no clocks ticking out the time of the universe, no radio broadcasting one-sided merriment, no sound of a neighbour’s baby crying. It was dark, too, the evening dying beyond the dense foliage that shaded the house even in the brightest of noonday suns. And there were scents . . .

A rambling, run-wild, decadent honeysuckle lurked just beyond the flecking paint of the cottage windows, excreting a turgid, almost oleaginous perfume that mingled with lesser tones of damp, dust, mouse and fertilizer. The chair in which he was sitting was old and uncomfortable, although Sheldon knew that it was more welcoming than his visitor’s seat; Sheldon somehow fitted into it, presumably by a process of long years of slow integration and mutual accommodation. Somersby’s seat was a thing that looked well over a hundred years old and beyond all available medical intervention; it looked mean, with lumps and springs in all the wrong places that were ready to bite; it was worn and dirty too.

Eventually Somersby said, ‘This is worrying news.’

Tom Sheldon looked at him, but only after a long pause did he say somewhat grudgingly and with little tone of remorse, ‘I’m sorry.’

Somersby sighed angrily. ‘It’s not your fault.’ It was clear from his tone that this was not necessarily his opinion of the truth of the situation.

‘It was fucking bad luck.’

Somersby grunted. He was looking at his thin, white hand. ‘You’re sure they were outside the inner fence?’ he asked slowly, his voice conveying tiredness, but the tiredness of a man who has done much and fears he might have to do much more yet.

‘Yes.’ Sheldon said this sourly, affronted that Somersby treated him like an idiot all the time.

‘There’s no way they can get into the Grange?’ persisted Somersby.

The response to this was nothing more than a grunt and a slight movement of his thickset shoulders in an attempt at a shrug. Sheldon didn’t know and didn’t think he should be expected to know. Somersby eyed him contemptuously. Sheldon was not his idea of an ideal business colleague, being woefully short of functioning stuff between the ears, but necessity was a harsh mistress; anyway, Sheldon was big and strong, and had the distinct advantage of being pleasantly free from inhibition when it came to violence, and Somersby could always use a man like that. ‘Make a check of the perimeter next time you are there. Make sure that there is no possibility anyone can get into the inner grounds.’

‘Why me?’ This was posed resentfully.

‘Because I’m busy, and you’re not.’ In these words there was the tone of a man who had come to expect obedience.

In Sheldon’s silence, there was the tone of a man who did not give it easily.

Beverley was clearly intensely angry, but Eisenmenger did not mind her anger, could not find it within himself to be affronted, for he knew that it was just a way of coping. After a final perusal of the ceiling – a rather boring landscape and therefore of some relief to him, given his barely subdued sense of hysteria – he at last looked down at the three police officers. ‘You have just seen a man beheaded on a guillotine, a woman die similarly; you have seen a man cooked slowly in an electric chair, and then a woman die quickly in the same one. It was done, if we are to accept the murderer’s manifesto, in the name of science. When you read the paper that accompanies these recordings, you will be led to believe that what we have here is nothing less than an attempt to determine whether or not there is a soul, and what happens to the individual at the point of death.’

‘Scientific?’ said Beverley scathingly. ‘You mean this madman is trying to convince us that he’s working in the name of science?’

‘Absolutely,’ replied Eisenmenger after careful consideration and with slow nodding. Then: ‘Yes. That’s about right. He thinks of himself as a scientist.’

Fisher, whose experience of science had ended well before he had failed a GCSE in the subject, and who read the Star every morning in a state of gullible grace concerning the latest research on such matters, asked incredulously, ‘You mean a boffin? Some guy in a lab coat is doing this?’

‘Fisher, don’t open your mouth and then I might forget you’re a cretin.’ Beverley didn’t even bother looking at her sergeant as she sprayed him with this acidic advice. She had returned to the introductory web page. Of Eisenmenger she asked, ‘It looks fairly convincing. Is it?’

‘At first glance, yes. It could have been reproduced from any reputable scientific or medical journal, save that the author is not named. It is in the correct format, and it presents the arguments for the research in a very structured, reasoned way.’

Lancefield’s voice was of a slightly higher register than usual as she asked quietly, ‘Reasoned?’

Eisenmenger was without compunction as he rounded on her and replied at once, ‘Yes, reasoned. Ask the psychologists. This man – woman, perhaps – is not chaotic or disordered in his thinking at all; in fact, he is almost certainly far more structured than you are, than I am, than everyone else is. He is a slave to his thinking, cannot escape it; he has lost free will, in effect, and with it a conscience. It’s because he is almost robotic in his thinking that he is capable of atrocity, just as a computer would see no difference between the killing of an ant or the killing of a baby.’

Beverley said, ‘So we can assume that he is a scientist?’

Fisher may or may not have been trying to make a joke when he murmured, ‘A mad scientist.’ No one took any notice because there was a knock on the door and a female uniformed constable came in at once. She presented Beverley with a note, waited for the response – a curt nod without word or change of expression – then left. She looked across at Eisenmenger, the paper still in her hand, waiting for his answer.

‘That’s one of the things that bothers me.’

‘Meaning?’

‘This murderer clearly has academic training and has read scientific literature – the primary research stuff, not the popular journalistic stuff – but I can’t believe that he’s a working scientist, nor ever has been.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘He is testing a hypothesis, not a null hypothesis.’ General confusion met this. He went on: ‘He isn’t thinking like a scientist, more like one versed in the humanities. Someone who is intelligent and used to academia, but who does not understand the philosophy of science.’

It was left to Fisher to ask, ‘What’s a null hypothesis?’ There was a refreshing confidence in the innocence of his tone, one that said that he was not ashamed of his lack of knowledge.

Eisenmenger stood up, embarrassed because he was aware that he was going to sound didactic and tedious and probably unintelligible. ‘Science works by examining data – whether generated from previous experiment or from observation of natural phenomena – devising a hypothesis to explain the data, then devising an experiment to test that hypothesis.’

Lancefield asked, ‘Isn’t that what this bastard’s doing?’.

‘But the hypothesis that is generated by the data must be a null hypothesis.’

Fisher was used to hitting people who tried to be clever with him, but contented himself with a frown in deference to his newly acquired rank. It was left to Lancefield to ask, ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’

‘The scientist conceives his hypothesis – this is what he believes to be an explanation for what he has observed – but he must avoid bias at all costs when he performs his experiments; he must be objective and detached.’

‘You can’t get more detached than this joker,’ pointed out Lancefield.

Eisenmenger had suspected he wouldn’t explain things very well and the facial expression of his audience told him he had been prescient; Fisher looked as if a magician had just plucked an egg from his anus, Lancefield was perplexed and irritated, and Beverley wasn’t even obviously in the room. ‘The experimenter must try to reduce any room for subjective interpretation to a minimum; in order to achieve this, it is not the hypothesis that is tested, but its antithesis. If I think that drinking while driving causes an increase in accidents, then my experiment must be so designed as to try to prove that it doesn’t. I then look at the results and, if they suggest that drink-driving does result in an increased risk of accident, I abandon that hypothesis.’

Fisher bore the same expression now as when he tried to do the cryptic crossword in the newspaper. Lancefield demanded, ‘Isn’t the same thing? You disproved one idea, proved another.’

‘No!’ Eisenmenger himself was surprised at the vehemence of his voice. He recognized stress in himself. ‘No, inspector. I have neither proved nor disproved anything. I have merely made one, infinitesimally small, step in the direction of Truth; but I have done so in a manner that is as disengaged as I can make it. I must now carry on to elicit further information. It appears that there may a relationship between drinking whilst driving, and accidents, but that does not prove causation, merely linkage. Further, interventional research must be done.’

Lancefield’s mouth was opening, Fisher’s merely open, when Beverley said suddenly, ‘A single piece of observational research proves nothing. Is that it?’

Eisenmenger took the line much as a drowning solo yachtsman in the middle of the South Atlantic might do. ‘That’s it. It doesn’t matter how big the sample, how long it took; a single experiment proves nothing.’ He then saw the look in her eye, was immediately cast into a shadow thrown by a combination of puzzlement, dread and precognition. Without taking his eyes from her, he carried on: ‘It promises at the end that this is merely the first of a series of investigations. And we already have one dead body not included here.’

There was a depth and density of silence that met this, until the phone rang, making them all jump, screaming into the silence that had fallen onto them. Beverley picked it up, said nothing as she listened; her face might have been overdosed on Botox. There was a dreadful inevitability – a feeling of a great rock about to crash, of a doom approaching, about to grab them, rip them to shreds – as they waited. Then she put the phone down and sat staring at it, her expression still paralysed, and no one dared asked.

Eventually she said tiredly, almost as if asleep, ‘They’ve just found another body.’

‘Where is it?’ asked Lancefield.

‘On some allotments in Churchdown.’

‘With or without its head?’ asked Eisenmenger. She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again; she hadn’t thought to ask. He murmured, ‘Or has it been cooked, I wonder.’

She snapped, ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

She thought for a moment, but just a moment; she had been transformed from the figure of pathos that she had presented just before. ‘First, we go to the mortuary. Then we go to Churchdown.’

TWENTY-NINE

Melanie often partook of the ‘jazz woodbines’

Melanie Whittaker had waited a long time for her daughter, Evangeline, and she was not in the best of moods. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded without preliminary greeting, without even waiting for Evangeline to get completely through the glass doors of the school’s science block. Evangeline was very like her mother, except for the sixteen years’ difference in their ages; this difference could not, however, be disguised by modern cosmetics, despite Melanie’s strenuous efforts. They were both, though, obese with small, porcine eyes, a slightly snubbed nose and full lips that could not quite cover their incisors (which in Melanie’s case were nicotine stained). They had similar taste in clothes, which was unfortunate for Evangeline’s mother because younger fashions did not suit her. They also had similar, incendiary temperaments.

Evangeline had been forced to stay behind after school because of a detention that should have finished fifteen minutes before; she was late from this because she had taken the opportunity to purchase something enjoyable but illegal from one of the school cleaners – a not irregular occurrence – but she was not about to tell her mother that. Melanie often partook of the ‘jazz woodbines’ but drew the line at that; some illicit drugs, in her opinion, were less illegal than others. Evangeline said impassively, ‘I was looking for a book.’

Anyone who knew Evangeline might have detected a lie here, and her mother certainly knew her daughter. ‘And the rest.’

Evangeline shrugged; her mother’s unbelief was of little consequence to her. ‘Where’s the fucking car?’ she demanded petulantly.

‘Round the fucking corner,’ was the witty rejoinder.

Thus they expressed their love for each other, just as they had always done, walking away from the tatty, decayed beacon of educational excellence that was Evangeline’s school. They both smoked, each of them plucking a cigarette from their own packet without any thought that they should share; they did not talk, as if smoking were enough, as if smoking were a means of communication and speech had become redundant.

The car did not have remote or even central locking; Evangeline’s mother made a point of climbing in first before reaching across to let her daughter in, and doing it in a leisurely fashion. Evangeline’s first act was to turn the radio to Radio One and up the volume; she did not catch what her mother said, but then did not try to. The twenty-minute journey home did not produce a single word of conversation between mother and offspring. There was, as usual, no space outside their Whaddon house and Melanie was forced to park a hundred yards away and, as usual, she spent several minutes doing so badly; the car ended up a yard away from the kerb at the back, a foot away at the front. Evangeline didn’t bother to comment and exited the car as soon as it was stationary; the slam of the door could be heard three streets away.

When Melanie finally made it to the front door, Evangeline was standing in front of it, arms folded, lips pouted, jaws chewing enthusiastically on her gum. ‘Where’s your key?’ mother demanded of daughter.

‘Dunno.’

‘Have you lost it?’

Evangeline said casually, ‘It’s in my other jacket.’

That this contradicted her previous statement and that it was, in any case, said in a tone that betrayed what was patently a falsehood, did not escape her perspicacious mother. ‘Fucking liar.’

As she pushed past her daughter, she groped in her bright yellow handbag for her own key, her form reflected blurrily in fourteen of the sixteen small squares of frosted glass in the door; cardboard clumsily taped into place completed the array. She opened the door and went straight into the minute hallway; Evangeline followed almost at once, but collided with her mother almost at once

‘Get out the way, can’t—’ she began, but she did not finish the sentence, for she had seen what had caused her mother to stop in such an inconvenient place.

It was a hooded man and he held a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun on them as he stood at the bottom of the stairs.

Two large spiders watched Eisenmenger with sixteen eyes from their webs, one in each corner of the rickety, cramped shed. He did not like spiders and he found them distracting, almost as if they were judging his competence. The mouse droppings under the camp stool on which the body sat were much less disturbing to him; he felt more at home with mammals, preferring their standard blueprint of symmetry about a single plane with all the external organs and appendages coming in pairs. He kept knocking over things, too. A stainless steel garden spade, fork and hoe; a rusting watering can hanging precariously from an equally rusting nail; an aged Thermos flask; all went over as he tried to examine the body. There were odours though, and not just from the body which had started to decompose, perhaps in protest at having to sit in a shed on an allotment for several days. Potash, manure, creosote and perhaps many other things smote his olfactory membranes. The day being humid, it all added up to being not a pleasant place to be. He went about his job with his accustomed dedication, though.

When he emerged into the bright sunlight, he was perspiring freely. It was with something approaching Schadenfreude that he nodded to the forensic team that they might now perform their tasks in the shed. Beverley was occupied talking to Mr Dearlove in the back of a police car, so he went to his own car, took off his oversuit, put it and his bag in the boot, then sat in the front seat to make notes, the car door open. After fifteen minutes, Beverley appeared, looming over him. ‘Well?’ she demanded. She was curt, clearly under pressure and he knew better than to be anything other than professional and brief in his reply.

‘You’ll have spotted that she hasn’t been beheaded.’ If she were going to react to that, he pre-empted her. ‘Nor has she been cooked alive.’

She was in no mood for frivolity. ‘Can you tell me anything useful?’

He considered; it was so characteristic of him, she thought, to be so careful, unlike some of his colleagues; it was not, she knew, because of cussedness but because of a desire never to be wrong. ‘She was bound in the same way as the others – there are abrasions around the wrists, ankles and neck, but there are also burns to the wrists and forehead, in a manner similar to Willoughby.’

‘But you’re sure she wasn’t cooked?’

‘No, not cooked, but I think she might have been electrocuted. A sudden high current, this time.’

She shook her head. She couldn’t see how this particular maniac was thinking, and it bothered her. ‘Anything else?’

‘Been in that shed a while. Some days, I’d guess.’ This was about as precise as Eisenmenger ever got when judging the time of a death.

She nodded. ‘Mr Dearlove has been unwell. Hasn’t tended his vegetables since a week ago Tuesday.’

‘Apart from that, very little more at the moment. I’d estimate her to be late middle-aged, perhaps in her early forties, and no other obvious injuries of significance. Other than that . . .’

‘Wait for the autopsy?’

‘Exactly.’

THIRTY

and he was still wiping his own bottom

Rebecca Lancefield let herself into her house at about a quarter to eight, tired and feeling slightly sick because she could not get the thought of the body out of her head, seemed to hear the sounds of his death, the stench of it, even; she now found herself suddenly understanding how ghosts could perhaps come into existence, how they might be resonances of such awful, horrid death. The house was darkening and seemed emptier than she had ever known it before. It was a north-facing terrace house in Longlevens; she did not like it, but she hardly ever seemed to be in it, at least not when she was awake.

She ought, she knew, have called in on her parents on the way home, but she couldn’t face it; not tonight. Accordingly, having taken off her coat, slipped off her shoes and made herself a cup of strong instant coffee, she phoned instead. Her father, of course, answered.

‘Dad?’

‘Hello, Becky.’ He sounded just as he always did, and just as tired.

‘Sorry I didn’t look in. I’ve only just got in. We’re in—’

He cut her short. ‘Don’t worry.’ If she had ever hoped that her relationship with her father was a thing that could be repaired, she had long ago given up, but all the same she found now that he still had the power to wound her. Her mother’s condition had only worsened the schism; indeed she could chart a direct correlation between the severity of her mother’s dementia and the degree of sullen hostility that enveloped all her dealings with her father.

She took a deep breath both physically and mentally. ‘How’s Mum been?’

‘Oh, not too bad.’ She knew that he was lying; there were never any good days with her mother; not now. He was telling her that he could cope, that she was surplus to requirements.

‘Has she been eating?’

‘A little.’

‘Has she been happy today?’

He hesitated. ‘She was until she saw something on the television that upset her. Something about horses.’

‘Oh, Dad . . .’

‘It wasn’t my fault.’ He sounded at once defensive. ‘It was one of those midday magazine programs and I was in the kitchen clearing the lunch things when they started this piece about point-to-point racing.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She began to scream and threw her coffee cup at the television. Luckily it missed, but there was a bit of a mess on the wall and on the carpet. Nothing serious.’

Becky’s brother, Tim, had been killed when he had been thrown from a horse thirteen years before; now in the corrosive grip of severe Alzheimer’s disease, her mother relived the pain at the smallest reminder. Ironically, she could date the degradation of the father-daughter relationship to that event; not that it did her much good to know why and when, not when she could do as little about it as she could about her mother’s illness.

She asked, ‘Is she calmer now?’

‘Yes, thank God. She had an accident, though.’

An accident. Becky almost laughed; her mother was now so far beyond continence, these were no longer accidents, they were normality. ‘Have you done anything about respite care?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Dad . . .’

‘I don’t see the need.’

He always said that, although she could see quite clearly that he was completely exhausted caring for his wife, he was locked into the behaviour, as much a prisoner of the situation as his wife was. She was locked in by disease, he by pride, though; both were strong, too strong to be fought successfully.

‘You must do, Dad. You badly need a break. Just for a few days.’

‘No.’

‘Why don’t you let me do more? I’m a bit busy at the moment, but in a couple of weeks, I could take some leave. I’m due some.’

He said immediately, ‘I saw on the news that you’ve got a couple of murders on the patch.’ Beverley had given a news conference that afternoon; to Rebecca’s disappointment, she had done a good job. The grislier details of the deaths had been skirted round. ‘Your career comes first.’ He didn’t mean it, she knew. It was a way of changing the subject because he was trying to shut her out. She wasn’t going to be put off so soon.

‘Even so, I promise I’ll try to get over tomorrow evening, to give you at least a brief rest.’

‘There’s no need. She won’t recognize you.’

Lancefield suddenly found tears; she knew of course that her mother would not recognize her, but that wasn’t the point, and he also knew it. She would be visiting as much for herself as her mother, and his insistence that she was not required was just dull spite. ‘Whatever, Dad. I’ll be over as soon as I can.’

‘If you want.’ His voice had become cold.

She resolved to make the time at all costs, no matter what.

In the end, events dictated that it was a promise made in vain; Rebecca Lancefield would be too busy to visit her unloving parents.

Fisher made the first breakthrough. He had been given the task of searching the files for likely candidates amongst the missing persons, a tedious job but not nearly as tedious as it had once been, before computerization. Then it would have meant pulling physical files, relying on a complex system of cross-referencing that required a degree to understand and a genius to administer, yet that had had only a police sergeant looking after it. Even now, after a two-year procurement process and a six-month bedding-in period in which the system had crashed seven times and they had somehow missed three victims amongst the many thousands in the database, Fisher suspected that he had been given this task because no one would be surprised if he cocked it up, that he was once again being used as a patsy, but he had come to accept his fate. He had made it to sergeant, after all, which was one rank higher than he’d ever expected, than most of his colleagues had ever expected him to make, and all he’d ever seemed to do was take the shit squarely in the face whenever it came; it might not have been the kind of strategy employed by a high-flyer, but he reckoned it was worth persevering with, at least for the time being.

And so he spent some hours contentedly, if not happily, at his task. He had to input the details of each of the victims, as far as they were known, then the program would produce possible matches. It was useful to a certain extent, but he was rapidly coming to appreciate the truth underlying the IT aphorism, GIGO – ‘garbage in, garbage out’. They knew so little about the victims that the ‘matches’ were loose, still requiring a huge amount of trawling through tedious details, something that was far from Fisher’s forte. He was therefore pleasantly surprised when he came across the description of Malcolm Willoughby, who had been working as a barman in Swindon Village until a few days before. It was his widowed mother who had reported him missing when he had failed to answer his mobile on numerous occasions; when she had rung the pub, she had been alarmed to be told that he had disappeared without notice and left no forwarding address. Her description of him included the fact that he had a tattoo on his back of a dragon.

Fisher had the feeling that this might just be the first step on the ladder of promotion.

But then, every week he had the feeling that he was going to win the lottery and have people to do everything for him, and he was still wiping his own bottom.

They stood side by side over the corpse that was now turned on its front, as Beverley held a photograph out at arm’s length that they were now both peering at. Lancefield stood to Beverley’s left and slightly behind, Fisher in a symmetrical position to Eisenmenger’s right; there was an air of triumph about him, one that was difficult to define but that was undoubtedly present, like a faint whiff of body odour. Lancefield had the distinct impression he was anticipating some fairly hefty thanks. When Beverley said, ‘It’s the same tattoo,’ Lancefield thought that the atmosphere became noticeably more oppressive.

‘I would say so,’ agreed Eisenmenger.

She turned to Fisher immediately. ‘Right, I want to know everything about Malcolm Willoughby by this time tomorrow, by which I mean everything. I don’t give a shit if you think it’s irrelevant, because I don’t give a shit what you think. Got that?’

Which was all that Fisher got by way of congratulation.

Sammy Carter was cooking tea when his son, Shaun, came in. Sammy was short and burly; although he had endured thirty-five years of working outdoors, and his face and hands were consequently weathered to leather, his eyes were still as bright and blue as the day he had married, and he had still retained a kindly smile. His cooking repertoire was not broad; neither was it wide; indeed, it could not be said to be anything other than shallow. Eggs, rice, oven chips and things in tins tended to form the outermost parameters of his culinary horizon; when he was planning to spend the evening in the local, this horizon contracted to a frozen, ready-cooked meal for two out of Lidl.

Shaun was taller than his father, but just as burly. He was also less easy-going and, his father admitted to himself sometimes as he worked, more arrogant; just like his mother, he thought. During the course of the year, Sammy spent a lot of time alone in his job – in the tractor or perhaps fencing – and he thereby had a lot of time to consider matters; over the years he had done a great deal of consideration of a good many matters. This was not deep, philosophical rumination – he did not, for instance, wonder about the significance of the God particle, or why increasing economic prosperity did not result in increasing personal contentment – but he did wonder about his lot in life, about how his life had changed so dramatically fifteen years before when Carol had died, leaving him to bring up Shaun on his own, about how difficult things had been, about how Betty had helped him through the early days, become something of a grandmother to the boy. He had always been a difficult youngster. Sammy knew well that, in his absence whilst he worked on the estate, Betty had had trouble bringing Shaun round to something even vaguely resembling proper behaviour at the start, and he knew that she had not succeeded entirely; there still remained in Shaun’s eyes a glimmer of defiance, spark of contrariness. He contented herself with the knowledge that it was only a glimmer, only a spark, that without Betty’s guidance, Shaun might have gone seriously wrong.

He did worry, though, that his son had yet to find his place in life. A job on the estate had been his for the asking, but aside from an interest in shooting, Shaun had never really been interested in agricultural pursuits. He had gone through a series of false starts – car mechanic, work on a building site, mortician and, most recently and disastrously, charity worker – and was now employed as general labour in Silverstone’s, a local junk yard.

Shaun, as usual, was less than garrulous. He barely grunted as he came in; Sammy had long ago given up asking him to take his shoes off when he came in the house, was constantly aware that his wife would not have taken defiance as a reason to stay silent; he was aware, too, at how big his son was, how there was an ever present sense of roiling about him. ‘Good day?’

Shaun shrugged and Sammy, used to having his questions become rhetorical by means of indifference, said, ‘Supper’ll be ready in about ten minutes. There’s tea in the pot.’

‘OK.’ His son had picked up the newspaper and was reading the back page.

‘How was work?’

Shaun shrugged by way of an answer; it was a perfect example of non-verbal communication and it said, Fuck off.

But Sammy was worried. ‘I was talking today to Barry Drew.’ Barry Drew was a man about town, a man of many talents, a man you called when you wanted things found like beaters for the shoot, or things done like gypsies moved on, or things removed that were in the way. He dealt quite frequently with Silverstone’s.

‘Yeah?’ This was a thing of total disinterest; the Sun’s football reporters had apparently produced copy of exceptional quality.

Sammy’s four eggs seemed to require more than usual attention as he stared at them and gently slopped hot vegetable oil over them. He went on: ‘The recession’s hitting hard.’

No reaction.

‘He said that a lot of the firms he did business with were having difficulties . . .’

Shaun turned the page without looking up.

Sammy might have been overcooking the eggs, but his mind had wandered. He said after something of a deep breath, ‘Silverstone’s are having trouble, aren’t they, Shaun?’ His tone was almost pleading, an attempt to enter his son’s world that, despite their close proximity for so many years, was an alien place.

Shaun at last looked up at his father, his face a mix of controlled anger and clearly fabricated disingenuousness. ‘A bit.’

‘Barry said that there was a lot of short-time working.’

His son’s face clouded briefly then he shrugged. ‘For some. Not for me.’

Sammy stared at the eggs that were now distinctly brown and crispy around the edges for a moment, then he nodded. ‘Good.’

Thereafter, their meal went as it usually did; that is to say, wordlessly, except for the chatter of Drivetime on Radio Two. After it was finished and Shaun had cleared the table in line with their unwritten contract, Sammy was left alone as Shaun went to his room before going out to the pub. He washed up slowly and methodically as he had always done, his hands encased in yellow rubber gloves, but his face was even more thoughtful than usual.

Barry Drew had been quite certain that Shaun Carter was on short-time working.

He wondered where his son was spending his extra spare time.

THIRTY-ONE

he could die with some dignity restored

Consciousness came to Len Barker slowly, like a warm blanket, a thing that stifled him as it gave him life. With it there was intense pain that he could not localize, together with nausea and giddiness. He was on his side, on the hard, cold floor and it was dark. What had happened? For some moments he found no recall, no light of any kind either around him or within him. Had he been attacked? He felt as if he had been kicked, certainly. Gradually, though, his eyes took in the darkness, made dim sense of it. He was in his small kitchen, close to the fridge-freezer, his head a thing of pain and, he now appreciated, blood; it covered half his face, had pooled around on the floor; he could not move to touch his scalp but he was fairly sure there was a deep gash in it.

He began to remember. He had been unable to sleep, so consumed with the idea that he had to make someone listen to him about the white van; he had finally decided that he would have to do something about it. His sudden recollection of the shopping list in the kitchen had seemed like a brilliant idea; it was a small whiteboard on the wall by the cooker, used by the carers when he was running low on stuff. Once a week on Friday, whoever was the carer on duty would travel into Ledbury and get whatever was on it. If he could get from his bedroom and down the short corridor, the whiteboard would be within easy reach. He would have to walk, though, because he could not control the wheelchair and anyway it was out of reach in another room.

At first he had thought he wouldn’t even be able to get out of bed, let alone stagger from room to room. There were handles suspended from the ceiling to allow him to pull himself up the bed, but actually sitting upright and then swinging his legs over was a wholly different proposition. He did not know how long it took, but he knew very well indeed how much strain and effort it required; he felt as if he had wrestled a python by the time he sat on the side of the mattress, the covering sheet rucked into a ball, his useless right arm hanging down, curled, beside him. Thankfully, it was a small room and he could reach out with his left hand to touch the wardrobe handle; by pulling on it he reckoned to be able to lever himself up onto his feet, then use it as a crutch. He could then pull himself towards it, and begin his nocturnal journey by leaning on first the wardrobe, then the chest of drawers, then the door frame and so out into the hall.

Everything almost went pear-shaped from the first. As he pulled on the wardrobe handle to lift himself off the bed, the whole thing began to pivot forward, threatening to pin him between its bulk and the bed, crushing the breath out of him; he had hoped that there would be more than enough in it, especially in the two deep drawers at its base, to take his weight, but it was a close run thing, a moment of uncertainty, when it could have gone either way. Eventually, though, he was up, the wardrobe was back at the horizontal, and suddenly he felt elated. Months of frustration at being impotent and patronized made this small victory a significant one for him; he still possessed some independence.

And the journey from there to the door and beyond, although slow and exhausting and jerky, proved similarly exhilarating. With every shuffle forward, he gained confidence and regained pride, stood a little straighter, became a little happier, despite the thin, cold stream of spittle that would not stop oozing down from the corner of his drooping mouth. He clung to the scuffed, cool emulsion of the hallway, feeling more and more a man again. He reached the open doorway of the small kitchen, stood there for a moment, aware of how cold the flat was, breathing heavily, feeling tired despite his triumph, then moved forward again, intending to stagger the short distance to the nearby work surface where the whiteboard had been fitted to the wall. It would require only a controlled fall.

He misjudged the distance, perhaps through overconfidence, perhaps through exhaustion, perhaps through increasing hypothermia. He had fallen forward, struck his head upon the sharp edge of the cooker and lost consciousness at once.

Once again, he came to almost imperceptibly, the deep darkness and cavernous silence leaving little evidence of what was unconsciousness, what was awareness. He felt so stiff, so numb, so groggy, yet not at all cold.

He had once attended a post-mortem on a man who had died of exposure and the pathologist had told him that in the later stages the victim loses all sense of cold, feels only tired. Was that happening to him? How could he die of exposure in his own home?

All the feelings of resentment and frustration and anger returned to him, his previous nascent impression of progress, of dawning belief that he was not written off, not forever a cripple, gone into a vapour as insubstantial as his dreams. He had to let them know what he saw. He had to. He would not let this fucking awful stroke beat him, not at this, not when it came to police work.

For a long time – he knew not how long – he lay there, trying to overcome the helplessness, to use his brain in a way that had become foreign to him since the stroke. He could not hope to reach the whiteboard now, nor any piece of paper, let alone writing tool. He would have to use whatever he could to leave a message. If he lived until morning, then all well and good; if he didn’t, and he could let them know what he knew, then he could die with some dignity restored.

Beverley descended on Fisher as soon as she got into the police station; his knowledge of the works of Byron was such that he had never heard of the Assyrian and his descent upon the fold but, had it been otherwise, he might well have spotted similarities. ‘What have you got for me?’ There was a glint in her eye that told even Fisher – his knowledge of body language as meagre as his knowledge of poetry – that she wanted results. She loomed over him as he sat at his desk in the office he shared with Lancefield, the window behind her so that she acquired a spectral, deathly appearance, a thing of wrathful shadow.

Fisher was slow and he was woefully short of imagination, but he was methodical. He had written down in untidy, sprawling, misspelled handwriting the products of his labours. He found this, put it flat on the desk, cleared his throat and began to read while Beverley settled herself in a chair facing him. ‘I’ve interviewed his mother—’ he began.

‘For fuck’s sake, I hope you trod carefully, Fisher. You didn’t go in there telling her she had lost her only child without first checking we’ve got the right body, did you?’

Fisher was hurt. ‘I got her to show me a recent photograph first. It is him.’

If he thought to receive some praise, he was to be disappointed, and not for the first time. ‘Go on,’ she commanded.

‘Malcolm Willoughby was twenty-six years old. Cheltenham born and bred, until two years ago, he was living at home with his mother; his father died seven years ago. He left school at sixteen with two GCSEs, then drifted through a series of dead-end jobs, mainly bar-keeping; his mother says that the death of his father affected him very badly. She says that he had no enemies and everyone liked him.’

As far as Beverley was concerned, any character reference from a mother about a son might just as well be written on toilet paper and used immediately. ‘When did she last see him?’

‘Six days ago. He was working as a barman at The Grey Goose.’

‘That shithole on the Tewkesbury Road?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Have you spoken to them?’

‘Willoughby disappeared four days ago. It wasn’t that he was dismissed, or anything. He just didn’t turn up for the morning shift.’

‘Nothing untoward happened? No fight, or anything?’

Fisher shook his head.

‘Have you checked the databases?’

Thankfully, Fisher had and was able to say that he had. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ she didn’t believe it. People like Malcolm Willoughby – people who failed at all the hurdles that you had leap to function in modern western society – inevitably drifted into crime, no matter how petty, no matter how pathetic.

Fisher was confident. ‘No.’

She was impressed by his certainty. ‘OK,’ she said, deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt, happy that she would be able to flay him and then incinerate the remains if he had missed something. She ran through what she had been told, sifted it for gold and found nothing. She was understandably disappointed, though; surely there was something in this little man’s past to indicate why someone had taken the trouble to broil him?

She turned abruptly and left Fisher with his thoughts, such as they were; she went straight up to her office where Lancefield was just putting the phone down. ‘Who was that?’ she demanded.

‘Press. They’ve heard something about the body on the allotments.’

‘You didn’t tell them anything?’ Beverley’s tone was threatening.

‘I said that I didn’t know a thing about it. They asked where you were and I said I didn’t know.’

Mollified, Beverley nodded. ‘Good.’ She sat down, beckoned Lancefield to do likewise; then she explained what Fisher had learned.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Go through those clips on the web posting. Go through them again and again and again. See if you can spot anything that might identify the location.’

‘It’s got to be isolated.’

‘And I’d wager large.’

Lancefield frowned. ‘A rich psychopath?’

Beverley snorted. ‘Maybe. Or a poor one who’s squatting in a large house. Or one who’s a servant of a rich man. Or maybe it’s a hangar, or an abandoned farm, or any one of a million possibilities.’

Lancefield took the hint. She left to follow orders.

THIRTY-TWO

a shiny bright, smooth and almost beautiful needle

There is nothing touching in the fact that Melanie and Evangeline Whittaker died together in a parody of the companionship that they had failed to find in life. They had come to – Evangeline first, her mother some twenty minutes later after her daughter’s loud, incessant and hoarse shouting – finding themselves facing each other at two ends of a long, dark corridor. They were both strapped into wooden chairs that were bolted to the floor. Melanie was groggy, confused and her daughter had to shout again. ‘Mum!’

‘Angel?’ She had not used this term of endearment for five years. There was fear in her voice and it made her sound pathetic; it was her curse that Melanie Whittaker somehow always sounded wrong; when she became too excited, she sounded raucous; when she was angry, she became shrill; now she was scared witless, she sounded merely witless.

‘What’s happening, Mum?’ Evangeline’s voice was cloyed with tears; she was so terrified that even years of disdain for her mother counted for nothing.

Her mother, of course, did not know, could not even find the words to admit this. Confused, she merely pulled ineffectually at the metal bonds, only dimly aware that they were naked, not at all aware that they were covered in sensors and electrodes, that they had been shaved. She did not even appreciate that her left forearm hurt terribly, at least not until Evangeline asked again, and in a voice that was barely less than a screech, ‘Mum? Mum? What the fuck’s going on?’ Melanie had never been a particularly sharp knife and the present circumstances proved far too tough for her to cut through; she could barely articulate, barely even concentrate. Evangeline asked (and perhaps it was more out of hope than expectation of a useful, coherent answer), ‘What’s with the tubes?’

‘Uh?’ Melanie Whittaker frowned, unable to understand such a complex question.

‘The tubes . . . in our arms.’

Melanie looked down – still frowning, still confused – and saw through clouds of bewilderment that crudely inserted into her left forearm was a shiny bright, smooth and almost beautiful needle, as wide as a knitting needle; it was strapped into place with parcel tape and led to a clear plastic tube that snaked away to large glass jar on the floor.

And it hurt, she came slowly to realize.

God, how it hurt . . .

There was a click that Evangeline heard, her mother didn’t. The girl looked around, unable to see its source, then noticing the tube leading from her mother’s arm; it was now red and this redness was splashing remorselessly into the jar by her feet. She looked down to see that her own tube, her own jar, was similarly filling with blood.

At which she point she screamed.

THIRTY-THREE

‘at least she died quickly’

Eisenmenger was not insensitive enough to be unaware that Beverley was stressed; as he gave her the results of the body on the allotment’s autopsy, he could hear her staccato, almost reflexive replies, and hear in them someone who was waiting to receive an Epiphany; and hear in them someone who was realizing that he was not its bearer. When she asked him how the search of people with mesothelioma was going – and, perhaps more to the point, he admitted that he had not yet started it – she exploded down the phone line at him.

‘Why the fuck not?’

‘I told you, Beverley. There are ethical considerations.’

‘This is murder, John. This isn’t a debate at the Royal Society of fucking Medicine. This isn’t an intellectual game, a parlour conversation, a late-night television chat show.’

‘I do know that.’

‘The fuck you do. You’re letting me down, John. Big time.’

She had slammed the phone down on him with that, leaving him alone with a feeling of failure. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he should stop being so limp-wristed. He had, after all, gone into dangerously unethical territory before in his career and come out alive. Perhaps he should once again consider the greater good.

Without conscious consideration, he found himself setting up the search of the pathology database almost without realizing it. It was a laborious process, since the Trust computer system was in IT terms primitive, pre-Stone Age, the era of slick user interfaces far, far in its future; he would have to run the search overnight because there wasn’t enough computing power to allow it to be run when it was needed for clinics and ward-based enquiries. The Trust had been discussing a new system for several years now – had almost got one before being ordered to stop by the Department of Health because of the coming of the integrated NHS IT system, a fiasco that had wasted billions and set health-care back years.

As he entered the search parameters, the question ‘why?’ kept occurring, kept resounding almost in his skull. Was it purely for justice that he did this? Was he really so wedded to law enforcement and the pursuit of felons – even a felon committing crimes as heinous as these – that he was willing to break the law? Was that really his motive? Or was it some other reason? And, if so, what was it?

Did he feel in some way beholden to Beverley, so that he had to risk, potentially at least, his career? Of course, it wasn’t the first time that he had broken one law in order to ensure that the breaker of another, more serious law, was apprehended; he was prone, he now saw, to a sort of intellectual vigilantism, going after criminals by any means, foul or fair, that he considered appropriate; not that he thought himself likely to turn into a true blue caped crusader, operating forever on the far edge of the law, perhaps resorting when the occasion demanded to bloodshed. Yet he was increasingly finding himself frustrated by the restrictions of modern British society where, in an effort to prevent the iniquities that arise when there are only black and white, everything had been turned into a soup of grey, without even any shades. The law of data protection was enforced more energetically than the law of theft (even aggravated theft), because it was easier to do so. Eisenmenger had a problem with that; he did not see all laws as equal, no matter what the high priests of jurisprudence might have to say, not when those charged with enforcing those laws claimed the right to choose between them.

So that was his motive.

Except he feared that it wasn’t just that, because once again he was finding himself wondering just what Beverley Wharton meant to him.

Beverley slammed the phone down and everyone around her was aware that she was not a happy bunny rabbit. It was left to Lancefield to approach her and, through the open doorway of her office, ask, ‘Bad news?’

‘Eisenmenger says that the latest body died of electrocution, just like the last, only this time it was quick, as might occur in execution or accidental electrocution.’

Fisher ventured, ‘Well, at least she died quickly.’ This earned him a malevolent stare and he shut up.

Beverley continued, ‘The tox results have come back on the first two deaths. Apparently there were significant levels of Flunitrazepam in the urine of both, but not in their blood.’

A question hung in the air – And so? – but Fisher was too scared to ask it. Lancefield, to his relief, wasn’t. ‘Is that significant?’

‘It means that they were drugged to get them wherever they died, but they were fully awake and aware when they died. Flunitrazepam is Rohypnol, the date rape drug.’

This they understood. Lancefield said with consideration, ‘It’s not a lead, though. Rohypnol is freely available on the Internet.’ It was a piece of wisdom that earned her no praise.

‘Then find me one, inspector.’

THIRTY-FOUR

the address struck a chime

Mr Leonard William Barker, aged 57 years.

Address: Flat 5, Hedgelands, Sandy Lane, Bromsberrow Heath, HR8 1XX

Occupation: retired policeman.

Information Received: Mr Barker was a widower, living in sheltered accommodation with carers looking after all his daily needs following a stroke in 2009 which left him wheelchair bound and unable to speak. He was found on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood from a gash to his head. He is believed to have fallen having hit his head on the corner of the cooker where there are bloodstains. The house is secure. There are three empty whisky bottles in the kitchen cupboard.

Information from GP: Until his stroke, Mr Barker had been an infrequent visitor to the surgery. He had suffered from hypertension, haemorrhoids and problems with alcohol abuse.

As E60s – the request for a post-mortem examination received from the coroner’s office – went, it wasn’t bad. It was a step up from those that merely said, effectively, Found Dead, or those that tried to tell the pathologist what the autopsy result should be: ‘Is believed to have had a heart attack’, or ‘Probably struck by lightning’. Those that worked for the coroner were not necessarily in any way medically qualified and they did their best to interpret the jargon that was fed to them; in this case, Eisenmenger felt that he had at least been given a fighting chance of a reasonable context in which to begin the autopsy.

Somewhere at the back of his head, the address struck a chime; it was where Malcolm Willoughby had been found.

Lancefield had been tasked with checking the website regularly and she found herself becoming more and more tense as, each time she did, it was unchanged. She ought, she thought, to be relieved, but she found that she couldn’t be; the new posting was coming, she was certain, and all she could feel was a clock ticking down, all she could see in her head was a stream of sand running through a timer.

She had had no inkling, of course, when at last it came; she felt first shock, then elation, then relief, then dread when she saw it, all experienced in a moment, all flushing through her system one after the other, surging, singing, screaming. She looked up, saw Beverley in her office through the half-opened door, called out in a voice that was unintentionally hoarse, ‘Sir? There’s a new posting.’

‘Was the flat heated?’

Mark Sheraton was a good coroner’s officer; he was brilliant with the bereaved families, he understood that the pathologists wanted relevant facts that might bear on the cause of death, not meaningless gossip or random facts thrown in as if they were telling a story to a child; in the coroner’s court, he read out the written reports with some fluency and authority. ‘To be honest, I don’t know,’ he admitted. Eisenmenger was talking to him on the phone from the mortuary office while Clive was cleaning up.

‘Find out, will you, Mark?’

‘You think it might be hypothermia?’

‘All the signs are there.’ By which he meant that there was no other obvious reason why Len Barker had died that evening, and there were a few vague changes at autopsy that could have been caused by hypothermia.

‘OK, I’ll make some enquiries.’

‘Until then, it’s “unascertained”, I’m afraid.’

Mark Sheraton took this well, although it would mean the inquest process would be set in motion, which meant work for him. ‘I half thought it would go “forensic” to be honest. What with him writing in the blood from his head wound. Very melodramatic. The constable who was called out by the carer even got CID in, but they’re happy there was nothing untoward; the flat was secure and nothing was taken. Must have been confused, I suppose.’

Eisenmenger had barely heard the last few sentences. ‘He did what?’

‘Oh, yes. I didn’t tell you because it didn’t seem relevant.’

For once, a coroner’s officer had not put in acres of meaningless anecdote and Eisenmenger wished he had. ‘What did he write?’

‘It was fairly difficult to decipher, but it looked like a car registration number.’

Occupation: retired policeman. Eisenmenger found himself assaulted by a feeling he knew too well, an itch deep within him, where disparate facts were coinciding.

‘And?’

‘And what?’ Mark Sheraton did not understand.

‘Whose registration was it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Mark, do me a favour and find out, will you?’

‘If you say so, Doc, but why? It’s not going to alter things is it?’

Eisenmenger did not at first know what to say. ‘Probably not, Mark. Not in this case, anyway.’

Betty Williams had not been feeling very well for most of the day. She had no appetite and had vomited twice already. Her chest hurt, too; there was a burning in the middle of her chest but she had had that before and it was just heartburn. For lunch the day before she had finished some chicken that had been in the fridge for some time – she wasn’t sure how long – and she had at first put everything down to this (‘just a drop of gippy tummy’ as she remembered her mother used to say), especially when she had almost had an accident as her bowels suddenly became loose. But she had lived long enough to know that this was different, that she should not be breathless, or so clammy, or so, so tired.

THIRTY-FIVE

‘warn him what he is about to see’

This one was ten, a hundred, a million times, worse. This one was not just two people dying, not just a snuff movie portrayed as the graphical (and graphic) illustrations for a pseudo-scientific paper on what dying is; no, this was one was a love affair with the subject, a forever-lingering caress of it, a thesis as opposed to a hypothesis.

The title – ‘Further Observations on the Physiological, Morphological and Metaphysical Changes that Occur at the Point of Death; Death By Electrocution’ – was suitably turgid and the following introduction could have been describing experiments on locusts, so dry and clinical was the tone, so willing to put ‘scientific’ enquiry about emotion. Indeed, so formal and cold was it, that they did not read it at any depth, for it quickly bored them. The appendices, though . . . As before there were two main ones, each detailing a death; one was rapid, one was protracted; from each of these was a large number of hyperlinks in which various physiological parameters were displayed in real time as the subjects sat in the electric chair. For one, the woman, the moment of death, as the current surged, peaked, and died within a hundred milliseconds, was brief in real time, and perhaps too brief for the author, because a further hyperlink slowed this, with all the attendant physiological reactions, down a thousandfold. For the second subject, the man, there was no need of such artifice, for his agony was so prolonged as to be a marathon of death, slow crawl of excruciation; and for this the viewer could watch all five hours, or dip in and out at will, picking the choicest morsels of a man’s agonizing death.

They could not watch it all, not even Beverley. Fisher gave in first, perhaps because of his youth and innocence, perhaps because of a less eroded humanity; then Lancefield left, when the atmosphere in the room had grown dark and dense with dread, and disbelief and shock. They both mumbled apologies, but they need not have done and, indeed, were barely heard. In the end, Beverley had to skip through the last two hours, a dreadful parody of sporting highlights, and even she felt sick at the end, drained to the point of exsanguination, saddened to the point of despair. She had in her career come into contact with men and woman who were scarcely human in their depravity, who would think nothing of rape, of murder, of torture or mutilation, but she could not see any of them behind this; this was off the scale of inhumanity, the knob turned beyond eleven, into the realms of unhumanity, the kind of thing an interested extraterrestrial might do, one who had lifted a rock, and found a man, and wanted to find out a little bit about him.

She took ten minutes to compose herself before going to the door and calling for Lancefield. She hoped that she didn’t look too pale, and that she wasn’t trembling, as she said, ‘Tell Eisenmenger about this. Tell him we need him to read the paper, but warn him, Lancefield. Warn him what he is going to see.’

Lancefield said nothing, merely nodded. She hoped that there was no sign of sick on her clothing

Having been to the doctor’s once in the past six years (and that against her will when she had felt slightly faint in church and the then vicar – who had been almost as old as she was and, she was sure, gay – had insisted she be seen), Betty Williams considered herself to have little need of medical services. Indeed, she had only been in hospital once – when she had fallen and broken her ankle twelve years before – and hated the idea of dependence. From what she read in the papers, hospitals were dangerous places, anyway. Now, though, she knew that she needed help.

She reached for the phone.

Braxton had insisted on seeing the website, and Beverley had left him to it; she noted with wry and decidedly sour amusement that he summoned her back to his office after only forty-five minutes; far too little time to have done anything other than skim the delights on offer. Even so, she saw that he looked distinctly grey as she sat down before his desk.

‘We’ve got to get this bastard, Beverley.’ Which was a truism and so she did not feel obliged to respond. ‘I mean, Jesus Christ . . .’ The blasphemy was uncharacteristic and therefore significant. He sighed. ‘What do you need?’

She didn’t understand at first, because she was so constrained by experience; investigations were these days resourced at minimum level, the ever-present mantra one of ‘efficiency’. He explained irritably, ‘Personnel, back-room staff, overtime, IT . . . Anything, Beverley. I’ll clear it. Just make sure that you get him before he does any more of this . . .’ He lost the words for a moment, a man shaken from his vocabulary by horrific things, visions from hell’s own abattoir. ‘. . . atrocity.’

As welcome as this offer was, she could suck little comfort from the unexpected, almost unprecedented words, found it ironic that for once she had no need of it. ‘At the moment, we don’t need them. We’ve only identified a single victim and had no leads from his disappearance.’

Braxton looked pained, approaching angry. ‘For goodness’ sake, Beverley. Why?’

And she had to explain, although she suspected he knew as well as she did. With only one victim identified, by definition there could be no pattern to recognize, and in cases like this, pattern was everything. With but a single point, there could be no connections.

‘Are there no clues from the previous video clips?’

‘Lancefield has been going through them repeatedly. Nothing. They’re just dark rooms.’

‘Someone will have to do the same with these new ones.’ He looked at her as he said this, aware of what he was suggesting. It was not news to Beverley, though; she nodded impassively. Braxton then said slowly, ‘I’m coming under pressure, Beverley. From above.’

Of course he was; pressure from ‘above’ was a constant for all middle-to high-ranking detectives; it was as constant and inevitable as gravity, and equally unforgiving; it was also as likely to flatten the unwary if it became too strong. She said nothing so he continued, ‘The press are sniffing and there are all sorts of rumours circulating apparently; they seem to have got hold of the idea that these murders are worthy of sensation.’ She could not tell if he was being sarcastic or not; if the truth of these particular killings got out, if the context of pseudoscientific investigation and the colossal callousness of the way that people were being slaughtered became known, ‘sensational’ would be revealed as a completely inadequate epithet, a fig leaf to cover a blue whale’s erection. It would come out eventually, of course, but not, she fervently hoped, until after an arrest. He continued, ‘Is everyone on the team sound?’

By which she presumed he meant ‘trustworthy’, rather than pure of tone. She nodded. ‘That’s the beauty of keeping the team small, at least until we’ve got more leads to follow.’

He grunted softly. ‘Well, just make sure you ask as soon as you need the support. I don’t want this bugger getting away just because you’re too stubborn to ask for help.’

She bit down on her immediate reply; she did not think that she had ever before been accused of being backward in requesting extra resources; if anything, she had thought she had a reputation of agitating too often for more money and men. ‘I won’t,’ she promised with a tight smile.

THIRTY-SIX

‘such a sweet old thing’

Betty Williams had been sick three times now and her breathlessness was increasing. She knew that she was dying and was very afraid. She sat in her favourite armchair, the gas fire on low, the clock ticking softly but menacingly. There was no pain but her chest was constricted, as if she were confined by an overtight corset; distressed as she was, the thought brought her fleeting remembrance of her life sixty years before. She was sweating, but was not hot, and she was feeling light-headed, much as she had done two Christmases before when she had drunk too much port at Sammy’s house.

Where was the ambulance?

The door bell rang.

Her heart lifted.

The call from her father came through to Lancefield just as she was making her way to the canteen; she had just rung Eisenmenger and told him about his homework. ‘Dad?’ She knew that something was wrong because her father was scrupulous about not disturbing her work for trivialities. ‘What is it?’

She knew what it was, though. Only one thing would make him phone her at work. ‘It’s your mother, Becky. She’s taken a turn for the worse. Doctor says it’s pneumonia.’

‘Is she in hospital?’

The hesitation told her much, was as informative as an hour-long speech would have been, and far more illuminating than a flash of lightning. He said only, ‘She wouldn’t want it.’ The tone was defensive, as she had come to expect.

She felt riven by a host of thoughts and emotions, all conflicting, all badgering her at once. Wouldn’t she? How do you know? She’s my mother! I love her! She’s changed. She would welcome death. She’s a fighter. She’s the one who should decide. You’ve fallen out of love with her. You only loved Tim. I know that you had an affair . . .

He said, ‘I told the doctor she should just be kept comfortable.’

Because she suddenly felt corrosive rage towards him, and because she knew that she was being unfair, and because she was about to fall over the edge into tears that would sound in her voice and would be seen by those around in the main corridor of the police station, and because she was running out of words, she said only, ‘I’m coming over.’

Josh and Harriet had had their tea and Antonia had supervised their baths; as a treat they were staying up to watch DVDs in the small but cosy sitting room. Antonia was sipping a cup of Earl Grey tea while she read the Telegraph when Andrew came in from a trip to the local supermarket. As he plonked the linen bag down on the pitted surface of the pine table, he said at once, ‘Have you heard the news?’

‘What news is that, dear?’ she asked after they had exchanged embraces.

‘Poor Betty Williams,’ he said, taking off his ancient green jacket that still smelled faintly of tobacco even after fifteen years of abstinence. ‘She’s passed away.’ He sounded slightly incredulous as if he had had it on the best authority that she had been immortal, perhaps even had a small wager on her continued refusal to join the bleeding choir invisible.

‘Oh, no.’ Antonia was genuinely shocked. She had liked Betty Williams, although she had sometimes found her a little uncouth. ‘How?’

‘I’m not sure. As I was coming past, I saw the ambulance outside and Marcus Pilcher and Sammy Carter were just coming out from the house. I managed to snatch a few words with them, but they could only tell me that the paramedics had just pronounced life extinct.’

‘Oh, dear.’ And she meant this. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear . . .’ This last was a sighing lament, an ululation for the entire concept of death and dying as much as for the demise of a single little old lady. ‘She was such a sweet old thing.’

Andrew knew better than to take her to task for this bending of the truth; in his opinion, Betty Williams had been an over-curious, slightly unwashed and certainly wickedly-tongued harridan, and he could remember his wife uttering similar sentiments on more than one occasion. He said blandly, ‘Absolutely.’ He found it best to be bland on occasion.

Her passing was thus remarked.

THIRTY-SEVEN

‘I’m not being patronizing, Charlie’

Charlie had had enough and, perhaps due to her Irish ancestry, perhaps because she was slightly drunk, she did not stint in a demonstration of her exasperated disbelief.

‘You are joking, aren’t you, John?’

Eisenmenger had a sense of humour, he was certain, although it was perhaps slightly stiff through underuse, perhaps even atrophied; an appendix of amusement. He, too, was less than sober. ‘About this? No.’

The remains of the meal lay between them, the second bottle of wine only half full (but only half empty, he caught himself thinking as they looked at each other over this battleground full of the dead). They were in his flat – a temporary abode, not to his taste, between Montpellier and Sussex Parade – and he had cooked a half-decent coq au vin (even if he did say so himself, because Charlie hadn’t), followed by rum baba. She was wearing a low-cut pale green dress in Grecian style and he had had trouble not noticing how low-cut it was.

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘This is becoming a habit.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘Yes, it is, John. It’s bloody fair. I’ve hardly seen anything of you over the past couple of weeks, and every time I have, you’ve cut it short.’

‘I don’t enjoy this life either, Charlie. Sometimes, it’s intolerable.’

‘You can say that again.’

This invitation, as per custom, was not accepted. Instead, he said weakly (and was well aware how pusillanimous the words were), ‘It shouldn’t take long.’ He was thinking as he said this that this might be wishful thinking, might perhaps be an exaggeration, might even – were he in a state to be objective – be a lie.

‘What have you got to do?’

‘Look at a posting on the web from the killer.’

‘Is that all?’

He smiled; he tried to make it a friendly, reassuring smile, but perhaps he failed for when he said, ‘It’s not that simple . . .’ she flared.

‘What the hell is going on here, John? Why are you constantly blocking me out?’

‘I’m not . . .’

The flare became an incandescence, an explosion. ‘YES, YOU ARE!’ She actually rose from her seat, a slight lift-off, one that did not achieve escape velocity and so she touched down again. Her vehemence tore a hole between them, a vacuum that she felt forced to fill while the shock of her shouting left him momentarily silent. ‘Yes, you are, John,’ she continued in a low, urgent voice. ‘You do your thing, and I’m told you do it very well. I know you do it very well, because I can see what kind of person you are. You are intellectual, you are kind, you are dedicated, you are, somehow, spooky.’ He hoisted eyebrows at that, but she nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’ve spoken to the mortuary man, Clive, and that’s what he told me; he said that everyone says so.’ This encomium was allowed to stand for less than a second as she added apologetically, ‘But you’re a loss as a human being.’ She stood, an almost reflexive action, way below the level of rational thought. It was completely unapologetically that she said, ‘No wonder Helena left you.’

Then, clearly to him aware that she had gone beyond the pale, she murmured, ‘I’m sorry.’

He didn’t answer, was transfixed by this conclusion, speared, pinned, wriggling to the wall and feeling only the pain of its penetration, and a certain degree of windedness, as if he were unable to breathe. He didn’t even move, just sat on his chair, staring, his thoughts active and turbulent, but a long way from his mind, a cinema show in the background that he was distracted from. She came around the table to him. ‘John, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that . . .’

But you did, and just because you didn’t mean to say it, does that not imply that it was in your head, unsaid, but very much alive, a worm of a thought, a mealy-mouthed little thing burrowing away into their relationship.

She sat next to him, reached for him and, as they embraced, she whispered, ‘I am so sorry, John. It was an unforgiveable thing to say.’

He was bathed in her perfume and that brought with it memories of other times that he had been bathed in it – memories that were still fresh, still exciting – and these fought with his hurt, so that he felt confused, but still overwhelmingly desirous of her. They kissed, at first an almost formal thing – a tentative gesture that was effectively a mutual offer of reconciliation – but then rapidly it became passionate, and for him healing.

Very much against his better judgement, Eisenmenger let Charlie view the latest web posting with him. ‘It’s not comfortable, Charlie. This one is seriously, seriously disturbed.’

‘I know that, John. Remember, I saw his first posting.’

‘This one is worse, apparently.’ It wasn’t so much Lancefield’s words as her voice that came back to Eisenmenger. Chief Inspector Wharton asked me to say to you that this one is bad. Be warned that the video attachments are difficult to watch. ‘I’m not being patronizing, Charlie, but you’re not a criminal psychologist, are you? These postings contain a lot of tough material.’

‘I’ve had some exposure of criminal psychology, John.’ Her tone had been edged with hurt honed by pride. ‘I’m not completely unused to this sort of thing.’

But she had insisted and he did not want to push her away, not after what she had said over dinner, and so they sat side by side in front of the computer screen. That they were slightly drunk and each had a glass of red wine, only added to a sense of unreality; it might have been a scene from Buñuel, the bourgeoisie at play. They read through the ‘paper’, he making notes, she adding comments.

The synopsis of the conclusions held a surprise, though. Eisenmenger pointed at the text. ‘What does that mean?’

The physiological readings – in particular careful analysis of the EEG and ECG – have revealed an anomaly which corresponds with an unexplained observational phenomenon at the point of death in both subjects. Such a correlation was not possible in the previous study because of the nature of the execution . . .

Charlie shook her head, a frown appearing slightly asymmetrically on her face. They read on. The introduction was mostly a rehash of the previous introduction, referring back to it, and full of pseudo-scientific ponderings about the nature of life, even once referring to it as ‘vitalism’. The methods section described in uncomfortable detail what had been done to Malcolm Willoughby and the as yet unidentified female; the voltage and current used in her killing, the rate of increase of both in his. It told of their height and weight (and thus the all-important body mass index), although it did not mention their ages, or any other datum that might have helped identify them. All the physiological parameters that were monitored were listed.

And then to the results section, as any good scientific paper would do but, unlike a conventional paper, constant reference was made to the appendices, to the video recordings of the subjects and the parametric readings. It soon became clear that they were going to have to keep accessing these, although Eisenmenger said nothing until Charlie said, ‘Shouldn’t we be looking at these hyperlinks? The text keeps referring to them and I think we’d have a better chance of understanding what’s going on if we saw them.’

‘I’m not sure . . .’

‘If we’re going to understand this psychopath, the more material we study, the more chance we have.’

He sighed. ‘OK, but not the visual recordings.’

‘Why not? The text refers to specific events, especially during the course of the male subject’s death, which are correlated with the physiological readings.’

‘These are snuff movies, Charlie. They depict people being killed for real.’

‘I’ve got a strong stomach, John. I enjoy gore in the cinema as much as most other people. There’s no need to namby-pamby me.’

‘There’s a difference between watching a Hollywood horror film and witnessing someone being executed, someone suffering real pain.’

‘Please, John, I am not a child.’

He did not want her seeing the videos but her voice was becoming strained again. He had found the first posting hard going and Lancefield’s warning coming on top of this had given him the heebie-jeebies; was he willing to let Charlie experience something so awful, so unique? Yet, she was right; he had no right to act as her guardian, to mollycoddle her; she was an adult, and an intelligent one who was trained in understanding the mind. Perhaps, he decided, he should not be so protective.

And so, he agreed.

THIRTY-EIGHT

photos that were old because they were of the young

Rebecca had always thought her parents’ bedroom was gloomy but now that her mother lay dying in it, she realized how wrong she had been; it was funereal now and it had always been so. It was as if it had been waiting for a death, as if they had decorated and furnished this slightly drab, slightly dingy room, a tableau from the seventies, with this scene specifically in mind. Her father had always been a man who was careful with money – always second-class stamps, Christmas wrapping paper reused year after year, socks darned and redarned – and he had never knowingly used a sixty-watt bulb, but the ceiling light seemed to be giving out little more than a candle’s glimmer, so that the shadows were barely distinguishable, as if they were hiding in plain sight.

There had been no eye contact between them, not when she had entered the house, nor since; his head had been kept low, as had his voice; the curiously atonal quality of this near-whisper gave an air almost of worship and respect, as if they were in the presence of something supernatural, but she had known in reality it was all a charade; they were in the presence of something dying, was all; they were scared; too scared to bicker for once.

And in this all-too-apt gloom, her mother laying breathing stertorously, thin and pale, eyes half closed and filmed, mouth open. Lancefield had watched her mother imperceptibly lose humanity over the past five years, but never before had she seemed to be so empty, so inanimate; was this the dementia or the onset of death, she wondered. Was this woman – try as she might, she could not come to convince herself that here was her mother – alive or dead? That she was breathing was beyond doubt, but was it a purely mechanical thing that this body did, as decerebrate as a headless chicken?

On the other side of the bed, her father held his wife’s hand and she could see that his grip was tight enough to show his knuckles white, as if he hoped that pain would bring her back to sentience, the long sought-for remedy for Alzheimer’s. She had given up holding her mother’s hand, gaining nothing from it other than the inescapable thought that it was too dry and too inert to be of any comfort to either of them, as if she were trying to commune with a mannequin. She spent most of her time either looking down at the bedcover – it was a sea of memories for her – and when that palled she stared at the photographs on the bedside table to the left of her father; photos that were old because they were of the young, that were nothing more to her then than reminders; reminders of how their lives had gone in both senses of the word.

They had sat there for four hours now.

They would sit there for many more.

Eisenmenger felt that, at last, he was beginning to understand what was going through this killer’s head; a feeling of displacement came over him, one that was familiar. He would not go so far as to say that he came to identify with a murderer, he could not get inside the mind, but he could start to see why the murderer did certain things, what the murderer was perhaps seeking, either to find or to demonstrate. And never before had he had such a text to work on as this, so much information to sift. There was the overarching theme of why the murderer was doing these awful things – and that was potentially illuminating enough – but there was also the extent to which the text betrayed the beliefs, the experiences, the hopes and the fears of this particular madman. It was, in effect, a manifesto, although he was sure that it had not been intended as such. His fascination grew and, accordingly, his awareness receded, and so he did not appreciate Charlie’s increasing discomfort.

It started off well enough. Where the text referred them to particular time points in the various readings – EEG wave patterns, ECG complexes, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, skin resistance – they followed the link; when it referred them to various points in the video presentations – and there were twelve camera views in each – Eisenmenger was at first very aware of Charlie’s reactions. The execution of the as yet unknown woman had been slowed a thousand fold, so that reference in the text could be made to points in the course of her death separated by less than a hundredth of a second, and because of this, she hardly seemed to move as the current surged through her and overwhelming agony had overcome her. As far as Eisenmenger could see, Charlie seemed to cope with this, maintaining an objective demeanour, her remarks pertinent and made in a controlled voice. He had begun to relax, to think that he had been unnecessarily protective of her; and, in so doing, had begun to lose himself in the task.

What was this particular mad man after? To capture the point of death was the obvious, trite response to that, but why? Why the desire to chase down something that, to Eisenmenger at least, seemed as elusive as the end of the rainbow, as real as the boundary between two consecutive seconds? Death might in the popular imagination be a single thing, or even a single entity (replete with scythe and skeleton eyes), but to a biologist, it was a fading, a gradual disequilibrium, an entropic dismemberment of homeostasis; consciousness was not a binary state – either on or off – but a property that arose from a breathtakingly large number of biochemical processes occurring at a molecular level; he knew that it was a property of chaotic systems that order would arise spontaneously, and he saw self-awareness as merely a higher level of such order. Just as it did not suddenly come into being, so it did not suddenly cease to exist.

Yet this man believed that it did, was convinced that he could demonstrate it happening.

It was with a shock of incredulity that he was jerked from semi-reverie by the last paragraph:

One finding that remains as yet unexplained but we believe to be of potential significance occurs at time point T+0.456 seconds in the first subject, and at time point T+4hours, 57minutes, 6.36 seconds in the second.

The following hyperlinks correlate all readings and relevant visual recordings of the two subjects at these points.

He sat up, and murmured to Charlie, ‘This might be interesting.’

He moved the cursor to the first hyperlink, the one that referred to the woman’s death, and the screen loaded with sixteen images, some close-up video stills, many frozen readings; he examined each carefully. It took a moment but he eventually saw with some fascination that at this moment, there had apparently been a simultaneous blip in the diastolic blood pressure, a coordinated abrupt, but brief increase in activity in both theta and delta wave activity in the brain, and a rise in skin resistance; yet the photos were the most enthralling. They were of the woman’s eyes – horribly bloodshot, pupils dilated to black holes without the power of sight – and in them was a tiny, violet spark. It was tiny but sharp, even at the magnification of the still; it seemed almost to curl around lazily, as if trying to bite its tail.

Was that real? Perhaps it was just a glitch in the software; yet it was symmetrically present in the depths of both gaping pupils. A reflection, then – the head was arched back, the current surge having caused extreme spasm of the neck muscles – and so conceivably he was seeing something that was on the ceiling. But what could it be?

‘Weird,’ he said, half to himself, half to Charlie. She said nothing, but he didn’t notice.

He turned next to the second hyperlink. The layout was similar and again the physiological readings all showed a small distinct change that, if the data were to be believed, was totally synchronous. The video images, though were harder to interpret, because they came at the end of an ordeal of nearly five hours for poor Malcolm Willoughby; his skin was browned, cracked with fissures of dried blood; his tongue swollen and black, his eyes filmed over with coagulation; he could even make out a haze between the camera and the subject, perhaps of steam. All this made detail difficult to discern but he thought that maybe he could just make out a faint violet spark deep in the pupils, underlying the frosting of the corneas, identical to that which had just been seen in the first hyperlink.

He breathed gently. Surely not?

‘What do you think?’ he asked Charlie softly without looking at her. There was no answer, but he did not appreciate this for a moment. Then he looked at her. Her face was buried in her hands, and she was weeping whilst she shook uncontrollably.

THIRTY-NINE

a susurrating background theme

Eisenmenger was tired and he had a huge gastrointestinal cut-up to look forward; the last thing he needed was a phone call from Beverley Wharton at eight thirty, before he had even managed to switch on the microscope. He sat down, sighing and looking out of the window at the car park; there were not enough parking spaces, but then there never had been, and a member of the parking Gestapo was prowling. He knew what she wanted, but couldn’t be bothered to think.

‘Two more bodies.’

Shit! Shit, shit, shit! ‘Where?’

‘Cotswold Water Park. I need you there now.’

He was building up a huge time debt to the Trust, he knew. It was likely he would be out most of the morning, and he could not ask his colleagues, themselves stretched by NHS duties, to cover for him. He would have to do the cut-up this afternoon; presumably the post-mortem would have to be done that evening, and the rest of his work would have to wait, perhaps until the weekend. He thought guiltily of Charlie, even as he said reluctantly, ‘OK.’

‘I’ll get a car to pick you up in ten minutes.’

And that was that; no thanks, no acknowledgement, and certainly no realization that he had troubles aplenty. He sought his phone and thought about ringing Charlie, decided to text instead. She had eventually calmed down, full of apologies and, as they went to bed at two o’clock, full of whisky. He had risen again at five, successfully not waking her and aware that he had to finish looking through the web posting. He had taken her a cup of tea at seven thirty, and she had been hung-over but seemingly not too upset. How she would react to the news that he was going to have to work late, he could not say.

Just as he was about to leave the office, his phone rang again; this time it was the coroner’s office. ‘You asked me to check that registration number. I’m sorry it’s taken so long, but it slipped my mind.’ He had forgotten as well, so could hardly criticize.

‘And?’

‘It belongs to the Colberrow Estate, in the north of the county.’

‘Where the fuck is Lancefield?’

Fisher was always cheerful – perhaps because he was constitutionally optimistic, perhaps because he was stupid (and opinion in the station was fairly clear on the subject that it was the latter), but even he could see that his chief inspector was angry, and that whatever was said to her was not going to make her laugh and smile and pat him on the head. He therefore kept his answer short. ‘Don’t know.’

Alas, even this did not save him. ‘What the fuck do you mean? She should have been in two hours ago.’

There was no answer to either the question or its pursuant statement. As so often before he felt at sea, and it was a distinctly choppy sea. He opened his mouth but his brain took too long pulling the levers to get his tongue, pharynx and vocal cords into operation, and so only a near-inaudible squeak was born, soon to die. Beverley continued, ‘Did she tell you she was going to be late?’

He shook his head, feeling that he was projecting a sense of guilt, although she did not seem to notice. ‘Ring her mobile. Tell her to get her arse over to the Cotswold Water Park now.’

The A417 gave a susurrating background theme to the scene, the sound of passing traffic coming over the wetlands, between the sparse trees and low bushes, above the ponds and lakes; the cars providing a sibilant treble, the HGVs punctuating this with intermittent bass roars. The road itself was nearly half a mile away, and only just visible on the horizon, which suited Beverley just fine; for once there was little chance of having a distant audience exuding prurience like pus.

The two bodies had been intertwined both with each other and with the weeds and reeds. They were bloated and pale, taking on an almost translucent appearance, slimy and dank as if made out of squid flesh. They were naked. They were difficult to consider anything more than fish food.

‘Well?’ Beverley had given up politeness. She felt out of control and it wasn’t a nice feeling, not a nice feeling at all; she had worked hard all her life – bent the rules and ruthlesslessly used what assets she had whenever necessary – to avoid being in situations such as this. She and Fisher had just entered the canvas tent on the bank of the pond just by where the bodies had been found. Eisenmenger was just standing there, staring at them.

‘Well, what?’ enquired Eisenmenger mildly as he looked up at her.

‘What can you give me?’

He sensed her impatience, and knew well what her temper could be like, but he had troubles of his own. ‘Two females, in the water between twenty-four and forty-eight hours. One is young, the other is considerably older – perhaps fifteen to twenty years.’

‘Mother and daughter?’

‘How the fuck should I know?’ His tone might have been light but there was more than a hint of irritation, and Beverley did not miss it, although she contented herself with a long, cold stare at him.

‘Very well. What else?’

‘I think it’s a fair working assumption that they are victims of our Internet scientist.’

‘How do you know that?’ This from Fisher. The smell in the confined space was rapidly making it even more difficult than usual for him to think clearly.

‘I don’t know it, sergeant. I said that it was a reasonable assumption. The victims come in pairs and we have here two bodies; all the victims have been naked, as are these. All have had their heads shaved, as these have.’

Beverley had knelt down by the two blubber-white bodies. ‘They clearly weren’t beheaded. Were they electrocuted?’

‘No external burn marks,’ he said. ‘Although that doesn’t exclude it, of course.’

Fisher had the feeling he was going to have to leave the tent pretty soon. As much as to stop himself being sick as for information, he asked, ‘Why not?’

Eisenmenger explained, ‘The electrodes could have been inserted into the mouth, or the anus, or even the vagina.’ He was quite capable, Beverley knew, of delivering news of such atrocities without thinking and in a cerebral sense, as if delivering an academic treatise to fellow pathologists; yet this time she had heard more than academic detachment, this time she heard almost viciousness in his reply.

The feeling of nausea that had been sidling up on Fisher swept over him – indeed, it swept him away – and he left with a mumbled, ‘Excuse me.’

Beverley stared at the pathologist. ‘What’s wrong?’

He returned the stare, his face showing passivity to the point of inhumanity. ‘Nothing.’

‘You seem out of sorts,’ she offered, but he was in no mood for gifts and just changed the subject. ‘This guy changes his method of killing every two victims. I doubt whether he’s used the national grid this time.’

‘So how has he done it?’

He looked for a long time at the two bodies lying side by side, companions in a cold death before saying, ‘They’re pale, aren’t they?’

‘Isn’t that due to immersion?’

He continued to stare at the bodies; it was a characteristic Eisenmenger pose, she thought; he might almost have been communing with the corpses. ‘Maybe. And, of course, pallor is a very difficult thing to gauge – some people are naturally pale – but there are the puncture wounds in the antecubital fossae—’

‘The what?’

‘The crooks of the elbows.’ He knelt down and raised the older corpse’s arm. ‘See?’

‘They’ve had blood taken?’

He laid the arm back down, as gently as if she were asleep and he were afraid to wake her. ‘I think,’ he said standing up again, ‘they’ve had all their blood taken.’

FORTY

‘A white-collar killer?’

Outside, in the cool fresh air that was tinged with the faint but reassuring odour of exhaust fumes from the distant A417, Fisher was leaning against the side of a police car, trying not to look ill. As Beverley emerged followed by Eisenmenger, he came across to them. A family of mallards was paddling in a nearby pool, making occasional, questioning quacks, and a pair of buzzards circled lazily in the high air above a large copse a kilometre or two away.

‘I’m sorry about that, sir.’

Beverley shrugged to indicate that it was of no consequence; she was struck that Fisher looked almost as pale as the corpses and that, what with Eisenmenger’s bloodlessly uncaring treatment of her inspector, she was surrounded by an army of the exsanguinated. ‘Check the missing person’s reports for a mother and daughter.’ He trotted off, happy to have instruction and she turned to Eisenmenger. ‘Did you look at the web posting?’

She noticed that there was something behind his eyes as he nodded and said non-committally, ‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘And what? It’s more of the same. It’s someone who has an obsession, but someone who has some intellectual training. Not your usual serial killer. This one is more than an undereducated, ill-informed bigot; this one let his obsession take hold after his education.’

‘Let?’

He shrugged. ‘Anyone can allow themselves to fall prey to their obsessions; they’re within all of us, just lurking, waiting.’

Eisenmenger had always struck her as somewhat dour, but today he was bleak; as bleak as she had ever known him. ‘A white-collar killer?’

‘I think so.’ He then said suddenly, ‘But not a scientist, I think. Someone who admires science, and maybe has some training in it, but not who practises it as profession. A good mimic of a scientist, but not the real thing.’

She accepted this, allowing it to meld with her other data. Then she thought to break the formalities. ‘Perhaps we should have a drink some time, John. It’s been a while.’

He looked surprised at the suggestion. ‘Yes . . .’ A pause. ‘That would be nice.’ Another pause. ‘I’m a bit busy at the moment, though.’

‘Of course. Just give me a ring when you’re free.’

And so he forgot to tell her about the last testament of Len Barker.

‘Any word from Lancefield?’ asked Beverley of Fisher as Eisenmenger walked back to the tent.

‘Nothing.’

Beverley said nothing, but Fisher could recognize bloodlust in her eyes when he saw it.

The results of Eisenmenger’s search were ready by the time he had completed describing, dissecting and sampling the previous day’s gastrointestinal surgical specimens; it was thankfully brief. In the past three months, there had been only six pleural biopsies – the definitive test for malignant mesothelioma – performed in the county. All of them were men, all between fifty-five and seventy, all of them could have been the headless man from the information that he had, but at least he had six names. His next move was to enter each name into the general hospital database, looking each one up for missed clinic appointments; this produced nothing definitive and he swore quietly to himself. What now?

He asked himself the question, although he knew the answer anyway, just didn’t want to have to do it. The database held all the personal details of each patient, including their home phone numbers and he made a note of all of them. He looked at the clock. He was due to begin the post-mortem on the latest victims in three hours; then, using his mobile, he began to phone each one in turn.

FORTY-ONE

‘I don’t even care if your mother lay dying’

Lancefield was sitting at her desk when Beverley and Fisher returned. She stood up at once, opened her mouth to speak but was doomed never to achieve her objective. Beverley had seen her from across the room and homed in on her much as a kestrel falls upon a dormouse. ‘You. In my office. Now.’

She swept away without a further word and without noticing how haggard her subordinate looked. When Lancefield followed, she was greeted by Chief Inspector Wharton sitting behind her desk, arms diagonally stretched away to its corners, fingers and thumbs braced, while she stared unblinkingly and malevolently at her.

‘Shut the door.’ Lancefield did so, then came to stand in front of Beverley’s desk; she felt light-headed, almost as if her mind were about to take wing. ‘You should have been at work five hours ago.’

‘I know . . .’

‘You haven’t been answering your phone.’

‘I turned it off . . .’

‘We found two more bodies this morning.’

‘Yes, so I understand.’

‘SO YOU UNDERSTAND!!?’ The explosion was perfect. She was neither overloud nor strident, nor hectoring; she was merely venomous, incredulous, instantaneous; it came at Lancefield from perfect calm and was all the more effective for it. She was immediately removed from her previous, almost languorous, exhausted numbness. ‘So you understand?’ repeated Beverley. Without further pause, she continued, ‘We are in the middle of tracking down the most deranged killer I’ve ever come across, one who has killed at least six people, possibly more, and in the most degenerate, depraved way it is possible to imagine, and you decide to swan off for hours on end, with no prior warning and remaining completely out of touch. Do you know how unprofessional that is, Lancefield?’

Lancefield found that she didn’t care how ‘unprofessional’ Chief Inspector Wharton thought it was. She might have gone so far as to say that she didn’t give a flying fuck what Beverley Wharton’s views on the subject were, but she wasn’t to be given the chance, for Beverley had yet to reach the end of excoriating her inspector. ‘I don’t know what you were doing, or what you thought you were doing; there is no excuse for this type of behaviour; none whatsoever. There is nothing that can excuse unexplained and ungranted absence during the course of such an important investigation. I don’t even care if your mother lay dying, you don’t just disappear when you work for me, do you understand?’

Lancefield looked at her superior from eyes that were sore and with a mind that was in shock; she saw someone she despised, someone who could never achieve respect from her, much less become a close colleague. She was there not because she wanted to be, but because she was required by others to be; she owed Beverley nothing.

She had just lost her mother – or rather lost the final husk-like thing that her mother had become over many pain-filled months – and she did not yet understand it; it was a fact but not an emotion; she knew it would not be long before that changed, but at the moment, the knowledge lodged in her brain and was stifled by the tiredness of the long hours she had just spent with her father and the departing, decaying spirit of the woman she had once called ‘mother’.

She ought, she knew, to feel anger at this preposterous woman’s preposterous slanders. But she couldn’t be bothered. She would soon need to grieve, to negotiate her mourning as best she could, but not yet. Now, she needed to clamber gingerly back on the rocky boat that was normality. But she couldn’t think clearly, could hear the words and think the thoughts, but couldn’t connect with either of them.

She nodded impassively. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Then she added before she appreciated the irony, ‘It won’t happen again.’

Beverley searched for the sound of contrition in what Lancefield said; she heard almost disconnection, as if she were somehow having trouble concentrating. Was she, Beverley wondered briefly, hung-over? Yes, that was it. The stupid bitch had been on a bender and overslept. If so, there were grounds for formal disciplinary action.

But no. She certainly looked pretty down in the dumps. She would allow her one more chance, she thought. ‘Alright, we’ll say no more about it. Talk to Fisher about the latest two bodies. There’s a chance they could be mother and daughter, so hopefully easily identified. Go through the missing persons reports in the county, see if there are any candidates. Also, Eisenmenger will probably be doing the autopsy this evening, so I want you there, OK?’

Lancefield took a moment to respond, doing so with a slow nod. She knew that she ought to have told Beverley about the real reason for her absence, but she found it impossible to speak about it, struck dumb with the awful shock; it was as if to share her grief with one such as Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton would be to dilute and pollute it; as if to share it would cheapen it.

‘Very well, sir.’

FORTY-TWO

merely fascinated, merely intellectually aroused

That Lancefield was subdued did not strike Eisenmenger; he was not particularly observant of those around him in general, but when he was working, he was dangerously prone to wreck his ship upon rocks that were quite obvious to everyone else. In this instance, though, he was safe, for Lancefield had thoughts of her own to contend with. Clive, too, was quiet, although this was characteristic of him during forensic post-mortems, and in complete contrast to his normal attitude, which was one of calculated cheerfulness. Forensics, Clive considered, were too important for unnecessary flippancy. He was a man who took his job seriously, even if his superficial manner was seen by some as flippant; he cared deeply about the service he provided, whether it be to pathologists, the bereaved, the coroner, the police or to undertakers, and was quick to let others know when he thought that they were not up to standard. It was one of the reasons he liked Eisenmenger, because the pathologist had a similar attitude; some of the pathologists he worked with did not, in his unstated but nonetheless cogent opinion, always behave as they should.

After five hours of near total silence, Eisenmenger had finished. He had worked first on the younger female then, as Clive reconstructed this one, on the older. He now said to Clive, ‘OK. You can put this one back together.’

‘Not much of a mess, at any rate.’

The autopsy on Malcolm Willoughby had been bloodless because his slow electrocution had cooked his blood into something approaching black pudding; in these two post-mortems, there had just not been much blood at all. Eisenmenger felt slightly put out by this, and was put out because he felt put out; a normal person would have welcomed this absence of gore.

Lancefield had been standing in the corner; it was cold in the mortuary but she looked as though she was only half aware of it to Clive; she looked, he decided, as if she was only half aware of everything. Eisenmenger, until now, only vaguely aware in his concentration on the task in hand that she was there, was slightly surprised when he had to address her twice to gain any attention.

Looking slightly startled, she said, ‘I’m sorry?’

‘The chief inspector will be wanting my provisional conclusions.’

‘Of course,’ she said, but he was aware that she was playing catch up and he wondered where she had been.

‘Tell her that it looks as though my first impression was right. These two have been bled to death.’

She frowned, appearing to be trying to concentrate. ‘Is that a good way to go?’

It struck him as an odd question but he said only, ‘Better than Malcolm Willoughby’s fate.’

She nodded absently.

Since Charlie Sherman had become a psychologist, she had been used to a commentary in her head, one that was above her emotions and thoughts, and that placed everything in context, that explained and therefore comforted her. It was as though she had been voyaging through life with a constant, reassuring companion – a nanny, perhaps – and she had not had to face the terrors of life alone. Yet now that voice, that explaining, soft and always-believable monotone in the background of her thoughts, was gone. She was alone, and she was suddenly facing the biggest challenge of her personal life without any benefit from her training and experience; it made her feel juvenile, almost adolescent, adrift and at the mercy of her emotions, those daemons that she had thought to have conquered.

She had been in control, she knew, until they had watched the web posting and then the voice had gone, neither fading nor saying goodbye, merely refusing to speak, deafening her with its obstinacy. At once, her life had changed and, worse, her perception of her life had changed; certainty became its converse, confidence froze and became immune to her, impenetrable; an alien thing that was now unknowable, and she did not know how it had happened, but happened it had during the hours in which they had viewed the web posting. In some way, her perceptions and thoughts during that period had altered – perhaps even damaged – the props that sustained her. The images themselves were appalling, sickening, unbearable, but she had guessed that they would be; they were worse than she had expected, but not beyond her endurance. She was well acquainted with the terrible things that human beings did to animals and to each other, but they seemed almost to reserve a special cruelty for the pain they inflicted on other members of their own species, as if the sentience of the victim gave a special piquancy to the pleasure.

But then there was the mind of the killer to think about. She was used to human emotions in their extremities, and until now had met them with professional equanimity. Her species, she was well aware, was governed by emotion, much as the higher socio-economic classes liked to think otherwise; in the world of psychological academe, the more refined might be aware of and be able to use their emotions – have ‘emotional intelligence’ in the common jargon – but they could not escape them. If they should ever manage that particular feat, then this is what happened; someone who killed, not only without compunction but without interest or understanding, who could not conceive any difference between homicide and any other human activity, like defaecating or eating. There was a monstrous irony that this one was interested, obsessed even, in life, in the soul; the killing was done in order to find out about what makes humans live. How could any one mind, no matter how twisted, hold that extreme contradiction and still function? She was well aware that the human mind was quite capable of holding diametrically opposed opinions and believe either, depending on circumstance, but one that was so extreme, so incompatible, found her lost, both professionally and intellectually.

Yet she could have coped with even that, had she not just watched the man she thought she loved seem somehow to lose his humanity, as he had taken in all this other-worldly, surreal, hideous existence and been merely fascinated, merely intellectually aroused, much as he might have been by a crossword puzzle or a curious pathological finding, or even a well-played game of rugby union. This was what had truly frightened her; he was still the same human being she had met some months before, still the strangely elusive, slightly shy and extremely irritating middle-aged, greying (but not balding, thank God) man she had at first thought nothing of; now, though, she saw what he was capable of being, and it had frightened her. Or rather, he had shown what he was capable of not being, for he had not seemed to react as she thought he ought to have done. He had shown no emotion, no sign that he was affected in any way; he had almost, she dared hardly think, reacted like the killer.

And this scared her.

Eisenmenger had a name for the anonymous man with mesothelioma, although he still could not be sure that it was the right one. He had managed to talk to two of the three non-attendees and their carers (one was in a hospice and expected to die shortly), but Dominic Trelawney stubbornly refused to answer his phone. He had done all he could, done more than he should have, to help the investigation, and more mundane activities were calling. Ben Gosling had called in unwell with flu and he had to cover routine autopsies for him; time to make Beverley earn her crust. He picked up the phone to tell her his news.

FORTY-THREE

‘Eisenmenger tells me he’s wondering’

There was only one autopsy the next morning and Eisenmenger thanked goodness for that.

Mrs Elizabeth Williams, aged 79 years.

Address: Ivydene Cottage, Albright Lane, Colberrow, HR8 9QX

Occupation: retired cleaner

Information Received: Mrs Williams was a widow who lived independently. The death was reported by her vicar who had called upon her to discuss church matters. She was clearly unwell. He states that she had already called an ambulance but, unfortunately, she became unresponsive before the paramedics arrived. The vicar attempted resuscitation but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Information from GP: Mrs Williams was registered with a general practitioner but had not attended the surgery in over ten years, despite being called for routine screening procedures.

‘What do you think, Clive?’

And so, Clive considered.

Eisenmenger had known a great many mortuary technicians – or ‘medical technical officers’, or ‘anatomical pathology technicians’ or (a term he abhorred) ‘morticians’ – in his career, and they proved a constant source of interest to him; humanity in general provided him with a steady parade of entertainment, a sort of never-ending rain of distraction and diversion from the dullness of existence, but this fine breed, these special men, were the epitome of human enterprise, the crown princes and crown princesses of endeavour, the A-list of the common herd. During his long and sometimes apparently tedious career, Eisenmenger had known, amongst many others, one who sang hymns while he cracked the ribcage open both with gusto and with stainless steel shears (and who had earned a subsidiary income by procuring abortions in his back sitting room), another who had had an unhealthy obsession with au pair girls (spending most of his spare time on websites and chortling in what could only be described as an unsettling manner), and one who had professed distinctly ‘un-PC’ attitudes to both women and people of other races, and who had been heard to refer affectionately to ‘Uncle Adolf’.

There were some, though, who were to him priceless. They not only did what they were supposed to do – evisceration of the bodies followed by their reconstruction, scrupulous cleaning, preparation of the bodies for viewing by relatives, sensitive handling of the bereaved, keeping up to date with the intricate paperwork engendered by the Human Tissue Act (that the job was complex was, he knew, little appreciated) – but also pointed out to the pathologists things that they might have missed, took an interest in the autopsy and what the findings were. Clive was one such. Sometimes, of course, Clive got it wrong; pointing out irrelevancies or, through failing to spot things, making the pathologists’ job harder. In the main, though, he was a useful man to have around.

Many mortuary technicians would have missed the small pieces of red lint that were under the lips. Unfortunately, he only spotted them after Eisenmenger had completed the organ dissection and when he was dictating his findings; thus he gave Eisenmenger a problem, for Eisenmenger had already found a perfectly acceptable cause of death. Betty Williams had had severe coronary atheroma – the arteries supplying the heart muscles were almost completely furred up – and this was a perfectly acceptable, and natural, way to die; indeed, a third of the population did so.

There is nothing a pathologist hates more than too many causes of death. The autopsy that does not immediately find a cause of death – that is ‘unascertained’ in the parlance – is a nuisance, but not a disaster; in perhaps ten to twenty percent of post-mortem examinations more investigations are needed: examination of tissue samples under the microscope, expert opinion, toxicological analysis of blood and urine, asbestos fibre counts. Even after these, no definitive cause of death may be found, but the pathologist will be able to state with some assurance that there were no traumatic, toxicological or other unnatural factors. It is an outcome that is less than satisfactory, but has to be accepted. More than one cause of death makes life very difficult, however; doubly so when one of them might be unnatural. Lint in the mouth suggested that someone had smothered her.

Eisenmenger saw another evening disappearing in the dubious company of the local constabulary, and more trouble up ahead with Charlie. He sighed.

‘Shit.’

‘It happens,’ was Clive’s only comment, one that was of no help to Eisenmenger.

Eisenmenger peeled off his gloves and went to the alcove where the sheet with the details he had been given by the coroner’s office was laid out. As he went to the phone, he glanced again at it and saw this time the significance of the place where she lived, that it was a place name he had seen before.

He began to wonder.

‘You alright?’

Lancefield had been staring at the computer screen but clearly not seeing it; even Fisher had noticed a degree of distraction. She looked up, but not in a particularly animated fashion. ‘Yes. Why?’

‘You’ve got a face like a slapped arse,’ he replied cheerfully and with a characteristic lack of tact. ‘Been dumped?’

She was too far beyond anger to respond. Even Beverley’s dressing down, mistaken in almost every way, had not been able to rile her beyond melancholia; Fisher’s clodhopping banter was certainly not going to do the job. She merely returned to the computer screen while Fisher decided that he had been spot on; yes, he now knew, she had been dumped.

Beverley came out of her office. Fisher looked up to discover that she had not found the secret of undying happiness since the last time he had seen his boss. ‘Fisher? How far have you got with the missing mother and daughter?’

‘Nothing as yet, boss.’

‘Find them, fuckwit. It shouldn’t be too hard, even for you. And whilst you’re about it, find out all you can on this man.’ She handed him a slip of paper with Dominic Trelawney’s name on it. With that, she turned to Lancefield. ‘You’re with me, inspector.’

She frowned. ‘Where to?’

‘The hospital. Eisenmenger reckons we’ve got another victim.’

Lancefield frowned, tried to concentrate. ‘Another one? So soon?’

Beverley was already turning away. ‘An old woman’s been smothered. I’m not sure it’s related, but Eisenmenger tells me he’s wondering, and when Eisenmenger wonders, it pays to start working on the assumption that he’s right.’

FORTY-FOUR

Magellan, Columbus and, perhaps, Scott

The first time that Josh and Darren dared to climb the tree and drop from the thick, overhanging limb, and thus enter the inner grounds of the Grange, they were aware that it was a momentous thing, a defining act; they knew that they were doing something terrible, something heinous (although they did not know the word, they knew its meaning); yet, although they were immature in so many ways, they had already learned that this type of wrongdoing was delightfully, deliciously, deliriously attractive. They had planned the trip assiduously, getting up early one morning, collecting their store cupboard of food from the shed at the bottom of Darren’s small, untidy garden (some chocolate digestives, two apples, two bags of salt and vinegar crisps, and two small cartons of juice; all carefully sequestered from their packed lunches over the previous week and in total representing a considerable sacrifice), and then cycling away up the curving lane to the estate, feeling like true adventurers, unaware that their emotions probably mirrored exactly those of Magellan, Columbus and, perhaps, Scott. They cycled for half a mile, then abandoned their bikes, hiding them behind the fence, before trekking across the open fields of the estate, following paths that they and they alone knew well, talking excitedly through the shortness of breath that their exertions brought. It was sunny but not yet warm, the dawn wind having died but the earth still cool from it.

They approached the stone wall with more care, staying low, looking around all the time for spies and snipers, the adrenaline pumping even more, the sense of adventure ringing and screaming in their ears; they saw no one. Skirting around the wall, body positions low, heads forever turning to left and right, they eventually found their secret way in, then made base camp. Whilst consuming the first of their rations – and doing so frugally lest they have to stretch them to days, possibly weeks – they rested and took their bearings, constantly watchful. After ten minutes, they set off again, deeper into the dark heart of the forest.

They arrived at the inner fence in fifteen further minutes, still scanning all around them, seeing in the depths of the woodland a thousand silent enemies, hearing in the soft wind high above them the stealthy steps of pursuers, certain that the birdsong held hidden, coded conversations between the foes. They lay upon the ground, heads down, arms tucked beneath them so that they crawled upon their elbows in the manner that they had seen in war films, skirting the fencing until they came upon the tree that would gain them entrance. Another pause to ensure that they were still unobserved, then they climbed its trunk, edged out upon the limb, and dropped quietly to the grass, the dried leaves and the twigs of the inner grounds of the Grange.

‘Did she, or didn’t she die of smothering?’

Eisenmenger spent a good deal of his time as a forensic pathologist combating barristers who sought to destroy his conclusions; he spent an equal amount of time combating members of the constabulary who sought to drag from him conclusions that he was not just unwilling to give, he was intellectually incapable of giving. As he had said so often before, he now said simply, ‘I don’t know.’ He knew that this would provoke fury – and he did not like provoking fury – but he could give no other reply.

‘Well, can’t you even give me a hint?’

‘Beverley, Beverley, Beverley . . .’

‘Please, John. I need something.’

They were in Clive’s office, sipping coffee. Eisenmenger had noticed that Lancefield was looking oddly detached, and had wondered distractedly what was wrong with her. He said, ‘I know she didn’t die of major trauma, but until the tox comes back, I can’t exclude a pharmacological cause, and she has enough coronary atheroma to kill an elephant.’

‘So?’

He grunted, lowered his head, stared at the pencil sharpener on Clive’s desk that was shaped like a small coffin. Then: ‘If you want an opinion now, I’d say she was smothered.’

Beverley let out a long sigh, as if she had been holding her breath for a hundred years. ‘Thank you.’

He looked up. ‘I might be wrong.’

She shook her head. ‘You don’t believe that, and neither do I.’

He allowed, ‘I think it’s likelier than not that she was smothered,’ which was as definite as she knew she was likely to get.

‘But this can’t be the same killer. The MO’s completely different.’

‘It is, isn’t it,’ he agreed. ‘Yet . . .’

‘Yet, you think it is?’ she guessed.

He hesitated. It was time to confess what he had discovered about Len Barker’s final message to the living. He had a feeling he was about to get bollocked, and he wasn’t disappointed.

‘Jesus mother-fucking Christ, John. How the hell could you forget?’

He thought that perhaps he had one or two reasons, but said nothing about them. ‘It might be nothing.’

‘The head was found not far from Colberrow, the registration that Len Barker wrote down is from a Colberrow Estate van, and now this. How can it be unconnected?’

He shrugged. ‘We don’t know that Len Barker saw anything.’

‘He lived at the top of the quarry. Maybe he saw a white van; maybe he saw someone get out of a white van and dump a body.’

‘Was he interviewed at the time?’

Beverley’s eyes narrowed; she knew full well who had been entrusted with that task. ‘He was, but apparently he didn’t make this information known.’

Eisenmenger, ignorant of the context, was running through possibilities. ‘He was still severely disabled; it was a left-sided stroke that affected his speech; if he was right-handed, it would have destroyed his ability to write. He was confined to a wheelchair, too. Maybe he just never got the chance to tell anyone.’ Beverley was thinking, Lancefield should have made sure. She should have given him the opportunity to communicate. I bet she didn’t. Eisenmenger continued, ‘He was found in the kitchen and had been there several hours. His carer put him to bed, so at some time in the night he got up, and made his way to the kitchen where he fell. If there was nothing in the bedroom, maybe he was looking for something to write with.’ He paused. ‘It would have taken a great effort, given his condition, though. Would it really have been that important to him?’

‘He was an ex-policeman, and a good one by all accounts; I should think he would have been desperate to make the information known.’

‘So we can be fairly certain that the murderer has something to do with Colberrow, probably the Colberrow Estate itself.’

She gestured with her head towards the dissection room where Clive was finishing up. ‘But how is that connected?’

‘Now that is beyond me, but connected it is, Beverley.’

Her mobile went off; it played ‘Carmina Burana’, Eisenmenger noticed. She said, ‘Yes?’ then listened intently for a little over a minute during which Eisenmenger sent a text to Charlie, asking how she was. Beverley said to her caller, ‘What do you know about him?’ The answer did not please, Eisenmenger deduced, because her reply was couched in somewhat brusque terms. ‘Well, fucking well find it out, constable. Find out everything there is to know.’ She paused, listening to what Fisher had to say. Then: ‘Just do it, Fisher. And whilst you’re about it, I want someone to go over the Colberrow Estate. They own a white van, registration number . . .’ She read out the number that Eisenmenger had given her. ‘I want to know who has access to it and where it was the night before the body in the quarry was discovered.’

She stabbed her finger with its long, crimson nail – almost subconsciously Eisenmenger wondered if they were false – down on the phone and almost through it into her handbag. ‘That name you gave us – Trelawney – has been positively identified as the beheaded male.’

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ His tone was mild, almost ironic.

For a second she might have been about to rip some of the proverbial out of him, but then she seemed to find a little pocket of patience – perhaps in her capacious handbag – that she had previously overlooked, for she took a deep breath and almost smiled. ‘It’s another lead,’ she admitted.

‘There you are, then.’

She suddenly laughed, the tension within her relieved. ‘Maybe, John.’

FORTY-FIVE

They’ll show me a bit of fucking respect

Somersby looked up. ‘Did you hear anything?’

Sheldon’s eyes were watering because of the strong smell of vinegar that permeated the shed in which they were working; in any case, he was thinking and thinking was something he had to concentrate on, lest he lose track of things completely. He did not reply. Somersby went to the door, unbolted and unlocked it, then looked out warily. Sheldon continued with his task – stirring as he added water to the now cooling mix – either completely oblivious or completely uncaring of what Somersby was doing and saying. This was the part of the process he hated the most, and he had always to keep thinking about the money he was making, the money that made it all worthwhile . . .

Except that he was starting to wonder if it was worth it. When Somersby had come to him and suggested that he had a sure way to make a decent wage without too much effort, he had been wholly enthusiastic, had been completely believing that this was a sure-fire money-spinner, the honest-to-goodness, guaranteed, gold-plated gravy train that he had always thought was sooner or later going to come his way. Maximum money, minimum effort; wasn’t that what everyone was looking for?

The effort, though, no longer seemed to him to be minimum; he always got the shitty jobs like this one while Somersby made out that his workload was just as hard and just as important, although it never seemed quite as unpleasant. When there was unloading or loading to do, it was Tom who did it, Somersby who directed him; washing the vats and utensils was always done by him, too, usually when Somersby had taken the latest batch away in the van, the van that was full because Tom had loaded it.

And he had a grievance about the money, because he wasn’t allowed to spend it. ‘We’ll be making tens of thousands, Thomas,’ Somersby had said. ‘Maybe hundreds.’ What he hadn’t said was that he wasn’t going to let Thomas see any of it, not for a long time. ‘We’ve got to be careful, Thomas. What are people going to think if you suddenly turn up one day in a Ferrari?’

They’ll show me a bit of fucking respect, was what Tom Sheldon had thought, although he hadn’t said it. Anyway, he wasn’t stupid; he wasn’t going to go mad and start buying diamonds and shit like that, but there wouldn’t be any harm in getting the odd, small luxury – a new Playstation, and maybe a car that was a little newer than the crappy old banger he’d had ever since he learned to drive. Fucking hell, he was entitled to something . . .

‘I thought I heard something.’ Somersby, having closed the door and secured it again, was now looking out of the window. ‘You sure there was no way those kids could have got in?’

Tom stopped stirring, his resentment bubbling close to the surface. ‘I told you, didn’t I? There was nothing.’

‘It sounded like a kid.’

‘I didn’t hear it.’

‘You wouldn’t have done, what with the noise of the stirring, Thomas.’

‘Why don’t you do some stirring while I do some listening?’

And why don’t you stop calling me Thomas? My name’s fucking Tom, you cocky cunt.

Somersby knew well that Tom Sheldon was becoming increasingly aggrieved, but he wasn’t too bothered and he had had a pretty good idea that a time such as this would come. He hadn’t chosen Tom for his brains but for his brawn, which was not without its dangers; there were stages in the process where things could go horribly wrong – ‘horribly wrong’ as in ‘explode’ – and the first few times that they had worked together, Somersby had worked with his arsehole too tight to let a pin in.

He smiled at Tom; a friendly smile, one that to a man of greater intellect would have been seen as inappropriate. ‘Why don’t I? And why don’t you do what I’m doing, Thomas?’

He came across the shed, held out his hand for the paddle. It was handed to him, although with sudden reluctance, for Tom hadn’t thought it would be this easy and his intellect wasn’t that limited. Somersby indicated the desk at which he had been working. ‘Go on.’

His voice was so full of uncertainty, he had trouble getting any words past it. ‘What are you doing?’ His face and demeanour mirrored the indecision.

Somersby replied neutrally, ‘I’m searching for suppliers of hydrochloric and sulphuric acid, acetic anhydride and chloroform. You can do that, can’t you, Thomas?’ But he couldn’t, and he knew it and Somersby knew it. Somersby continued, ‘I’ve set up a dummy company, but you’ve got to order only small amounts, and not all from the same company.’ Tom nodded; he did so slowly and could not hide his anxiety. Somersby was relentless. ‘And order in the right ratios. I don’t want stuff we can’t use left behind.’

‘Why not?’

‘Evidence, Thomas. Evidence.’

Tom nodded but didn’t rush to the desk and the computer thereon.

‘Well?’ There was a trace of viciousness in Somersby’s tone now and on his face was a tight, unpleasant grin. ‘You can do that, can’t you?’

Tom hesitated. From outside but at some distance, there came the faint sound of a child’s laugh. Somersby said at once, ‘Go and check what’s happening outside. Now.’

The imperative tone was enough to make Tom obey at once. Sheldon waited in the shed, looking through the window. About three minutes of quiet passed before there arose, clear and high, a child’s scream.

FORTY-SIX

‘at least you haven’t had the children to contend with’

Lancefield looked around the room, trying to focus. Why the hell was she there? Not just why was she in that room at that time, but why was she not elsewhere, mourning as she should, perhaps comforting her father. Except that there was no comfort to be given or had. She appreciated fully for the first time that she had been so wrong all these years; she had been so aware of gradually losing her mother that she had missed the fact that it was only the illness that had allowed her to keep – albeit in a distorted, loveless way – her father. Now that tenuous, desiccated link was gone, and with it the bonds to her father were gone completely. All future contact would be loveless; worse, in fact, because it would be lovelessness tinged with mutual and self-loathing, each of them aware that they were equally responsible for the impasse, yet each ready to blame the other completely.

She felt ashamed, more than bereaved, and wanted to run from this, yet couldn’t. It hampered every thought she had; she knew that she was not functioning properly, yet could not help it; the last thing she would do is take compassionate leave. The next before last thing she would do would be to tell Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton of her personal problems and ask for forgiveness.

Fisher had been looking through the rest of the house. ‘No sign of forced entry.’

The cottage was cramped and overfilled. It smelled fusty and old, unchanged for perhaps decades. There was an inordinate amount of furniture, not surprising, she supposed, considering Dominic Trelawney had been a joiner; the small dining table was exceptionally beautiful. It wasn’t a neat house, though, and he had clearly been sleeping downstairs on the sagging, worn settee for some weeks or months, with consequent disruption and untidiness; the bed had been made, but badly. She looked out of the front-room windows, through old, warped glass and through smeared grime. The cottage was on the side of the steep Stroud escarpment, looking across to larger, more luxurious abodes. They were too far away to have seen anything.

‘Call on the neighbours. Find out when they last saw him and if they saw anyone suspicious come to call.’

Fisher disappeared and Lancefield managed to energise herself enough to begin looking for something that might help in the investigation. After forty minutes, she had found very little. Most of the expected paperwork she found in the sideboard – cheque book, pensions statement, bank statements, hospital appointment card, television licence, old-style driving licence – and none of it told her anything. In the kitchen was the beginning of a shopping list and a calendar. There was nothing on it that she could see was relevant – no mysterious meetings with ‘Q’ or unexplained sums of money written in the margins – but she decided to take it back to the station anyway, if only to cover her backside when Beverley Wharton demanded to see it. Behind it was last year’s calendar and this dropped to the floor. She bent to pick it up. It had fluttered open and she was looking at the February before last. The initials ‘AA’ were written in for Tuesday of every week. Beside each was written ‘St Mark’s’.

For a moment she became excited – who was AA? – but this quickly subsided. Alcoholics Anonymous, of course. They would meet in a church hall. She checked and found the entries stopped after October and there were none in the present year’s calendar. So he had stopped going probably when he found out he had cancer; she couldn’t blame him. She began to riffle through cupboards, discovering four empty whisky bottles. She grunted softly, then went to the old-fashioned pantry at the back of the kitchen, moved some tins of soup and fruit and found three full bottles of whisky, all of which made her smile.

Antonia had had a migraine for most of the day, one that made it hard for her to think. She was delighted that Josh and Harriet had been out of the house for the day – Josh out playing with Darren, Harriet spending a few days on holiday with a school friend in Scotland – thus allowing her some respite. Andrew had been in London at the Royal Society of Medicine (‘my club’ as he liked to call it), attending a symposium on new advances in gerontology. Had she not felt so unwell, she would have really enjoyed the day, treasuring the chance to garden, to rest, to read and to listen to her beloved Radio Four; as it was, all she could do was lie there in a darkened room and feel blessed relief that she was not being pestered every ten minutes.

Andrew arrived home at twenty past seven to find his wife of thirty-seven years asleep. Unaware of her travails, he made his usual bustle as he came in, calling out for her and slamming doors, just as he had been doing for all of their married life, just as he was always being told off for doing. He was pouring himself a glass of red wine when she came into the kitchen. He looked up, his face changing from an expression of smiling welcome to one of surprise. ‘Antonia? You look awful.’

She took the compliment with fortitude. ‘Good. Because that’s how I feel.’ She sat down at the table heavily, waving away his offer of wine. ‘Have you had a good day?’

‘Very interesting. Quite astonishing the progress they’re making in ageing. Did you know, they now believe that it isn’t at all genetic. There are no genes directly involved in ageing, it’s really all just wear and tear . . .’ He paused. ‘But that doesn’t matter; what’s up with you?’

‘Migraine. It came on not long after you left this morning.’

‘You poor old thing. At least you haven’t had the children to contend with.’

She sighed. ‘No, no. It’s been nice and peaceful.’

He looked around. ‘Where is Josh?’

‘He spent the day with Darren.’

He looked at his watch. ‘Still? Isn’t it a bit late for him to be out?’

‘Don’t worry, Anthony. He’s spending the night at Darren’s. He’s perfectly alright.’

FORTY-SEVEN

and she was careful not to let him hear

MISSING PERSON REPORT, REF NO. 10/434/A

Name: Melanie Whittaker (Photograph attached)

Age: 34

Address: 29b Wilson Crescent, Whaddon, Cheltenham.

Date and Time Last Seen: Wednesday 29th July, at approximately 4.30pm

Last Seen By: Mrs Alice Dolittle (Statement attached)

Reported By: Mr Isaac Lawes

Relationship to Missing Person: Ex-boyfriend and father of the daughter (Statement attached).

Comments: Please see Missing Person Report ref no 10/434/B

‘I heard you were after missing wives and daughters. Thought you might be interested.’ DCI Smillie lived up to his name, but then he was always living up to it; he smiled perpetually, his facial muscles seemingly paralysed; even when the rest of his face desperately wanted to frown, his mouth refused to come out and play, staying petulantly in its chosen position, deaf to all entreaty. His voice was stuck in one mode too but, unfortunately, it was one of whining condescension, of mockery and Schadenfreude. He was not the most popular of men, which had driven him further into this caricature of satisfaction, one guaranteed to irritate all within quite a wide radius. He had only been working in the station for five months, but already he had engendered a vigorous hatred in Beverley’s heart. She looked at the report he had handed her as he said, ‘434/B refers to her daughter, Evangeline.’

Beverley found herself fighting all sorts of emotions: extreme dislike of the pompous uniformed Smillie, elation that here was another potential lead, exasperation and extreme annoyance that Lancefield had apparently missed this. ‘What enquiries have been made?’

‘We’ve taken statements, as you can see. We’ve also talked to the daughter’s school. She’s well known for truanting, so they weren’t too bothered that she was missing.’

She scanned the statements. They were brief and, as so often, almost indecipherable. The concatenation of police constables who were functionally illiterate, witnesses who were functionally stupid and a photocopier that was functionally decrepit made reading such documents an arduous exercise in deduction and guesswork. She asked, ‘Is there any hint that the ex did something?’

‘Not a chance. He’s an HGV driver, just got back from Estonia. Called in to see his daughter as soon as he got back.’

‘And nobody saw anything suspicious?’

‘Nope. But then, it’s Whaddon, isn’t it?’ Which was code for nobody ever saw anything of use to the police in Whaddon.

She looked at the photographs. They were definitely of the two people found at the Cotswold Water Park, although the partner would have to identify them. ‘Thanks,’ she said, unfortunately finding as she did so that she had just run out of sincerity.

Smillie smiled. ‘Surprised your guys didn’t spot it.’

‘So am I.’

‘Perhaps a team talk . . .?’

‘Perhaps.’

He turned and walked away, and she was careful not to let him hear as she murmured, ‘Cunt.’

She waited until he was safely out of earshot before calling Fisher and Lancefield. She commanded them to close the door, then chucked the report on to the desk for them to see. Lancefield picked it up and Beverley let her scan through it. When she looked up, Beverley saw a strange mix of surprise and ennui in her inspector’s eyes. She said calmly, ‘DCI Smillie has just brought me that. Why didn’t either of you?’

Fisher looked across at Lancefield, his mouth open, his eyes betraying fear, as if he could see the train lights coming at the far end of the tunnel and he had his foot trapped. He was well aware that standard operating procedure in the police force was to pass the bomb down the ranks until it exploded in the hands of the most junior officer; as it happened, he need not have worried. Lancefield said only, ‘I’m sorry, Chief . . .’ She sounded tired, almost absent, certainly unable to appreciate the shit she was wandering into. In his incredulity at such an unexpected reprieve, he looked at Beverley. She was staring at Lancefield, her face unreadable. Without taking her eyes from her, she said to him in what the romantic might have considered a biblical way, ‘Go, Fisher.’

He left, mightily relieved.

Beverley leaned back in her chair. Her incandescence had dimmed, replaced by perplexity. ‘Your mind isn’t on the case, inspector.’ Lancefield didn’t react. ‘Care to explain why?’

Lancefield took her time focusing on her superior. When she spoke, it was hesitantly, yet without fear; there was something of relief, indeed. ‘I watched my mother die two nights ago.’ But before Beverley could register her shock at this news, she continued, ‘I sat there all through the night, holding her hand, listening to her ramblings, getting more and more tired, more and more depressed, and more and more uncertain. She lapsed into a coma, yet was still alive, still occasionally moaning and muttering. Would you believe it, she laughed once!’ With unconscious irony, Lancefield laughed, and it was a thing of bitterness. ‘I hadn’t heard her laugh in years . . .’

Beverley tried to intervene, to show some of the contrition she was experiencing, but Lancefield wasn’t even aware that she was in the room. ‘And I began to understand what this killer wants. I started to comprehend him . . .’ She frowned in puzzlement. ‘He wants to see some sign of the soul, and as I sat with my mother, I found I wanted to as well; after so many years of mental disintegration, I had come to consider her little more than an animal, a not-human thing, and I supposed I came to consider that she didn’t have a soul anymore. Then, over the course of that night, I recalled the web postings and I wondered if I would be lucky enough to catch sight of something wondrous, something that would prove that my mother was still endowed with a soul, that she was still my mother and not a demented animal . . .’

Beverley didn’t know what to say. This was not going at all as she had imagined it would; Lancefield had gone far off script and she found herself unsure of which lines to say. Eventually she asked gently and hesitantly, ‘And were you lucky?’

Lancefield considered the question for a long moment, then shook her head. ‘No. There was nothing.’ She sounded devastated as much by this as by the death. She sat down abruptly and trailed off, but it was only to take a breath before looking up at Beverley and saying simply, ‘I’m afraid. Very afraid.’

Beverley asked softly, ‘What of?’

Lancefield looked up at once. ‘Of ghosts,’ she said with scarcely any sound at all.

FORTY-EIGHT

a sorrow for a number of things

Eisenmenger sat in the small study of his flat, the sun dying behind him so that darkness was rising to meet him, to enfold him and to welcome him; he did not mind, indeed his subconscious found pleasure in the thought of dissolution, in becoming indistinguishable from his environment, in ceasing to have a separate identity. His mind was full of thoughts, though all were chaotic, disconnected and sociopathic, seeming to shun contact both with him and with each other; nothing was coherent in his head; there was no smooth flow of thought, just a turbulent mental activity that was completely without direction. In his hand his mobile phone was clenched loosely, might almost have been about to drop to the orange-red of the rug beneath his feet. It was the phone on which he had just spoken to Charlie, the one that had given him the news that she thought that she could no longer continue their relationship.

She had sounded distraught, but that was only the scantiest of comfort and it sounded in his ears very like the words of one who has made a decision but earned a guilty conscience as reward. I’m sorry, John . . .

Which was a sorrow for a number of things – for reneging on what she had promised him, for shitting on his parade, for feeling uncomfortable, for feeling like a shit – but he did not gain pleasure from this. How could he? He did not feel vindictive towards her merely because she had done what so many had done before her; his logical mind told him that the one constant – John Eisenmenger – must be the one at fault.

Yet what could he do? He was what he was, and he did what he did. He did not feel that he was evil, nor even unpleasant, although he admitted that he was not ordinarily bothered by unpleasant things; did that make him so difficult to love? Apparently it did, at least as far as Charlie was concerned. He was well aware that pathologists had a reputation for coldness, for disconnection, even for strangeness, but he had always hoped that this could be divorced from the rest of his life, that it could be inserted firmly into a compartment and the lid closed, so that for at least some of his life he could consider himself normal, and have others consider him likewise. Yet it had never yet proved so. There was ever seepage of one into the other, a tainting of his non-professional life by what he did in daylight hours; it was as if the evil that men did not only lived after them, but was a contagion that he had caught and of which he could not be cured.

Even Charlie, who had at least had professional training in aspects of the world in which he found himself, could not cope, it seemed. If she could not, could anyone? Was he doomed to choose between marrying another forensic pathologist or a life alone?

Yet Helena had, at least for a while, endured him . . .

For the first time for many months, he really thought of Helena.

He saw her, remembered her, experienced her as if she were still with him.

She became real, just for an instant, as she had not been for so long, not since before she had died.

He had not argued with Charlie, had not even thought of doing so. He had the emotional awareness of a codfish, but even he had experience enough to appreciate that this was not a debate that could be won by intellectual acumen, that she was not putting forward a proposition, that he had just been given a description of how it was.

He began to weep.

What did he have now? Where could he go?

Just what was he?

Without prior awareness of the intention, he suddenly stood up and went to the kitchen to find some whisky; he had unexpectedly discovered that he intended to get himself thoroughly fucking drunk.

‘Go home.’ With these two words, Beverley stood and went to the door, opened it and stood to one side. ‘Go home and go to sleep. You’re on sick leave as of now.’

Lancefield stared at her; she did not get out of the chair and did not appear to be about to. ‘Sir . . .’

‘You’ve lost your mother, inspector. Even a bitch like me wouldn’t have a problem with you taking compassionate leave.’

But Lancefield did not move and did not even change her facial expression. She said slowly and firmly, ‘I don’t want to go home.’

‘You aren’t in any sort of emotional state to do your job properly. I don’t need someone wandering around like a zombie, bumping into the furniture.’

‘I know I haven’t been pulling my weight, but I promise I’ll pull myself together. Don’t make me go home.’ She was pleading and Beverley was both surprised and rather disgusted by the realization.

‘It would be for the best.’

But Lancefield was vehement. ‘No, it wouldn’t be. I have no one to talk to there.’

‘What about your father? He’s still alive, isn’t he?’

‘We . . . don’t see eye to eye.’

Which found Beverley nonplussed. She considered. Losing Lancefield would be a temporary problem whilst someone else was drafted in, but it was not insurmountable. On the other hand, Lancefield was normally efficient and reliable – if anything, too efficient. She said, ‘No more fuck-ups, Lancefield. If I let you stay around, you behave normally. It’s your decision to carry on working, which means no special treatment, OK?’

Lancefield nodded. ‘I appreciate that, sir.’

‘You fucking better, Lancefield. I can’t afford to cock this investigation up, and that means I can’t afford to have anyone – anyone at all – not functioning at full capacity. If you let me down, I’ll flay you alive and then throw you to the wolves; I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again, if I must. Understand?’ Lancefield said nothing but it was clear from her expression that she understood only too well. Beverley continued to stare at her for a full thirty seconds more; then she said, still without dropping her gaze, ‘Now, first I want you to find out all you can about a place called Colberrow. It’s in the north of the county.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything, inspector. Absolutely everything.’

‘What then?’

‘Keep digging for a connection between the victims we’ve so far managed to identify.’

Which Lancefield thought was a waste of time. Nothing had come up so far and she strongly suspected it never would. ‘Anything else?’

‘You can go through those Internet postings again.’

An inexplicable spurt of panic ran through her at this. ‘Again? But . . .’

‘Yes, Lancefield. Again.’

Lancefield was about to ask why, then decided against it; she guessed that it would not be a wise move.

Lancefield found that she could not stop herself watching the Internet postings again and again. It had started as merely her obedience of a superior’s orders but, as awful as the images were, it imperceptibly became a compulsion. A voice in her head kept telling her not to, kept telling her that there was perversion in her desire to see what the killer had seen, seek what the killer had sought, but she could not desist. And with each showing she trod deeper and deeper into a mire that sucked at her soul, that insinuated itself into her being and corroded it. This killer scared her but beckoned her somehow; he whispered to her, sought what she sought, wondered the same things that she wondered. She felt a dreadful affinity for him, a hypnotic entrancement by his thinking . . .

Abruptly she pulled herself from the brink.

But brink of what?

She was cold, she suddenly realized; cold, hungry and ragingly thirsty. It was past midnight and darkness had fallen in her small terraced house without her realizing it.

It was with a feeling of nauseous fear, as if she had looked into the mirror and seen a corrupted vision of herself, that she turned the computer off at the wall, eager to see that screen fade to black. She was hungry, but she knew that she could not eat that night.

FORTY-NINE

panic bloomed like a devouring plague

Eisenmenger rang his secretary at eight thirty the next morning, claiming sickness; it was not altogether a lie, because he had indeed vomited twice. He felt almost overwhelming guilt at this subterfuge, yet at the same time, and considering what was happening to him, he tried to reason that he had some right to take a break; such reasoning, however, sounded to him specious and had the sound of sophistry in his ears. He was well aware that he was dumping his colleagues in it, and he did not like to do things like that. Yet, he just could not find it within himself to carry on as normal, as if his personal life had not just been blown asunder; if normally the stiff upper lip was not far from his face, today it was absent without leave; it was on someone else’s face, perhaps, someone who did not feel as if one of the legs on which his life was based had just been blasted away by a shotgun.

Having phoned in his apologies, he made some coffee and retired to bed on a breakfast of caffeine and paracetamol. For the next two hours he drifted in and out of dreams that were soon forgotten yet left an aftertaste of unpleasantness, before becoming suddenly awake. It was quite abrupt this transition, and it found him without a headache, although with a dry mouth and sore throat. He got up, and tried to fight the feeling of guilt that he really should have gone into work, that he had let himself down. More coffee down and he debated whether to go to work, but decided against it; Charlie would presumably be in the hospital and, although it was unlikely they would meet, he did not want even to chance it. Besides, he felt something at the back of his head, something about the murders that was there to be seen, but had so far eluded him.

Accordingly, he settled down in his small study with a cafetière of fresh coffee and began to collate all the findings on all the bodies thus far found.

Feeling much better, Antonia was up early the next morning. Andrew who, since his retirement, had become something of a late riser unless he had to be otherwise, joined her in the kitchen at just after nine thirty. ‘What are you doing today?’

‘I need to take the children into Hereford to get them new clothes for school. What about you?’

‘Cutting the grass. If I get the time, I’ll start pruning the roses out the front.’

‘Would you? They desperately need it.’

There was a period of companionable silence as he munched muesli and she took delicate, perfect semicircular bits of brown toast and apricot jam, while someone read out the Radio Four book of the week and told them all about life during the London Blitz. They drank the breakfast tea that she liked and could only get in Waitrose. It was too early for the paper or the post, so she read a magazine and he a book on the history of gynaecology.

The doorbell rang. It was Ellie Taylor to pick up Darren. It took a few moments, but when it sank in with all concerned that the boys were missing and had been all night, panic bloomed like a devouring plague.

The news of the missing boys had broken in Inspector Smillie’s office at eleven o’clock that morning. He had an unfortunate manner that did not endear him to his colleagues, and he was well aware of this, but this did not mean that he was a bad or incompetent police officer. Far from it, in fact. He had constantly impressed superiors wherever he had been stationed and, the scuttlebutt predicted confidently, he was destined for great things, perhaps even for a post as Chief Constable. He went straight to the small village of Colberrow to question Ellie Taylor and Antonia and Andrew Barclay. He then organized house-to-house enquires of the entire village.

At three minutes past twelve, Eisenmenger stood up from the desk, stretched, winced and sighed. He had not moved beyond his despair at Charlie’s phone call, but he had at least found a distraction. In fact, after reading and rereading his reports, making copious notes all the while, he now thought he had found an altogether very interesting distraction. He looked at his watch and decided that he and the environment in general would benefit if he took a long shower. Then he would contact Beverley and see if she agreed that he had found something useful.

He had a feeling he had.

FIFTY

they’re of the social class who get murdered

‘It’s not all bad news.’

‘Go on.’

Eisenmenger could hear weary cynicism in Beverley’s voice. She had spent most of the morning collating all that she had, and had found it was precious little; she felt like someone who had just gone to get money from the bank, only to find that the account was overdrawn. ‘The DNA tests confirm that the head in the slurry pit and the body from outside the mortuary match; likewise, the head with the body from the mortuary matches the body in the compost bin.’

‘How is that good?’

‘It’s conclusive proof that I was right and you don’t have to look for two more headless bodies and two more bodiless heads.’

She was patently less than impressed and showed this with a soft grunt and with no change in expression. ‘At the rate that other types of dead bodies are turning up, that’s little comfort, John.’

‘None of the victims is known to the national DNA database, though.’

‘You surprise me,’ she said with irony that was so heavy it left him slightly winded. ‘I’ve yet to find any victim or suspect who is.’

He shrugged. ‘I suspect the mathematics are that you need a DNA database in order of magnitude bigger than the one we’ve got before you see real benefits.’

She looked less than content, saying only sourly, ‘Thanks.’

‘And all the toxicology has come back completely negative so far, although we’re waiting on the results from the last two.’

‘No drugs, no alcohol?’

‘Nothing in the blood. As I said, they’d been given Rohypnol at some point, but when they died, that had passed out of their system. They were completely compos mentis when they were killed.’

Under her breath, he heard her say, Shit. More loudly, she then observed sourly, ‘Lucky bastards.’ A snort, then: ‘I thought you said it wasn’t all bad news. Where’s the good in any of this?’ He was surprised; she was not usually so morose. The Beverley Wharton he knew well was driven, cocksure, almost arrogant; this one was hung around with a necklace of defeatism. Interestingly, she did not seem quite so attractive now, he thought, and that was a shame. ‘Haven’t you got anything at all to help me?’

‘You’ve got four of the victims identified. Sooner or later that ought to highlight a common theme.’

She picked up four pink cardboard folders and chucked them across the desk to him. ‘This is all we’ve found so far on all of them. I’ve had Lancefield trawling again, but I doubt she’ll find anything new. Go through what we’ve got so far, if you like. I can’t see anything that links them.’

He did as he was told, not because he expected to spot something that she had missed – he knew that she was too good a detective to have missed the obvious, and he was too inexperienced a detective to find the obscured – but because he had something buzzing around the back of his mind; it was a feeling he had had before, and it occasionally meant that he had his fingertips on a thread that led to a string, that led to a cord, that led to an answer. As he read, she explained tiredly, ‘Dominic Trelawney was something of a recluse, the more so following his diagnosis of malignancy. He kept himself to himself; his neighbours tended to avoid him, since he was at best uncommunicative, at worst bloody rude and abusive. Malcolm Willoughby was a no-hoper from the day his mother said, “yes”; or rather, his father said, “get your legs apart”, and he was barely known at his digs. He could have been dragged from his bedsit by purple monsters with ten eyes and no one would have bothered except to take snapshots with their smartphones to put on YouTube.’ She threw a pencil across the room; it bounced off the edge of the waste-paper bin and hit the wall before skedaddling behind the filing cabinet, perhaps fed up with being flung around. ‘And as for the Whitakers, they were on all the social benefit they could lay their hands on; I’m expecting someone to tell me that they were receiving war disability benefit at any moment. The daughter spent more time truanting than she did attending classes, and the mother has never spent more than a month in paid employment. The area they lived in, they could have been kidnapped by a gang firing AK-47s and rocket-powered grenades in the air and no one would have thought it odd.’

He observed, ‘He’s choosing his victims very wisely.’

‘He is.’

‘A clever murderer, then . . .’

‘Tell me about it.’

He took a deep breath in. ‘They’re all of a certain social class, though.’

She shook her head. ‘They’re of the social class who get murdered, John. Agatha Christie might have polished off the nobility, but in my world, it’s the ones who don’t have social networks who die, the ones who don’t matter, except to very few, very unimportant people.’

‘If I were a serial killer, I’d choose people like this,’ he commented. ‘It’s the logical pool to fish in.’

‘Which doesn’t help me . . .’

‘No,’ he agreed.

There was silence for a short while before she said, ‘I did wonder if he was enticing them with money. He could be placing small ads somewhere, but trying to find out where without any hints would be a colossal task.’

He appeared not to hear and, when she looked at him, she saw that he wasn’t paying her any attention at all. She called, ‘John?’ He grunted softly, but not so softly that she did not hear it. ‘John?’ she repeated when he made no pretence at reaction.

For a while Eisenmenger still appeared to be uncomprehending, for he just carried on leafing through the reports, then he asked without his head rising, ‘Did either of the Whitakers drink?’

She leaned towards him. ‘John?’

He looked up. ‘Did they?’

‘I don’t know. I could find out, though.’

‘I think the mother did. I think she had an alcohol problem.’

‘How do you know?’ He hesitated and she picked up on this, narrowed her eyes, became a touch more animated. ‘John?’

‘A curiosity,’ he said. ‘Probably nothing more.’

‘Go on . . .’

‘Three of them had fatty livers.’

She knew him well enough to know that he did not like talking about hypotheses that might not pan out. ‘And?’

‘The fourth had cirrhosis.’

She also knew him well enough to remember how bloody infuriating he could be. ‘Which means fuck all to me, John.’

It was two o’clock and he was hungry. Without any prior planning, he asked suddenly, ‘How about some lunch?’

They went to a bar near the Rotunda in the Montpellier district of Cheltenham. She had a Caesar salad and he a croque-monsieur; with it, she drank Sauvignon Blanc, he lager. He found himself experiencing curious feelings as they sat at a street table under the awning; they had known each other for many years and during those years there had been an underlying mutual attraction that neither of them had openly acknowledged yet both had been fully aware of. Only the strength of his relationship with Helena had stopped him on some occasions from taking things further; he wondered as they sat there what was going on in his subconscious, given Charlie’s announcement of the night before. Beverley, though, was too preoccupied with the case to be dwelling on past – perhaps present – feelings. ‘So what are you talking about?’ she had demanded as soon as they had ordered.

‘A liver gets fatty – pathologists call it steatosis – for a variety of well-defined reasons. Diabetics tend to have it because insulin is the hormone that regulates the conversion of sugar into fat and vice versa, and a lot of sugar is stored in the liver; you can also get the same phenomenon just because you’re obese and, perversely, if you’re starved.’ The waitress brought cutlery; she had a smile on her face but it was as meaningful and dislocating as that on a clown; her eyes were constantly looking outside at the passing traffic and Beverley wondered if she were near the end of her shift and waiting for a lift. Eisenmenger continued, ‘But the commonest reason, at least in the developed world, is drugs; and one drug in particular.’ He raised his glass and took a drink. ‘Alcohol.’

‘They all had a drink problem?’

‘They all drank enough alcohol to affect their liver; I leave it to you to decide whether that’s “a problem”.’

She considered this. ‘If it’s a common theme, it may not be the common theme. A lot of people drink too much. It could be entirely coincidental.’

He held up his hands as if in surrender. ‘I know that, Beverley. I’m only pointing out an interesting observation.’

She was thinking things through. ‘Even if it is the link we’ve been looking for, what does it mean? Is the killer a pub landlord? Perhaps he owns an off licence?’

He smiled tiredly. ‘Maybe.’

She was concentrating hard now, weighing up the implications of what she had been told, performing a cost-benefit analysis; should she listen to him, and devote resources to what might be a complete waste of time, one that might delay her discovering the real linking theme? Or should she dismiss this as coincidence, look elsewhere, and possibly miss scooping the prize? Either way, if she got it wrong, she was going to look both stupid and incompetent, and she would be deeper in the mire than ever. Eisenmenger had a habit of being right when it came to finding odd, previously overlooked clues, but he was not infallible, and his suggestion that drink was the thread that she should follow was vague enough and nebulous enough to mean that it would not prove advantageous without considerable resource. The more resource that she committed to it, the greater her risk. It was a high-stakes gamble to listen to him, but was it a higher stakes gamble not to?

‘Jesus, John. You and your “interesting observations”.’

He bowed his head in mock apology. Their food arrived; his had mustard on and was therefore, in his opinion, spoiled; when he asked her how she found the salad, she shrugged and made a face to tell him that it was merely OK. They were barely halfway through the meal – with little more said between them – when her mobile rang. As she listened to what the caller had to say, her face became first grave and then, if anything, vacant; noticing this, he put his knife and fork down and waited. She said a brief, ‘OK. I’ll be back in ten minutes,’ then ended the call.

‘Another body?’ he guessed, but she shook her head.

‘Two young boys have disappeared.’

A bad occurrence for sure, and extremely worrying, but he could not see why she should have taken the news so badly. She had produced a twenty-pound note and put it now on the table beneath the salt and pepper. He asked, ‘And?’

She was already up and walking to the door and he had to hurry after her to hear her reply. ‘They live in Colberrow.’

FIFTY-ONE

it probably means nothing at all

On the way to the village of Colberrow, Lancefield told them what she knew. ‘Josh Barclay and Darren Taylor.’ She showed them pictures that had she had taken off the intranet; one was of a thin, handsome boy with Afro-Caribbean features and a shy smile; the other of a slightly more thickset, Caucasian lad with sandy hair and a freckled complexion. ‘Their families are neighbours in the village. Josh and his sister live with their grandparents – their parents are both dead; Darren with his mother and two younger sibs – the father is not at home. They went off for the day on their bicycles yesterday morning, taking a packed lunch. Each family thought that the boys were spending the night with the other, so they weren’t missed until this morning.’

‘Who’s the CIO?’

‘Chief Inspector Smillie.’

Despite her personal antipathy towards the man, Beverley was relieved at this news, for she appreciated that whilst he was a complete dickhead on a personal level, as Chief Investigating Officer he would prove professional and competent. She said, ‘Where’s Fisher?’

‘I told him to find out all he could about Betty Williams.’ She spoke with a hint of questioning temerity in her voice, as if she feared that Beverley might not approve; in the event, her superior merely nodded.

They arrived in the village, saw that Smillie had set up a temporary headquarters in the assembly hall of the local school. In the lane outside it were five marked police cars and a further three unmarked cars; she recognized Braxton’s among the latter. In the entrance hall of the school there hung the unmistakeable shade of school dinners past – stale, overcooked cabbage and something definable only by its acrid unpleasantness. The ceilings were low and the walls festooned with paintings, collages, photographs and displays that varied wildly in ability; Beverley felt a vague reminiscence stealing upon her as she walked past them, a reminiscence that was not entirely happy. In the assembly hall – one, she saw, that doubled as dining room and gymnasium – trestle tables had been set up along one wall and on this were computer stations manned by police personnel. Along the opposite wall were two desks facing one another; at one was Inspector Frobisher – Smillie’s usual assistant – while the other was unoccupied. Smillie was standing up, talking earnestly to Braxton whilst gesticulating at three large portable whiteboards – presumably borrowed from the school – on which was pinned a large-scale map of the area, lists of names, photographs of the two boys and various notes; there were also numerous jottings and notes written on in marker pen. A continuous trickle of people, some in uniform and some not, were entering, then reporting, then going out again.

Beverley walked over to Braxton and Smillie, both of whom expressed surprise that she should be there. Braxton vocalized his. ‘I appreciate that you are keen to help, Beverley, but I think Frank here can handle things.’ Smillie said nothing; his expression was one of wary defensiveness as he nodded enthusiastically at Braxton’s words. Braxton continued, ‘I need your full energies applied to this mad bastard who’s killing people in the name of science.’

‘There’s a chance the two cases may be linked, sir.’

At which news, both Smillie and Braxton visibly started. Smillie said, ‘Connected? How?’

‘The name of this place, Colberrow, keeps cropping up.’

Braxton was looking at her appraisingly. He said after a moment, ‘Perhaps we’d better discuss this in private and sitting down.’

The head teacher’s office was Spartan and small, but adequate. Braxton as senior officer, sat behind the desk while Smillie and Beverley took the place of parents, perhaps worried about their child’s SAT results, perhaps there to be told of some heinous misdemeanour which would mean exclusion for their offspring.

Beverley quickly went through her hypothesis after which Braxton looked still more thoughtful and Smillie said at once, ‘It’s a coincidence, nothing more.’

‘You know as well as I do that it’s bad policing to write off anything as “coincidence” without checking first,’ she countered.

‘I thought your madman was taking people who wouldn’t be missed; he could hardly have done anything more likely to attract publicity than taking two young boys from their families in the middle of rural Gloucestershire.’

‘I admit that goes against what we thought might be part of his MO.’

Smillie turned to Braxton. ‘And we only have one pathologist’s opinion that the old lady was murdered; even if she was, it doesn’t fit the MO of the other killings.’

Beverley could see that Braxton was becoming convinced by Smillie’s reasoning; actually, she was becoming convinced herself and it was as much to reassure herself as Smillie that she said, ‘The killer has no MO. He doesn’t operate in his own socio-economic group, he doesn’t kill his own racial type or gender. He just kills to kill and to examine the process while he does it.’

Smillie jumped in triumphantly. ‘But he didn’t “examine the process” when he supposedly killed the old woman, did he?’

Braxton looked at Beverley questioningly. ‘Good point.’

Smillie hadn’t finished. ‘And as for the message written in blood, it’s a complete red herring. Len Barker lived in Bromsberrow Heath which is barely five miles from here. It isn’t that surprising that the registration number came from a vehicle registered to an owner from Colberrow. It probably means nothing at all.’

‘He wrote it whilst he was dying, for God’s sake! That surely suggests he thought it significant.’

Smillie was unimpressed. ‘I understand that your enquires about the vehicle came to nothing,’ he pointed out.

Braxton looked at Beverley, his eyebrows raised in query. She admitted, ‘The keys to the van are kept securely in the estate manager’s office; they have to be booked out and booked back in again. For the time in question, the van was in the charge of Shaun Carter, an estate worker. He was tasked with picking up an antique dresser for the estate owner, Mr Wallace Parker. He had to drive to Inverness – an overnight journey. We’ve checked and he at least was there, although we cannot confirm that the van was.’

‘But forensics say the van is clean,’ said Smillie with a grim smile. Beverley admitted this, and Smillie turned to Braxton. ‘This is nothing to do with the body in the quarry. Len Barker was a good copper in his time, but he’d lost it when he had stroke.’

Braxton at last decided to contribute to the conversation and, as usual, it was to decide not to make a decision. ‘We must keep our options open. I admit that there does seem to be tenuous evidence that there may be a link’ – his accentuation of the adjective was enough to tell both Beverley and Smillie that he did not really believe it – ‘but I think it would be unwise to work on that assumption to the detriment of all other possibilities.’ Which was an easily deciphered code for ‘I am not about to be party to a decision that might ruin my record.’ ‘Therefore I suggest that Frank here continues with his enquires bearing in mind what you have told us, and I am sure he won’t mind you keeping a watching brief, as long as you don’t neglect other lines of enquiry.’

Having made this indecision, he thought about it, nodded (presumably at its wisdom) and then looked up beaming at both of them. ‘I’m going back to HQ. Keep me fully informed.’ It was a sign that they should go.

FIFTY-TWO

‘and yesterday? What were you doing yesterday?’

That Smillie did not agree with his commanding officer’s strategic decision was clear from his whole demeanour as he briefed Beverley on the operation to find the two children. He was defensive and curt, sounding as if he had been tasked with a waste of time, and one which was keeping him from matters that urgently required him and him alone. Beverley was well used to such an attitude and was open-minded enough to acknowledge that she would probably have reacted similarly herself; it didn’t mean, though, that she took it meekly.

‘I’ve got four teams of two on house-to-house in the village and surrounding area . . .’

‘You think that’s enough?’

‘It’s standard.’

She made a face, bobbed her head from side to side slightly. ‘In an urban setting, of course, but around here, I don’t know . . .’

He frowned but refused to engage in argument. ‘We know from the mother of Darren and Josh’s guardians that they were in the habit of playing on estate land – Colberrow Estate is over a thousand acres and effectively surrounds the entire village.’

‘Did they have a special place on the estate that they went? Have you asked?’

A spasm of irritation crossed Smillie’s face. ‘If they did, no one except the two boys knows about it.’ He smiled a bitter smile. ‘Yes, we have asked, OK?’

She returned the smile. ‘Just trying to help.’

In a whisper, Smillie said aggressively, ‘This is my case, Beverley. Not yours. I’ll keep you informed because I’ve been ordered to, but don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re welcome here. Just keep your nose out of it.’

Her lips stretched into a shallow smile while her eyes stayed aloof and just stared at him; she might have been calculating the best temperature at which to roast him. He turned to the large map on one of the whiteboards. ‘We’re working on the assumption that it was to the estate that they went yesterday morning. We know that they left at just after nine on bicycles and, Darren’s mother seems pretty sure, with some sort of picnic. At present, though, we know nothing of what happened to them after that.’

‘How are you organizing the search of the estate?’

‘We’re using the village as a centre and working our way out from there; I have forty officers forming a cordon, but we’re going to need more pretty soon.’

Beverley was looking at the map, not even appearing to hear. Smillie was on the point of speaking again when Frobisher called to him from his desk. ‘Sir? They’ve found two bicycles.’

‘Where?’

Frobisher repeated the question into the phone, then came to Smillie and Beverley. He pointed at the map at a point along a small, twisty road that headed north of the village. ‘There.’

Smillie took a moment to examine the map in detail before saying to Frobisher, ‘Right, reorganize all the teams so that the search is centred on that location, radiating out from there as before, OK?’

Frobisher was about forty and prematurely balding with a ginger moustache that Beverley found unnecessarily bushy. He nodded and was about to return to his desk when Beverley asked, ‘Were the bikes in plain view?’

He shook his head. ‘Hidden under undergrowth.’

‘Any sign of a struggle?’

Again he shook his head. With a final glance at Smillie, Frobisher returned to his desk. Beverley said to herself, ‘Maybe abducted, maybe not . . .’

Smillie snapped, ‘How they came to disappear isn’t our immediate concern; we can investigate that when we have them back safe and sound.’ He called to Frobisher, ‘Where’s the estate manager? What’s his name? Somersby?’

‘He’s on his way in now. Should be here in a couple of minutes.’

‘Where the hell’s he been?’

Frobisher shrugged.

Somersby came in, as promised, two minutes later, accompanied by a uniformed policewoman. He looked harassed and decidedly unhappy. Smillie took him into the head teacher’s office, annoyed to find that Beverley tagged along; he gave her a warning look but said nothing. Smillie took up Braxton’s seat, with Beverley standing to one side of him, leaning against the wall.

Smillie said, ‘You know why we’re here?’

Somersby nodded. ‘It’s an awful business. I hope to God that they’re safe and well.’

‘Where were you this morning? We couldn’t find you.’

‘I had arranged to meet some contractors to discuss some work that needs doing.’

‘What work would that be?’

‘Drainage. We’ve got a bad problem with flooding in the northwest corner of the estate, at a place called Fairman’s Wood.’

‘And yesterday? What were you doing yesterday?’

Somersby frowned, looked across at Beverley, then back to Smillie. ‘Am I being accused of something?’

‘We have reason to believe that the boys went missing when they were on estate land. Were you on the estate yesterday?’

‘I spend most of my time on it.’

‘Which part were you on yesterday?’

Somersby looked slightly nonplussed. ‘I couldn’t say for sure. All over the place.’

‘Just driving around?’ Smillie’s tone contained a hint of disbelief and it stung Somersby. ‘No. We’re coppicing in two different areas – Silver Hill and Langley’s meadow – and there are several shoots to organize. My job isn’t a bed of roses.’

‘And you didn’t see the two boys in question?’

‘I’d have said something if I had.’

Beverley asked from behind Smillie’s shoulder, ‘Are there any buildings on the estate? Presumably there are barns, stores and suchlike.’

‘Plenty of those.’

Before Beverley could say any more, Smillie interrupted. ‘We’ll need you to mark those down for us. Any mineshafts on this land?’ For a moment Beverley thought that she had misheard, but then remembered that the area was technically in the Forest of Dean, where open-cast mining had once occurred. Somersby, however, shook his head. ‘No coal around here.’

To Smillie’s intense annoyance, Beverley asked another question. ‘Any abandoned buildings, places that might be dangerous to go into?’

A look crossed Somersby’s face as he hesitated; it was a look that Beverley and Smillie knew well, the look of a liar. ‘No. None.’ The shake of the head was emphatic – perhaps too emphatic.

There followed a brief pause as if neither Beverley nor Smillie was sure what to say, or perhaps they were each waiting for the other to speak, before Smillie asked, ‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded before saying, ‘Very well, Mr Somersby. If you could let Inspector Frobisher know the locations of all the buildings on the estate before you go.’

‘Of course.’

He stood and was heading rapidly out of the room when Beverley called a question to him. ‘What was the name of the contractors you were meeting this morning?’

He stopped but did not turn at once, delaying the movement for a fraction. His face was bland as he faced them. ‘Marcham and Son. They didn’t turn up, though.’

Smillie raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? How annoying for a busy man like you.’

‘It was.’

With that he turned again and left them.

Beverley said as soon as the door closed. ‘I wonder what he’s hiding.’

Smillie might have been aggravated to the point of incandescence by his colleague’s interference, but his instincts, too, were aroused. ‘I don’t know, but I intend to find out.’

FIFTY-THREE

‘have faith in the Lord’

Antonia’s migraine had returned with a vengeance and she had spent much of the day in bed. It had been with the utmost effort that she had answered all the questions put to her by Inspector Frobisher, Andrew sitting by her side while she tried to produce the answers through huge, heaving sobs. In truth there was nothing much she could tell them, and this only added to a near overwhelming sense of guilt, of failure. Since the death of her son and daughter-in-law, she had come to wear with a heavier and heavier heart a mantle of deep responsibility, and she felt that she had faltered badly. She was a woman of great sense of purpose, and she had always felt it important to do her duty and to do it properly; she had become lax, not listened to her greater instincts, not been a proper parent. If she had looked after Josh and Harriet as she had looked after James, her son, then this would not have happened. And this sense of culpability only added to the burden that was her sorrow and her dread. Stories of paedophiliac monsters crammed her senses, made thinking difficult, made sleeping impossible. Her mind was not her own to command; it vacillated wildly, caromed and cavorted as if – indeed, because it was – a thing possessed.

Downstairs, Andrew sat with Marcus Pilcher in the large kitchen, mugs of tea between them. Marcus had been there for an hour but, as he quite openly professed, doing little good. Andrew had tried to assure him otherwise, but his heart had not been in it and it had been clear to both of them that he was being merely polite and not honest.

‘Does Harriet know yet?’ asked Marcus.

Andrew shook his head. ‘But we’ll have to say something soon. The papers will publish something soon, and we can’t let her learn what is going on from them.’

‘No, of course.’

‘But I don’t know what I can say. How can I tell her that Josh is missing? She’s only just got over the death of her parents.’

‘I’m sure they’re all right,’ said Marcus for the fourth or fifth time. ‘They’re probably on some great adventure; thought they’d camp out or something – it was very mild last night.’

‘Then where are they now?’ asked Andrew.

‘Well, I expect they’ve got lost.’

Andrew said nothing, a silence that only accentuated the banality of these hypotheses and caused the priest to become unusually interested in his mug until he said suddenly, ‘Look, Andrew, I know I’m not much use in these situations – men of the cloth never are – but I really am sure that everything will turn out all right. The media have us all believing that there are paedophiles and ne’er-do-wells lurking behind every tree, but the real world isn’t nearly as bad as they would have us believe.’

‘No? What about these dreadful killings that have been happening recently?’

Marcus frowned and shook his head. ‘I am sure that this has nothing to do with that, Andrew.’

But Andrew was sunk into despair. ‘How can you be? Until they turn up safe and well, we just don’t know . . .’

Marcus reached across the wooden surface of the table and clasped Andrew’s left wrist with his right hand. ‘Yes, they will, Andrew. Yes, they will. Have faith in the Lord.’

But Andrew, who was a good and devout member of the Church of England, could not at that point find it within himself to believe that such a course of action would help either him, or his wife, or his grandchildren in any way at all.

Smillie and Beverley returned to the assembly hall to find Frobisher and Somersby standing in front of the map. As they approached them, Frobisher was saying, ‘It’s completely secure, then?’

Somersby was an exemplar of confidence. ‘Completely. The Grange is derelict and highly dangerous. We make very sure that no one can get anywhere near it.’

‘And what is the Grange?’ asked Smillie.

‘It’s an old country house. A hundred years or so ago it used to be the squire’s house, but nobody has lived there for sixty years. It’s fallen into ruin.’

Smillie said at once, ‘I thought you said that there were no ruined buildings on the estate.’

Somersby looked uncomfortable. ‘I forgot it. It’s not really part of the estate proper. It’s completely inaccessible except to a few of the estate workers. There’s an outside perimeter wall made of stone and an inner chain-link fence.’

‘Do you make any use of it at all, then?’

‘Wallace – the owner – wants to redevelop it but I’m not sure the figures are right for that. At the moment it’s just used as a general storage compound; bulk supplies such as fence posts, barbed wire, stock-proof fencing, that kind of thing. Of course we keep it locked, because we don’t want the stuff stolen.’

‘You check that it’s secure regularly?’

‘It was checked only a day or two ago.’

Beverley was examining the map. ‘It’s not too far from the place where the bicycles were found,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘We ought to confirm that it’s as secure as you say, I would suggest.’

Smillie’s expression might have been because he was experiencing intense indigestion or a particularly severe bout of tenesmus, but it was odds on it was because he did not need to have a fellow officer of equal rank making suggestions about how the investigation should be conducted. If Beverley realized this, she hid the knowledge well and looked at her colleague in blatant innocence. Smillie, unwilling to argue in front of juniors or a member of the public, said briefly, ‘Of course.’

Somersby’s reaction was interesting. ‘There really is no need. That area is completely secure; I guarantee that. The Grange is in an extremely dangerous state of disrepair; it’s not only a question of security, but of health and safety, and we take that very seriously.’

Smillie, though, was not to be swayed; indeed, the more Somersby talked, the more convinced he became that he wanted to take a look in the area. ‘You don’t have children, do you, Mr Somersby? You’ll find that they are a most resourceful and irritating species, Mr Somersby. I really think we have to make absolutely sure that they’re not there.’

Eisenmenger watched dusk fall through eyes that were shaded with alcohol. He found that he did not care anymore, that he had run out of emotional fuel. The impact of what Charlie had said to him was only now unfolding in his head, spreading sinuous tentacles through his mind, insidiously destroying the props that held his confidence and self-respect. It was a sadly, strangely familiar experience, one he recalled with all-too-great clarity from the weeks that had followed the suicide of Maria, a girlfriend who had immolated herself before his eyes in an explosion of petrol-driven flame. He had then tormented himself with the knowledge, the certainty, that he had been responsible, and that he was solely so. Charlie might not have committed suicide but Eisenmenger was experiencing the same emotional shock, the realization that his interests, his profession, his personality were all anathema to the business of love, that he was some sort of freak, ultimately abhorrent in the eyes of those who might otherwise love him. Even Helena had been falling – had actually fallen, he supposed – out of love with him at the time of her death.

He was a Jonah, a pariah, untouchable.

‘Dr Death’ Clive used to call him, and Clive was no fool.

FIFTY-FOUR

freshly dug

‘I told you.’

Somersby’s voice carried triumphalism but this overlaid something that Beverley suspected was relief. They were standing in front of the wooden gates in the stone wall that surrounded the Grange. They were, as Somersby had promised, securely locked and the broken glass on top of the wall was clearly a considerable deterrent to any would-be trespassers. Smillie said, ‘We’ll just check the perimeter, Mr Somersby. Just to make sure.’

Somersby’s face didn’t change, but there was a noticeable increase in the tension within him, one that neither Smillie nor Beverley failed to notice. Smillie gave orders for two teams of two officers to walk in opposite directions around the wall, then said to Somersby, ‘If you could open the gates, Mr Somersby . . .’

Somersby found a key amongst a large collection and did so whilst shaking his head and muttering. He inserted it into a large black padlock that hung from a chain, pulled the chain loose of the doors and pushed them open. Smillie walked into the woods beyond with Beverley following, then Somersby and two plain clothes constables. It was cool and quiet in there; almost unnaturally so. They walked along the rough gravelled driveway, looking from side to side, occasionally startled by something scurrying through the undergrowth, although very rarely did they identify what it was. The afternoon sun was yellowing and warm, ageing and becoming more slothful and decadent; there were a lot of flies and midges buzzing around them, with the odd small wasp and bee, all seemingly sleepy and bad-tempered. The air was oppressively heavy with natural and not always entirely pleasant perfumes.

After a walk of some ten minutes’ silence – nervous silence in the case of the estate manager – they reached the chain-link fence and could see the decrepit roofs of the Grange above the tree line. ‘See?’ exclaimed Somersby hurrying to the gates, showing them that they were padlocked. At that moment, Smillie’s mobile phone rang. He answered it with a curt ‘Yes?’ then listened. Just before he switched it off, he said, ‘Get more men and some dogs over here.’ Then he looked at Somersby with eyebrows raised ever so slightly. ‘My men have just found some sort of tunnel under the wall. Possibly it’s a badger run, they think.’

‘Well, then . . .’

‘But it’s quite big enough for a young boy to get through.’

Somersby looked stricken and Beverley found herself become more and intrigued; doubly so because then a breeze blew through the trees and it brought with it a new perfume, one that for a moment she could not place. It seemed out of place in a wood, she thought, striving to identify it. Then she did so. Acetic acid, she thought, and she knew the significance of that. She said, ‘I think we need to take a look at what’s on the other side of that fence.’

Smillie hadn’t caught the scent of vinegar yet and didn’t therefore know what she was thinking, but he looked at Somersby who, seeming almost to be battling invisible forces that were crushing and immobilizing him, turned slowly to the padlock with the correct key selected. There was a dull metallic clank as the chain fell away against the wire and he pushed the gates open. They went through and looked around; the trees and undergrowth were thicker here, the scents even stronger, but not strong enough to hide the acidic scent of vinegar; Smillie noticed it, then glanced at Beverley who nodded imperceptibly in response. They both knew what it meant. Smillie beckoned to one of the constables and whispered to him, gesturing at Somersby’s back; the man nodded.

The party moved forward in silence. After a couple of minutes, one of the constables said, ‘Sir?’ He was pointing to their right where there was a large low outbuilding.

Smillie asked, ‘What’s that, Mr Somersby?’

‘Nothing. Just a storage shed.’

‘I think we’d better take a look.’

‘It’s secured. There’s no way—’

‘That’s what you said about the outer wall,’ pointed out Smillie. ‘We’ll take a look nonetheless.’

They veered off, following a rough path of sorts. It was clear that it had been recently used, and used heavily. ‘Do you have much occasion to come in here?’ Smillie asked of Somersby, who shook his head but did so jerkily and with his eyes on the ground.

They were about a hundred metres away when Somersby suddenly made a bolt for it, sprinting away to his right. He wasn’t fast enough, though, and immediately there was a policeman on his tail; within ten seconds he had brought Somersby to the ground in a clumsy rugby tackle. The estate manager was being brought back to his feet when the rest of the party came up. ‘Going somewhere, Mr Somersby?’ Somersby, still panting, said nothing. Smillie didn’t seem to mind. ‘Shall we resume? Let’s see what you’ve been doing in that storage shed, shall we? I’ll wager it’s something your boss doesn’t know about. Something, even, illegal.’

The vinegar could only be described as a stench as they stood outside the door to the shed; it was a large wooden building, perhaps ten by ten metres, and freshly done up. Smillie asked Somersby, ‘Open up, please, Mr Somersby.’

‘I don’t have a key.’

Smillie held out his hand. ‘Give me that impressive bunch of keys you’ve got in your pocket. We’ll just check.’

Somersby had no alternative but to hand them over. It took Smillie four minutes to work his way through over twenty keys before the lock clicked open. He glanced across at Somersby, astonishment on his face, but he said nothing. The stench of vinegar became so strong that Beverley found her eyes watering as they trooped inside, then stood in a small knot, looking around at the large vat in the corner, at the bags of chemicals on the wall opposite, at the heavy duty electric hob and at the collapsed packing cases piled high to their left.

‘What the hell is all this?’ asked Somersby, his voice betraying a slight trembling, and attempting but failing to Beverley’s ears, to assume a basinful of incredulity.

Smillie continued to look around as he replied. ‘This, Mr Somersby, is a heroin factory. And I’m willing to bet all Chief Inspector Wharton’s annual salary that your fingerprints are all over it.’

‘Rubbish! I know nothing about this. I let Shaun Carter have the use of this shed; he said he wanted to store some booze he’d brought back from the continent. He said he had a nice little earner . . .’

Smillie was no longer listening, a man who had heard all the lies before and felt that life was too short to indulge in futile debate with scallywags like Somersby. To the one of two constables he said, ‘Take a scout around outside. Check to see if the boys could have got in here.’

‘This has nothing to do with me, inspector,’ said Somersby again and with the same degree of success he had had before.

Smillie’s only response was to say, ‘Why don’t you take a seat, Mr Somersby?’ Somersby wasn’t given the chance to make his own decision, for his escort pulled him down into a chair and, at Smillie’s order, handcuffed him.

Beverley looked around the shed at the equipment and chemicals, whilst trying to work out where this fitted into her case. It didn’t seem to, though; but then neither did it fit into the disappearance of the boys. Perhaps this was just a distraction, forwarding neither case. Smillie was on his phone, giving orders presumably to Frobisher, when the policeman who had been looking around outside rushed back in. He looked both sick and excited. ‘Sir, I’ve found something.’

Smillie was quick, Beverley had to admit. He barked to Somersby’s escort to stay put, then ran outside, followed by Beverley. Around the back of the shed, about five metres away, there was a tangle of fern, bindweed and bramble. It had been trodden down and the policeman ran to it, then stopped. As Beverley came up she saw that Smillie was staring at the middle of this.

At what appeared to be a freshly dug shallow grave.

FIFTY-FIVE

killed for their trouble

The phone rang irritatingly, almost painfully, inside Eisenmenger’s head. His mouth felt swollen and rough, his tongue tasting only acrid mucus. He reached for the receiver, found that he had fallen asleep on his arm and it was no longer his, refusing to do as he told it; it felt heavy, lethargic and clumsy, a reluctant recruit to the cause of helping him answer the phone.

‘Eisenmenger here.’ As he spoke he was looking at his wristwatch, surprised to see that it was only a quarter to six in the evening. His clothes were rumpled and he knew that he looked as dishevelled and disreputable as he felt.

‘John, it’s Beverley.’

And he knew at once what that meant. He said tiredly, ‘Another body?’

‘Two. The missing boys, we think.’

‘Oh, shit,’ he breathed. ‘Where?’

‘On the estate at Colberrow.’ He closed his eyes; the thought of having to watch another posting, this time involving young boys, made him feel nauseous, ready to vomit, but Beverley’s next words surprised him. ‘It doesn’t look as though it’s the Internet killer, though.’

Which piqued his interest, despite his hangover. ‘Then who?’

‘They stumbled across a heroin factory in the woods and got killed for their trouble. We need you here to do the autopsy.’

He felt awful, was probably still drunk, and he was on the point of suggesting they find another pathologist when he stopped. Something wasn’t right, he suddenly realized; it was too much of a coincidence.

‘Send a car to pick me up, Beverley. I’m not sure I’m up to driving at the moment.’

For the first time since the death of her mother, Lancefield found a small spark of the kind of enthusiasm for the job, enthusiasm even for life, that she had known such a short time before. It was minute, almost beneath her ability to perceive, but it was there. She clung to it as she pondered what to do next.

Beverley had instructed her to find a link that concerned alcohol between the victims that had thus far been identified. Lancefield had got the impression that she was being given the task because it was safe and probably a waste of time; after all (and as Lancefield had asked) what kind of link could that possibly be? Beverley had shrugged and told her to start with the pub in which Malcolm Willoughby had lately been employed – were the others customers of the pub? If that didn’t pan out, her only suggestion was to talk again to the next of kin and steer the conversation around to alcohol, places where they drank, parties they had been to, that kind of thing.

And Lancefield had thought – but definitely not said – Thanks very much.

But after half a fruitless hour spent in the delightful company of Stan, Malcolm Willoughby’s last employer, followed by a whole fruitless hour with Malcolm’s mother who, understandably, was completely devastated but who, perhaps not so understandably, was off her head on cannabis, something in the back of her near moribund brain flared just briefly – a glimmer, nothing more in a fleshy nook – and she stopped abruptly. She was just walking away from the ground-floor flat that Mrs Willoughby occupied in the Benhall area of Cheltenham, picking her way amongst dog faeces in varying states of decomposition, crushed lager cans and signs of pavement pizzas long past, happy to be out of the atmosphere of sad inadequacy and damp that seemed to pervade the grieving mother’s house, when she stopped walking, stared for a long time into the clouding sky, then turned around and knocked for a second time on the slightly warped, sun-bleached red front door.

Like all policemen, Smillie hated having to give the bad news, and he could have passed the task on to Frobisher, except that Frobisher was a hundred metres away doing exactly the same thing to a different grieving, devastated family. Smillie thought it important that the relatives be given the bad news – he found himself laughing inside at his use of the euphemism ‘bad news’ by a senior detective; the ‘bad news’ that all dreaded, that all had probably imagined might come to them at some time or other, that all had assumed never would come. He did not take that lightly, had a kernel of humanity – one that was deeply hidden lest it break forth and ruin his carefully crafted image of cold, mirthless sod – and was still proud to appreciate that he was in the job to serve, not just to ‘catch’. He knew that Beverley and Braxton and all the rest would be astonished to find that he gave sanctity to these thoughts – Frobisher might not, for Frobisher had been with him for six years and had been through much with him – but this did not bother him, indeed it made him feel secure and safe; he was a member of the crowd, one of the anonymous, indistinguishable many.

Yet that did not make it any easier as he sat in that kitchen and watched Antonia Barclay clutch her husband so tightly it might have been that she wanted to squeeze him out of life, even squeeze him out of existence itself. Her keening was dreadful, made worse because it was an old woman’s voice, bearing the grief of being both a grandmother and a mother, trembling with both anguish and age. He could not see her face but he could see her husband’s and could see on it stoicism undermined by the tears that trickled down amongst the fine, grey hairs of his stubble, could hear the soft comforting noises that meant both nothing and everything, as he comforted her. Next to him, the large, ugly priest who had been introduced to him as Marcus reached across, a hand on each of them, his face contorted with grief and compassion.

It was a scene he had been forced to witness too many times before, would have to witness many times to come, and no amount of repetition would inure him to it; indeed, repetition seemed to sensitize him to it, and he briefly wondered if his insistence on performing this sorry duty implied some sort of masochistic, or perhaps voyeuristic, streak within him.

He said in a gentle voice, ‘Perhaps we should ask your GP to call, Dr Barclay.’

Andrew’s eyes flicked up to him but he didn’t break off his low, nonsensical comforting. The priest said, ‘It’s Dr Llewellyn, from Newent, I believe.’

Smillie looked across the kitchen table at the fifth member of the cast, a female police officer he did not know very well. He said under his breath, ‘See to it. Get him here now.’

She hurried outside to comply.

The glimmer had become dazzling, almost incandescent in her head; it blotted out – no, Lancefield realized, it somehow synergized with her previous despondency, turning it somehow from a thing that fed on her to one that succoured her. Malcolm Willoughby had attended an Alcoholics Anonymous group, albeit only for a month or so. His mother, annoyed despite the chemicals in her system that were damping down all but the most disruptive of emotions, had eventually recalled that it had been one in a church hall somewhere in Gloucester, she thought.

‘St Mark’s?’

Lancefield had asked perhaps, she felt afterwards, too eagerly. The woman – a bloated face framed in an angular fashion by lanky, greying hair, beneath which was a figure clothed in an oversized and faded navy blue cardigan and jeans that could have fitted a bull – had appeared to think long and hard, but had eventually decided that, yes, that could have been the place. Lancefield had thanked her, but knew better, even in her slightly deranged state of mind, either to betray or to feel too much elation. She had driven back to the station in a calm, almost detached manner, but she had felt like a pressure cooker with a sticking safety valve. She considered calling Beverley, but something told her not to.

FIFTY-SIX

The Grange. It’s falling to bits

Even the term ‘shallow grave’ was doing it a kindness. Barely any digging had gone into the disposal of the two boys’ bodies; they had been laid to rest in a slight depression and then hastily covered with soil, mulch, vegetation and stones from nearby. The dying evening sun shone through the partial overhead canopy, dappling the area in a way that ought to have been enchanting, but was only deeply depressing. It was a hurried, shoddy affair.

Eisenmenger had never been able to cope too well with the murder of children. He had none of his own, did not even particularly want any, yet there it was, this weak point. He found it ironic that in any other profession and for billions of people on the planet, it would not have been considered anything other than a virtue, this squeamishness, yet for a forensic pathologist it was seen as an undesirable trait, something to be kept hidden lest it bring down shame. He had even tried to give up his chosen profession following the death in his arms of Tamsin, burned to death by her insane mother, but somehow it had never happened. Somehow, he had been dragged back, attracted against his own will once more to dance with death, to look into the heart of man’s last and only true friend.

Dr Death, indeed . . .

‘Strangled?’

Beverley, standing behind him as he crouched before the two bodies, clearly did not harbour such flaws in her character. Keeping his voice low and steady, he said, ‘I think so.’

There had been a similarly untroubled scenes of crime officer taking photographs, but who was now finished. The forensic team, attired as Eisenmenger was in the oh-so-fetching all-in-white, new-this-season protective suit, were carefully scrutinizing the ground; they had found precious little, and little that was precious. Eisenmenger stood up and, his face composed, turned to face her. ‘There are definitely fingermarks around their necks. Assuming that there are no wounds on the backs of the heads or torsos, and assuming that—’

She interrupted irritably. ‘I know, I know. Wait for the post-mortem.’

He shrugged; her testiness was of no importance to him. He pointed at the derelict building that rose above the trees. ‘What’s that place?’

‘The Grange. It’s falling to bits.’

‘What was it? A stately home?’

‘At one time. Over the years, it’s been a lot of things. During the war, it was some sort of army training headquarters. Before that it was a lunatic asylum.’

Around them, the woods were being combed by uniformed officers, and there were six police cars and a black private ambulance parked along the track to the Grange. Another car drew up at that moment, with Smillie and Frobisher climbing out. Neither of them looked happy. They strode up to Eisenmenger and Beverley. ‘Well? Anything?’

The forensic team had finished and Eisenmenger just ordered the bodies brought up from their sorry sepulchre; they were laid on a pale-blue sheet of plastic and then, at Eisenmenger’s order, turned. He let Beverley explain his findings to Smillie while he examined the backs of the corpses.

Smillie said, ‘I think we can safely say that your Internet killer isn’t responsible.’

Eisenmenger stood up. ‘Certainly, there are features missing that we’ve come to expect – the shaven heads, for example.’

‘It’s quite obvious that Somersby did it, purely because the boys stumbled in on his little factory.’

‘He’s admitted it, has he?’ asked Beverley.

‘Not yet. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him.’

‘So it’s pretty circumstantial at present.’

Smillie scoffed. ‘There’s “circumstantial” and there’s “circumstantial”, chief inspector. I’d say that the bodies of two boys not ten metres from a highly illegal drugs kitchen will weigh fairly heavily in the mind of the average juror. Anyway, I think I can persuade Mr Somersby to tell me all about it.’ Beverley said nothing and Eisenmenger was trying to attract the attention of the photographer to take pictures of the back of the bodies. Smillie asked, ‘When will you do the post-mortem?’

Eisenmenger looked at his watch. It was nearly eight and rapidly approaching darkness; lights were being unloaded from an equipment van that had just arrived. ‘I should be ready by about ten.’

‘Good.’ To Frobisher, Smillie said, ‘Let’s go and talk to Somersby in the meantime.’

Eisenmenger walked away and having directed the photographer in which pictures he was to take, he asked Beverley, ‘What do you think? Was it Somersby?’

She said hesitantly. ‘He certainly has a motive and, as you said, it isn’t the normal MO of the Internet killer, is it?’

Eisenmenger shook his head but said, ‘There are one or two things that worry me, though, Beverley.’

‘Such as?’

‘Why bury them so close to where they were working? Why not somewhere else on the estate, well aware from here?’

‘Because he thought he was safe here, where he has the only key and no one else comes. Moving the bodies would be riskier than burying them on site.’

‘Then why not on the other side of this area, why so close? And why so shallow?’

‘Perhaps he was going to come back and bury them deeper when he had more time. He couldn’t be found when we first tried to talk to him; perhaps we called him in the middle of digging.’

He looked neither convinced nor sceptical. After a moment, he asked, ‘Is Somersby a big man? Strong?’

‘Not especially. He’s fairly lean and wiry, but not a muscleman. Why?’

But, frustratingly, he would say only, ‘I’ll tell you after the post-mortem.’

‘I appreciate that it’s getting late, Dr Aldrich, but it is potentially very important.’

Dr Aldrich, the incumbent of St Mark’s Church, was small and, it appeared, irascible. He was balding and clearly his physiology felt that this alopecia needed compensation, for the hair follicles in his nose, his eyebrows and his ears had leapt into action, enthusiastically sprouting a chaotic tangle at each of these sites. There were also scattered hairs around the base of his neck, popping up cheekily from the depths behind his dog collar, and the sum of this was to give the impression that he was inevitably surrendering to relentless hirsutism. He was, too, a careless shaver – as evidence by small cuts on the top lip and around the chin and so, overall, he presented a picture of a man who had higher things on his mind than physical appearance.

‘I have a meeting with the bishop in ten minutes.’

‘Very important.’

He sighed. ‘Very well, but be quick.’

Lancefield and Dr Aldrich were standing in the vestry of St Mark’s, a feeble light bulb bravely fighting the oncoming gloom of night, and failing; Lancefield could see that the lampshade was covered in a uniform layer of soft dust. The place smelt of damp and she wondered if that was how heaven smelt, if it was the scent of God. Around her was a mess, evidence the vestry was as much a store cupboard as an office. She had not been invited to sit and was relieved not to have been. She asked, ‘Does Alcoholics Anonymous meet here?’

He shook his head at once. ‘No. Is that all?’ He was all but ushering her out. He had a shabby, dark-grey overcoat on and around his neck was a black scarf; since the night was quite mild, it appeared to Lancefield that he felt the cold.

‘Not in the hall at the back?’ The church itself, a Victorian building cloaked in the grime of fifty years of heavier and heavier traffic, was near the centre of Gloucester, on a corner by the inner ring road. Behind it was a hall made of prefabricated panels and in a poor state of repair.

‘Of course not. I said that they don’t meet here.’

‘But have they ever?’

‘Yes, but that was over a year ago. Before I arrived.’

‘What about records of the meetings? Where can I find those?’

‘My dear young lady, how would I know? Do they even keep records? I sincerely doubt it. Now, if that is all—’

‘Do you know who ran the meetings?’

Becoming increasingly impatient, he was actually herding her out of the room as he replied, ‘My predecessor here.’

‘Who is that? Can I speak to him? Do you know where he is now?’

She was outside in the church proper, the empty font behind her. Dr Aldrich had his back to her, locking the door. He turned around. ‘His name is Marcus Pilcher. I believe that he now serves in the parish of Colberrow.’

Fisher rang Lancefield as she was heading out of Gloucester, heading north along the A417. ‘I think I’ve identified another victim.’

‘Which one?’

‘The beheaded woman, the one with “Maureen” tattooed on her back.’

‘And?’

‘I think it’s Maureen May. She lived in Barton Street, Gloucester. She was a prostitute, living on her own.’

Which made sense. Barton Street was a black hole, a zone of anonymity in which someone could die and remain undiscovered for months. ‘Did she have a drink problem?’ she asked.

Fisher was taken aback. ‘I didn’t ask. Is it important?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Have you let the CI know?’

‘I’ve left her a message. Where are you?’

Without a pause, without even a question in her mind as to why she was doing it, Lancefield replied, ‘I’m on my way home.’

FIFTY-SEVEN

the normal compliment of arms

Outside it was raining heavily.

‘Has Somersby confessed?’

Beverley and Smillie were standing in the corner of the dissection room, whispering to each other. It was nearly twelve and Eisenmenger had his back to them as he dissected an organ pluck that was painfully small. Smillie did not enjoy autopsies and found most pathologists arrogant and patronizing. He found the whole process upsetting and was always put off his food for at least a day afterwards. He beckoned Beverley outside into the body store where a bank of fridges formed one wall.

‘He’s admitted to being the brains behind the heroin factory – he could hardly do anything else, considering his fingerprints are all over it – but he denies absolutely anything to do with the death of the boys.’

‘He would, wouldn’t he?’

‘But he specifically accuses his associate, someone called Tom Sheldon. He’s a labourer on the estate. He says that they heard the boys near the shed, Sheldon went out, and then there was a scream. When Sheldon came in, he said he hadn’t been able to find the boys, but Somersby thinks he’s lying.’

‘Have you got Sheldon?’

‘Frobisher’s picking him up now.’

Beverley did not know how to react. She was pleased that the murder of the boys was to be solved relatively easily and quickly, but perturbed. Colberrow was somehow connected to the Internet killer, she knew, and it seemed incredible that there should be two completely different murders in such a small, rural location. Yet Smillie guessed from the expression on her face what she was thinking. ‘I doubt that Sheldon is your Internet killer. Somersby seems to think he’s little better than a Neanderthal.’

She couldn’t argue, and was forced to accept that she was no further forward. She had earlier picked up Fisher’s message, so there was at least a new lead there, and perhaps Lancefield had made some headway on Eisenmenger’s suggested alcohol link. It wasn’t all bad, she reasoned.

The Rectory, whither she had been directed by a gruff man with a lazy eye who, despite the late hour, was out walking his dog, was tucked well away from the road, itself just a lane. There was no street lighting, and the only man-made structure that was visible was the spire of a church about a kilometre away. There was an intrusive sound of traffic droning intermittently in what was otherwise country quiet as she got out of the car.

She looked around. It was just starting to rain and she had to hurry to get out of it and under the small porch. She rang the doorbell, looking around again. What, she suddenly wondered, was she looking for? Whatever it was, she felt it was important; important enough, she hoped, to be disturbing potentially innocent people in the middle of the night.

The door opened and she was confronted by a huge figure. For a moment it was in shadow, loomed over her, seemed about to engulf her; then, with his left hand, he switched on the porch light and she saw that the face was smiling and there was a dog collar beneath it. She did not produce any identification. ‘Marcus Pilcher?’

The smile broadened. ‘Yes. And you are?’

‘My name is Rebecca Lancefield. May I come in? I realize how late it is . . .’

There was no hesitation as he stood aside to let her enter and asked, ‘Are you in some sort of trouble?’

She surprised herself by answering, ‘Yes.’ He didn’t react to that beyond a small nod. The house was cold and, she thought, slightly damp. It had been built in the Thirties and was only sparsely furnished with what looked to her like other people’s cast-offs. He showed her into the dining room where he had been working at the rectangular wooden table. He bade her sit and resumed his seat in front of a thick pad of paper on which was laid a black fountain pen; beside it was a pile of magazines and leaflets. She saw that the top one was entitled God’s Hypocrisies.

‘What kind of trouble are you in?’

Again, her answer surprised her; she had the feeling that she was not the mistress of either her thoughts or her speech. ‘You are the Internet killer.’

What reaction did she expect? She couldn’t have said, but probably she would not have put much money on the one she provoked. ‘Is that what they’re calling me?’ He laughed softly and, she thought, kindly. ‘I suppose it was inevitable.’ He looked at her questioningly. ‘I suppose you want to know why?’

She shook her head. In a whisper and looking at the top leaflet with its intriguing title, she said, ‘I know why.’

‘They were strangled. I doubt that they were drugged first, although the usual proviso about the tox results applies. I’ve found no indications in the modus operandi that would link them to the previous murders.’ Smillie glanced across at Beverley as Eisenmenger said this, perhaps hoping for a visible sign of capitulation but, in truth, she had already accepted that would be the verdict. They were facing Eisenmenger across the stainless steel dissection table on which lay the body of Darren Taylor; even in death they could see that he had been destined to be a handsome young Afro-Caribbean man. Eisenmenger hadn’t finished, though. ‘There is something odd about the precise way they were strangled, though.’

Both Beverley and Smillie were pulled from any thoughts by his words, both of them looking intensely at him. It was Smillie who asked, ‘What?’

Eisenmenger indicated the boy’s throat. He performed the dissection so that instead of the primary incision running straight up from the pubis to the Adam’s apple, it split at the top of the breastbone and went off obliquely on the left and right to end at the tips of the shoulders; then he had peeled the skin away using a flat blade and delicate incisions, exposing first the throat, then the lower jaw, and then the whole of the face. It was now replaced but as he said, ‘There was a huge amount of compression injury, see?’ He lifted the skin away and indicated what he meant. Even the two policemen could see that there had been considerable soft tissue damage done. ‘The trachea has been crushed, the jugular veins severely traumatized; there would even have been considerable compression of the carotids. It’s the same pattern with the other child.’

‘Someone strong, then?’ asked Smillie.

Eisenmenger laid the skin back down in its proper place, then reached up and pulled down a spotlight that was suspended from the ceiling; he shone it on the skin of Darren’s neck. ‘The pattern of bruising would suggest that it was done with a single hand.’

‘Not two hands?’ Smillie was surprised.

Eisenmenger shook his head. ‘Just one. The right.’

Beverley murmured, ‘Why? Why use just one hand?’

Smillie was clearly having a problem with this. ‘Are you sure?’

Eisenmenger looked up at him. ‘Yes,’ he said. His tone wasn’t particularly outraged or chiding, merely puzzled that anyone should ask.

Beverley was only half-joking when she suggested, ‘Perhaps the killer is one-armed or one-handed.’

But Eisenmenger said at once, ‘No, he’s got the normal complement of arms.’

‘How can you be sure?’ Smillie was sceptical.

Eisenmenger indicated the body of Josh. ‘Because he killed Josh in exactly the same way, only with his left hand.’

FIFTY-EIGHT

born out of death

‘I was born out of death. My mother haemorrhaged and died within an hour of my birth. My father was in the SAS and had the soulless eyes of a killer; that is all I can remember of him. I had no brothers or sisters and both of my parents were only children. There was no family to divert me from the course that God had chosen for me.’ He spoke calmly, as if reading from a text, and she could hear that she was listening to a man who was used to speaking to an audience. His huge hands were interlaced on the table in front of him and his face showed extreme, almost unnerving tranquillity. ‘My father did understand many aspects of love and affection but not, I think, what is required in a father. I have no reason to believe that he ever abused my mother, but I doubt that he showed her what she might consider to be affection. His world was one of valour and effort and masculine pride; I think that he thought that these were enough to love a woman or a child, too; I think that he knew no other way.

‘He brought me up, then, much as a deaf man might bring up a hearing child; he neglected – how could he not? – that which he knew nothing about, yet of course he laboured ceaselessly to educate me in those things with which he was familiar, those things that he considered important. He taught me about comradeship and loyalty and he was careful to make sure that I would survive in the world and, by that, I mean survive both emotionally and physically. I had just turned five when I killed my first animal. It was a rabbit that he had snared and I was given the honour of dispatching it . . .’

Pilcher trailed off into the memory and, as he did so, he looked down at his huge hands. Lancefield could almost see him throttling the rabbit herself. After a moment he continued, ‘Eventually, the camping in the forest and fending for myself became a regular thing, taking up most of my holidays. He sent me to a boarding school as soon as it was practicable; it wasn’t a cruel place, except in that it was a heartless place, and if there is no affection, then there is a chance for badness to breed. There was only low-level wickedness, mainly from the older boys, but, for me, there was an ever present sense of hopelessness, because there was never a respite from the coldness; other boys looked forward to the holidays, yet all I had was a transfer from one place of desolation to another.

‘I think I must have looked around to find what might rebalance what, even to a child, seemed an existence terribly out of kilter, although you would not, I think, have known my feelings had you been in my company. My father had done a good job in that, at least; I was externally composed and detached, destined in his mind, I am sure, for a successful career in the armed forces. I killed the animals with efficiency and ease, not appearing to give thought to them beyond the use I could make of their carcasses, yet inside wondering what I was doing, wondering again and again if death was all there was to life. He taught me to ignore pain, that avoidance of pain is neither necessary nor particularly desirable, that minimization of pain is not compassion. They are not yin and yang but nor are they completely separate. I would go so far as to say that they are necessary for each other’s existence; without one, the other cannot be. Only in true compassion is there the most exquisite pain; only in supreme pain does the average, slothful, incerebrate human come anywhere close to touching the face of the one true God.’ His voice had risen and become more impassioned, but now he stopped and looked up at Lancefield. ‘But I am a poor host. Would you like some refreshment?’

She said at once no and he nodded acceptance of this refusal before continuing. ‘My father was a strident atheist; not for him was there a beneficent God who overlooked killing in a just war, one waged for the greater good. For him, either there was a God and he was damned forever, or there was not; it was more comfortable for him as a human being to deny than to accept. I think that he preferred to hope that there is some certainty to be had in this universe, but I, however, was beginning to think him wrong.

‘He died quite unexpectedly when I had just turned fourteen. It was an accident, when we were out walking in the Black Mountains; the weather had turned foul and there was a heavy driving, drizzle that caused us to walk with heads down and water trickling underneath our clothes. He slipped and fell perhaps twenty metres; I scrabbled down to him as quickly as I could and found him still alive, although only just. He had a terrible head injury and looked to have broken both his legs. I held him, talked to him, tried to comfort him, all the while aware that I was once again in the presence of death. It took him perhaps twenty minutes to die and, as cold and wet and shocked as I was, I was staring into his face all the while and . . .’

He stopped abruptly; Lancefield had been almost hypnotized for Pilcher was speaking in a soft, lyrical lilt, one that massaged and caressed. She came to from her reverie but before she could speak, he went on whilst looking into her eyes, ‘ . . . and I felt him die.’

She had been holding her breath, and continued to hold it. She knew that she was looking at a man who had, indeed, seen a moment of dying. He smiled, aware of her interest, aware that here was perhaps a kindred spirit. He explained slowly, ‘I do not know what I felt, nor did I even “feel” it as such; I certainly did not see anything, or hear anything. I just sensed a passing.’

Lancefield looked at him, her heart full of curiosity, and wonder, and, perhaps even envy. ‘What was it like?’ she asked.

He lifted his head to look her directly in the eye and she saw a glow about his face, one of joy she could see. ‘It was ecstasy,’ he breathed.

‘We’ve got Sheldon. Made a bit of a fuss, but he came along after a bit of persuasion.’ The Smillie before them was very definitely a happy Smillie. He was rubbing his hands and, at least in Beverley’s opinion, the smile on his face only made him look uglier. ‘Frobisher’s got him tucked up in the cells now. And –’ he nodded in Eisenmenger’s direction – ‘he’s a big strong lad with large hands.’

Eisenmenger, showered and dressed in civilian clothing had been sharing a cup of coffee with Beverley as Clive tidied up in the dissection room. He said softly, ‘Case closed, then?’

Smillie caught his mocking tone, paused and considered. ‘No, Dr Eisenmenger. Not closed, but it’s only a matter of time. With Somersby’s evidence and your findings, he’s certainly got one foot inside a prison cell.’

Beverley suggested, ‘You’d better go and interview him, then.’

Smillie shook his head, still a lambent source of smugness for them all to warm their hands on. ‘I think a few hours’ sleep is called for. Let Somersby and Sheldon stew.’ He was about to leave the room when he appeared to think of something. ‘You’d better do the same, Beverley. You’ve still got a madman to catch.’

With that he was gone and Beverley murmured to the space he had just now occupied, ‘See you next Tuesday.’

Eisenmenger laughed, then stood up. ‘He’s right, though. I desperately need a few zeds myself.’

He fished in his wallet and produced five ten-pound notes, leaving them under the desk blotter for Clive as a tip. They walked out of the mortuary together having called out goodbye. Outside the rain was warm but relentless. He asked her, ‘Do you think he’s right? Sheldon killed the boys because they stumbled across the drugs operation?’

She made a face. ‘It’s plausible, but there’s something not quite right about it.’

‘Since when has a perfect fit been needed to convict a criminal?’

‘Unfortunately, that’s very true. There’s always doubt, one way or the other. The only question is, how much doubt should we allow?’

‘You think there’s too much in this case?’

But she didn’t know what she felt and turned the question around. ‘What about you? Are you happy to convict Sheldon?’

He laughed. ‘I’m only a pathologist, Beverley. That’s outside my remit.’

‘But not outside your experience. You’ve been involved in enough investigations to have a view.’

‘Maybe.’ He paused to consider, gather his thoughts. They were walking in the rain back to their cars. Suddenly he said, ‘Look, I’m dog tired and so are you. Give me a few hours to sleep and think it through, then I’ll tell you what I think tomorrow. OK?’

‘Of course.’ They had reached the cars. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’ She smiled at him; it was a smile that he had not seen before, one that was almost shy. He wondered what it meant.

There had been perhaps ten seconds of silence, which is a long time when it is deep in the night, and there is rain outside and the room is cold. Pilcher suddenly stood up and came around the table, pulling out a chair so that he could sit directly beside Lancefield. He said, ‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you. You understand.’ These were assertions. She nodded, tears in her eyes, but said – could say – nothing. ‘Come here, child,’ he commanded, his voice soft and overfilled with compassion. He took her hands in his, enfolded them, as if making them disappear by a conjuror’s illusion. ‘Tell me.’

And she confessed. She told him how she and her father had sat with her mother for hours and how she had gradually subsided, and how she thought that her mother was going to slip unseen away, as if sneaking from the room. ‘My father had fallen asleep and I was close to it; I felt so tired, but I couldn’t allow myself to miss her passing. I just couldn’t.’

She looked into the face of the priest and he nodded and there were tears in his eyes, as there were in hers. ‘Of course you couldn’t,’ he agreed.

‘She had been deteriorating for years, and I had looked on that as dying, as a passage away from us, from her body, from life, but now . . . now I don’t know.’

‘What happened?’

‘After so many long hours of just lying there, eyes closed, mouth open and chest barely moving, her eyes suddenly opened. For some seconds, she just stared up towards the ceiling, and then I said softly, “Mum”. I thought she wasn’t going to respond, but quite suddenly, she turned her head to look at me. I reached for her hand, took it, and was immediately aware that it didn’t feel right.’

‘How so?’ he asked at once.

But she couldn’t put it into words. ‘I don’t know. It was just different.’

He frowned, considered, then sighed slightly. ‘Go on.’

‘My mother’s eyes were at first unfocussed, but then she seemed to see me. I was going to speak, but then, for the first time for years, she smiled and with that, her eyes lost focus and I felt something.’

‘What?’ he demanded, but again she had trouble continuing and he had to prompt her. ‘Was it as if something were passing through you?’

‘Yes,’ she said but it was a hesitant affirmation. ‘I suppose it could have been.’

‘You felt it too, Rebecca. You are truly blessed.’ And the tears rolled down his face.

FIFTY-NINE

true life comes after this

Eisenmenger tried to sleep but there was too much going on in his head for that. He had showered and was now back at the table, pad of paper in front of him, scribbling his thoughts as they came to him. He had a familiar feeling, one that suggested to him that he was seeing a way through the maze. He was so far behind with his work at the hospital that tomorrow he would have to spend the morning in his office, eyes stuck to the microscope. Then he would meet Beverley and take her through his thoughts.

Right at the back of his mind, beneath the part that was excitedly analysing the facts of the killings of the two boys, there was a faint wisp of a different kind of excitement, but he was too preoccupied to consider it deeply.

At Lancefield’s bidding, Pilcher resumed his story. ‘I sought advice from the chaplain at school; a repressed homosexual, perhaps even a repressed paedophile, although he never made advances towards me. He was a sorry looking man, perpetually morose and subject to chronic dandruff. He was of no use, of course. He thought I was either making it up or had just dreamed it, but I knew that I had not. I had been placed with foster parents and they were kindly enough, although ineffectual, and unable to view me as anything other than a casualty, something to be cosseted, forever wrapped in childhood softness. They had something of a shock, I think, when I insisted on carrying on my hunting pursuits; certainly they did not accept my gifts of pheasants, rabbits and even the odd small dear.’ Pilcher grimaced. It had grown very cold in the house, but Lancefield did not care. She did not take her eyes from his face, nor her ears from his tale.

‘It became something of an obsession of mine to try to recapture that moment, snaring an animal, and then looking into its eyes, coming as close as I could to it, as it died. Yet, there was never that frisson; I was watching an animal die, nothing more; could it be, then, that I was looking in the wrong place? Perhaps I saw nothing because there was nothing to see. In being with an animal when it died, perhaps I was wasting my time. After all, what was I exactly looking for? What had I experienced as I held my father and as his life left him?

‘Despite the pusillanimous responses of my chaplain, it became obvious to me that it was his soul that I had experienced, that it had passed through me. I tried to explain this to my teachers, but they at best patronized me, at worst scoffed; I was a child and therefore, in their eyes, incapable of any fundamental observation, worthy only of childish delusions. I had tried to recreate the experience but had failed; I had nothing but my memory.

‘That I drifted into the Church was more from pragmatic and academic reasons than pastoral ones. Where better to examine this thing that man has spent thousands of years talking about yet never seeing? How better to access the finest minds on the subject? Did I believe in the existence of God? I believed in the existence of the soul; I believed that the soul differentiates us from the animals and that it is because of it that we have self-awareness. So, yes, I supposed that I did. Yet my God has never been that of so many Christians, an idealized version of a father, one who is so comforting because he is always willing to forgive, one who beams down on us from on high, a twinkle in the eye, a softly playing smile around the lips.’ He snorted in disgust. ‘Those fools should look around them and see the universe in which they live.’

In a voice that was hoarse, Lancefield said, ‘But you must believe in kindness and charity . . . in caring.’

He frowned. ‘Of course I do. But do not for one moment believe that such things come from God. They come from us, no one else. How can a God with a universe to consider, have any regard for things as lowly as we?’

‘But the soul goes to heaven, doesn’t it?’ She sounded in her own ears to be scared of his answer.

‘Of course. This existence is merely a temporary thing. True life comes after this.’

She nodded, relieved. ‘Good.’

He seemed slightly troubled, as if her interruption had broken his line of thinking. Only slowly did he begin to speak again. ‘Over the years I became something of an expert in writings on the soul, on what the “experts” had to say, which was precious little. Of more interest to me was the chance it gave me to be present when death arose from life. Those were the times that I craved, that made my own soul sing, yet time after time came and never once did I feel as I had felt on that one time when my father had passed away. Gradually, my passion faded. I concluded it must have been a fluke, or maybe my school chaplain had been right and I had deluded myself. I settled into the life of priest and would be there now if circumstances had not conspired to reawaken my desires.

‘I was the incumbent of St Mark’s in Gloucester. It is not a particularly attractive church, nor an attractive area, or even an attractive congregation. It was at this time that I married. Did I love my wife? I have asked that of myself many times, and still do not, perhaps cannot, find the answer. I have not been taught to love as most are; I knew that there was something missing and was unable to repair the fault. All the same, Linda was happy, I am sure. She died, though, as I knew she would, for she had myeloma when I met her.’

Which brought Lancefield up with a start. ‘You knew when you married her?’

He said simply, ‘Yes.’ There was no inflection in his voice, no surprise that she should ask, no shame at what he had done. ‘She was lonely and she fell in love with me. I showed her affection and attention and love; few people had shown her those things in her life before. She was dying and I made the last few years of her life as comfortable and love-filled as I could.’

‘And you got to see her die,’ guessed Lancefield.

Pilcher did not react other than to explain, ‘I think that if I had not succeeded, I would have given up.’

‘It happened again? You experienced the passing of the soul?’

He took a while before he nodded. ‘On that final morning, I held her and we talked for long hours. She was very ill by then. The cancer had caused her to become bloated and she was prone to haemorrhage. She was drowsy, and accumulating fluid in her face and limbs. Yet, at the moment of her death, I was again the conduit, it seemed, for something, and my faith was renewed. I knew that I had not imagined or confabulated the events of my father’s death. There is a soul in each of us and it is a distinct entity.’

‘You decided to search for it,’ guessed Lancefield.

‘Linda had left me a not inconsiderable legacy; it seemed only fitting that I should use it to try to define the soul. I knew that if I were to hope to persuade a sceptical world, I would have to adopt the methods of that world. I had studied the scientific method as part of my theological training, so I had a good idea where to start.’

‘Where did you get the money?’

‘Linda left it to me. She was a rich woman.’ Lancefield was policewoman enough to wonder just how tangled his motives had been for marrying the poor woman, but she said nothing about this. Instead she said, ‘And so you killed all those people. They were from your Alcoholics Anonymous group, weren’t they? No official records and therefore nothing to trace them with.’

Without any emotion – no shame, no pride, no satisfaction, as if it all meant absolutely nothing to him, he nodded and said, ‘Yes.’

‘But the pain you caused, the suffering of those poor people.’

He reacted suddenly. ‘People, yes! But not to their souls, not the God-given part of them. They are safe, in the afterlife; they are where they belong. I have merely released them from the captivity of an incarnate, imperfect prison.’ He was suddenly animated and Lancefield was slightly afraid. She found herself wondering what she had been thinking, to come here, to think to find someone whom she understood, whose motives were known to her yet completely unknowable to the likes of Beverley Wharton and the oh-so-clever Dr Eisenmenger. He was no longer talking to her, but to someone, or something else; his own personal daemon, perhaps, or his own personal God. ‘I am trying to find something that mankind has sought for thousands of years, something that could prove the existence of an afterlife. Think of it, Rebecca. The knowledge that there is an eternal, immortal soul in each and every one of us. The pleasure and relief that would bring to billions. Is not a small amount of pain for a few sorry individuals worth that?’

‘But what you did to Malcolm Willoughby . . .’

‘Was worth it.’ This was deadpan, both in his voice and his face. ‘I know that he is in the afterlife and he is happy.’

She began to think that maybe it would be a mistake to argue with him, to wonder if she were entirely safe. He was still sitting in the chair facing her, and the rain was still falling outside and it was still cold and dark in that house, and suddenly everything was scaring her. She tried to soothe him, hoping to reconnect with him, for she now saw that he was no longer looking at her as, quite literally, a soul mate. ‘You’ve had some success, too.’

He seemed to change slightly at this. ‘Yes. Just a hint, but I think that there was something. You saw it?’ She nodded and hoped it wasn’t too enthusiastic and counterfeit. He seemed pleased. ‘It shows I am on to something. It is worth continuing, I’m convinced.’

SIXTY

in suffering is there salvation

Antonia could not sleep properly, despite the pills and potions Andrew had insisted on giving her. Believing that she was thinking clearly, she eventually could lie in her bed no longer; moving slowly and cautiously so as not to wake her husband, she got up, put on the dressing gown that lay on the end of the bed, and crept from their bedroom. She went to Josh’s room as if drawn and, once there, she just sat on the end of his bed and looked around, immersed in memories, tears boiling within her.

She felt crushed by failure. She had been entrusted with looking after her grandchildren and she had failed catastrophically. ‘Oh, dear God,’ she whispered into the darkness of that empty room, her voice trembling. ‘What can I do now?’

Antonia Barclay was a fighter, though. She knew despite her failure of duty, she could not, for the sake of her husband and remaining grandchild, afford to let self-pity engulf her. She still had responsibilities. Part of her grief, she knew, was powerlessness. She was impotent to bring Josh back, impotent to assuage the anguish that Andrew was feeling, that Harriet would feel when she learned the awful truth. She was impotent, even, to help with the conviction of the two men that Chief Inspector Smillie had caught and that he assured her were the guilty men. All she could do was what woman had done for thousands of years; all she could do was weep.

She switched on the bedside light, illuminating through the Star Wars lampshade a room that was cosy and untidy and haunted. Should she tidy it? She hated the thought of turning it into a shrine and thereby becoming chained to the past, but it seemed wrong to tamper with things that were not hers. She almost laughed. It had never bothered her before, tidying up after Josh, although she had constantly scolded him for his mess. It might even help . . .

‘Antonia?’ It was Andrew, standing in the doorway, sleepy, concerned, almost disorientated, and easily a hundred years old. Without saying more, he went to her, embraced her hard. They said nothing, but cried so much.

Lancefield’s next question was asked at the cost of her life. Her professional instincts came to the fore before she could stop them as she asked, ‘Did you kill the boys?’

Again, everything changed; it was a small, subtle alteration, but the shift in perspectives it produced was profound. Quietly and not looking at her, he said, ‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘They saw too much.’ He sighed. ‘I liked Josh and Darren, but I could not allow them to tell others that they had seen me there. Nor could I use them, for it would have been too close to home.’ He was silent for a while, brooding, although she did not think that he was particularly remorseful, just upset that he had not been able to use them in his experiments. Then, chillingly, he looked at her and said, ‘But all was not lost.’

‘No?’

‘No, because as I killed them, it happened again. I felt it, Rebecca, just as you did, just as I had twice before. Their souls passed through me as I held them down, one in each hand, and crushed their necks.’

He was elated and she knew that unless she, too, showed him elation, she was dead.

She was dead anyway.

‘You did?’ she asked.

In a reverie, the boys’ deaths a successful experiment rather than an obscenity, he murmured, ‘If only I had been able to do it in controlled conditions . . .’

What could she say to that? In the event, she didn’t need to say anything, for he came out of his trance and was back close to her again; terrifyingly close to her. He asked in a whisper, ‘But what about you, Rebecca?’

What about her? She was very afraid that this was a question that had no answer, at least not one in which she continued to live. She could only look deeply into those eyes and close her throat on a dry swallow. He continued before she had rediscovered the ability to speak, ‘You would not wish your soul to go to waste, would you?’

She had come to this place, to this man, because she had been living, she had believed, a half-life, had been in a kind of crazy love with the idea of dying. She found now that it had been a romanticized delusion and that she had been a fool. She very much wanted to live; she did not want to die, certainly not at the hands of a man who had cooked someone to death just so that he could search out a purely metaphysical concept.

But it was too late. His gaze was constant, without blinking, as he said softly, almost lovingly, ‘Your soul is strong, Rebecca; I can tell that. You will ascend to heaven and I will see it. Together we will prove that I am right, and you will be in everlasting joy with God.’

‘No . . .’ She was shaking her head, and her eyes felt so wide and cold that they might been about to fall to earth.

He was smiling. ‘Do not be afraid, Rebecca. For in suffering is there salvation, in pain is there joy.’

Too late to do anything by way of resistance, she began to rise from her chair. He leaned forward in his chair and his right arm stretched out and his right hand – so massive, so strong – was around her throat and pushing her down and back into the chair. And no matter how much she tried to pull it away or reach out for his face and eyes, no matter how much she tried to struggle, no matter how much she squirmed and wriggled and kicked out at his shins, no matter how strenuously she gasped for breath and tried to scream . . .

No matter how much all of these, he continued to squeeze. She lost consciousness, but he stopped immediately, smiling. ‘You will see heaven, Rebecca, but not just yet.’

SIXTY-ONE

the null hypothesis

‘In science, the null hypothesis is the way forward.’

Beverley Wharton didn’t need another soliloquy on the philosophy of scientific method, no matter how learned it might be, and even if it was from John Eisenmenger. They were in her office and she was in a fucking bad mood because Lancefield had disappeared again. This time she had had no hesitation in reporting the matter to Braxton and he had agreed that even if Lancefield was in mourning, her behaviour was unprofessional and disciplinary action was inevitable. She had been given Frobisher as a temporary replacement. ‘So you said before.’

Eisenmenger was Eisenmenger and didn’t notice the inflection of her reply. ‘So, we ask ourselves, what if Chief Inspector Smillie is wrong and our Internet killer did murder the two boys?’

‘Except that the MO is all wrong.’

‘Let’s put that to one side for a moment. If our madman did kill the boys, what is he to do about disposing of the bodies? If he hides the bodies, or has some way of effectively destroying them – which, of course, is unbelievably difficult – there is still a big signpost pointing to Colberrow. In fact, it’s worse if the bodies aren’t found.’

‘I suppose,’ she said.

‘In which case, his only safe course of action is to make sure that they are found, but make it look as if they were killed for another reason and by someone else.’

‘Somersby and Sheldon, and their little drugs kitchen.’

‘Which would explain why the bodies were hidden so poorly and so close to the shed where Somersby and Sheldon were working.’

‘They had a very good reason for killing them, we assume that it’s nothing to do with the previous killings, and our man is in the clear.’

‘It makes sense to me.’

She stood up and went to the door. Opening it, she yelled out, ‘Fisher? Get me coffee for two.’

Eisenmenger noted the lack of pleasantries and asked mildly, ‘Is that the best use of your manpower?’

Back behind her desk, she snorted. ‘Where Fisher’s concerned, it is.’

He laughed. She said thoughtfully, ‘There’s still the problem of MO. Our killer has never done anything like this before.’

‘But perhaps he didn’t have any choice. Perhaps he was forced to kill the boys on the spur of the moment.’

‘Because they saw something?’

‘That’s what I think; it wasn’t Somersby’s little operation, though.’

Fisher knocked and came in with two mugs of coffee, two spoons, a half full bottle of semi-skimmed milk and sugar cubes in a chipped canteen dessert bowl. Eisenmenger murmured, ‘Silver service, I see.’

‘Nothing but the best for Gloucestershire Constabulary.’

He put some milk in his coffee, while she took hers black; the sugar cubes were ignored. Sipping it, she said, ‘If all this isn’t complete rot, you’re suggesting that there is something the Internet killer doesn’t want us to see in or around Colberrow. Other than confirming our suspicions about the significance of the place, I’m not sure that gets us any further forward.’

Eisenmenger mused for a while. After a while, he admitted, ‘No, I suppose not.’

‘And it could all be misdirection. If our man is clever enough – and I have a horrible feeling he is – he might be deliberately pointing us towards Colberrow so that we don’t look elsewhere.’

‘Maybe . . .’

They sipped the coffee for a while; Eisenmenger found himself settling into a cosy sense of companionship.

Beverley stood up suddenly, went to the door and bellowed, ‘Frobisher!’

He came in at once. He was a short man, not unhandsome, and clearly a fastidious dresser; Eisenmenger even saw cufflinks, an affectation he found strangely anachronistic in the modern police force. ‘Sir?’ Frobisher asked, standing to attention before the desk. Eisenmenger got the impression he wasn’t happy to be answering to Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton.

‘Sit down.’

He complied.

‘Has either Somersby or Sheldon confessed?’

Frobisher said at once. ‘Don’t know, sir. Not my investigation anymore.’

She cut across him, sharply. ‘If I want to hear bollocks, I call in Sergeant Fisher. When I ask you a question, I want some sense and I want the truth, inspector. I don’t blame you for keeping in contact with DCI Smillie, so tell me what’s happening.’

He had stiffened noticeably. ‘No one’s confessed yet. They’re both vehement that they had nothing to do with it. They’ve both admitted the drugs charges, though.’

Eisenmenger observed, ‘Which is still going to mean a very stiff sentence.’

‘But easier parole,’ responded Frobisher.

‘But as far as I can see, that means we still have a legitimate right to investigate the boys’ murder, since I deem it to be possibly connected to the Internet killings.’

‘I don’t see how you can say that,’ protested her new inspector, clearly demonstrating a distressing lack of team spirit.

‘I don’t care doodley-shit what you can or can’t see, Frobisher. Shut up if you can’t be constructive.’

Inspector Frobisher was clearly not used to Beverley’s methods of discipline; either that, Eisenmenger reckoned, or he had just soiled his Calvin Kleins. He asked him, ‘Was the Grange searched?’

‘We made sure it was secure, yes.’ This was said in a rather haughty tone.

‘And there was no sign that anyone had got in recently?’

‘None at all.’

‘So what the fucking hell did they see that got them killed?’ asked Beverley. Frobisher began to say something and got put straight before he had got halfway through the first syllable. ‘Shut up, inspector. We’re thinking outside the box here.’

‘To coin a cliché,’ murmured Eisenmenger almost inaudibly.

Frobisher was flushed and angry at this series of put-downs and had donned a petulant expression which did little for his innate beauty, and did even less to disturb Chief Inspector Wharton, who sat in deep thought until she said suddenly, ‘Frobisher, you and Fisher find out all you can about the history of the Grange. I haven’t talked to the boys’ parents yet, and that’s the first thing we should have done.’

Frobisher frowned. ‘Shouldn’t you talk to DCI Smillie first?’

‘I’m going to talk to them about the Internet killer, Frobisher. Nothing to do with Smillie’s investigation but, if I find you’ve accidentally let him know what I’m doing, I’ll make sure you never make Chief Inspector. Got that?’

He didn’t like what he got, but he undoubtedly got it.

SIXTY-TWO

a chat with the neighbours

Ellie Taylor had nothing to tell them. She was holding herself together with admirable courage, helped by Darren’s father who had flown back from his new home in Spain to be with her. It was an awkward interview, with Beverley’s tact stretched to the limits as she wrestled with the opposing demands of being considerate and trying to elicit information. Eisenmenger, who had only come because Beverley had insisted, said nothing; he felt his presence to be intrusive, almost voyeuristic.

If anything, at the Barclays, things were even more difficult. It was clear that Antonia Barclay was holding herself together with nothing less than superhuman effort, whilst her husband was operating almost as an automaton. The information they gleaned, though, was of more interest. It seemed that the boys had been in the habit of playing on the estate. Had they been into the grounds of the Grange before?

Yes, Antonia said, they had. They weren’t supposed to, but they had been caught on one occasion, and reprimanded for it. Mr Somersby had been angry, and now she knew why.

She broke down in tears and was comforted in a painfully mechanical way by her husband. After a short interval, Beverley began again. Had they ever mentioned anything they’d ever seen while playing in there?

No, nothing.

Nothing at all?

Antonia became flustered. No, nothing. What were they getting at by asking these questions?

Beverley explained that whilst it was almost certain that the killers were in custody, the police had to explore every possible avenue.

They understood. She asked if they could look at Josh’s bedroom; she solemnly pledged that they would disturb nothing. Antonia, still wandering in the hinterland of breakdown, said with tears in her eyes that she had been about to tidy it the night before.

Andrew took them up and then stood in the doorway, not entering as if unable to, watching them as they looked around. It was Beverley who found the camera. She asked Andrew if he minded if she looked at the photographs. He said no, as long as she didn’t delete them, and she was careful not to.

‘Look at this,’ she suddenly said to Eisenmenger. He came to stand just behind her shoulder. She was looking at the picture of Darren with the Grange in the background. To the extreme left-hand side of the picture, at the side of the Grange, there was a small white object.

‘A white van,’ breathed Eisenmenger.

They looked at each other. Andrew asked, ‘Found something?’

Beverley said to him only, ‘Probably not.’ To Eisenmenger, she said, ‘We’d best go.’

They hurried downstairs, making their goodbyes as politely but quickly as they could. Antonia asked if they had found anything useful and Beverley replied as neutrally as she could that it had been very useful and that they were very grateful indeed for their indulgence. Andrew asked what they had seen in the photographs and Beverley replied neutrally that it had confirmed something that might prove to be of use.

Once in the car, she phoned Frobisher at the station. ‘You said that vehicles were parked at the back of the Grange.’

‘Yes. Land Rovers and tractors, and suchlike.’

‘Any vans? In particular a white van?’

‘Yes, I think there was a white van.’ She looked at Eisenmenger and nodded to indicate Frobisher’s affirmative. ‘How are you doing with the background on the Grange?’

‘Fisher’s doing it now.’

‘Well, tell him to extract his finger for once in his miserable little life. I want him at the outer gate of the Grange in thirty minutes, and I want him there with the keys and with some useful information.’

She didn’t appear to Eisenmenger to wait for an answer before she cut the connection. He asked, ‘What now?’

She pointed farther up the road. ‘Up the road is where Betty Williams lived. It’s about time we had a look, don’t you think? I should have done it a while ago, but things got busy.’

‘Is there likely to be anything left to find?’

She laughed, then shrugged. ‘You’ve got a long way to go before you make a policeman, John. Your clever-clever deductions are all very well, but in the real world, most of the time they mean sweet fanny-fucking-Adam. My job is to look, look again, and then look a third time. It’s all about tedious, repetitive, arse-aching searching, looking and diligence.’

‘Sounds like histopathology,’ he replied.

Lancefield was too befuddled to appreciate fully any relief that she was still alive. Her neck hurt and she felt as if her chest were on fire. She was stiff and sore all over and . . . and she was completely naked, bound by metal bands to an upright wooden chair.

An electric chair.

Suddenly the pain in her throat and chest didn’t matter much anymore. She screamed as she had never screamed before.

There was nothing, as he had suspected, and as she had known. It was almost certainly in their imaginations, but it was more than just an empty house, it was a dead house, a small piece of a necropolis. They heard a silence that told them they were in a place lost to life, they saw shadows that hid not even ghosts, they smelled the damp and decay of a place no longer to be tended. Beverley said tiredly, ‘Well, we had to check.’ They went outside into humid sunshine. ‘Let’s have a chat with the neighbours,’ she suggested after a deep breath to clear her body of the taint of death.

But this course of action proved initially unproductive. No one answered the rather shabby looking house on the left and, when Eisenmenger peered through the window, he saw that it was abandoned; a single chair lying in its side with just three legs was the sole occupant. The house on the right was in considerably better condition but again there was no response when they rang the doorbell. This time, however, they could tell that the house was clearly occupied; he was able to deduce this not just because there was furniture, but because sitting on a piece of it was a young man. True, he was staring fixedly at the television with his back to the window and seemed to be absent in a cerebral sense, but in a physical sense, he was most definitely there.

‘Fuckwit,’ murmured Beverley. She leaned on the doorbell, seemed to be trying to drive it into the housing and, after a goodly while, this produced a result. Eisenmenger saw the figure rise slowly, still staring at the television screen, then move with even less alacrity towards the hallway. The door opened slowly to reveal a broad face of perhaps some twenty summers with features that were never going to illuminate a room. The dark grey eyes moved slowly to the identification that Beverley was holding up in front of the face; Eisenmenger could almost see the effort that went into focusing on it. She said, ‘DCI Wharton, Gloucestershire Constabulary.’

The features did not move much – Beverley suspected that they could not – but there was a subtle shift, one that induced a distinct air of wariness. She was well used to that effect. He asked, ‘What do you want?’

‘Could I have your name, please?’

There was a moment when he appeared to be too reluctant to give this information but then he seemed to think better of it. ‘Carter.’

‘First name?’

‘Shaun.’ Then, ‘What’s all this about?’ Beverley thought that she knew the type well; petty criminal with a million minor misdemeanours on his mind and without the intellectual ability to hide them. She gestured with her head to the left. ‘Your neighbour, Mrs Williams, has just died.’

‘What about it?’ Was it her imagination, or was that wariness increasing, perhaps even being tinged by fear?

‘When did you last see her alive?’

‘Days ago.’

‘How many “days ago”?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Did you see her on the day she died?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see anyone visit her on the day she died?’

‘Dunno. I wasn’t here.’

‘Where were you?’

‘At work.’

‘And where is that?’

The staccato duologue faltered and he hesitated. ‘On the estate.’

‘What kind of work do you do on the estate, Shaun Carter?’

Whatever he did, he seemed to find difficulty describing it. ‘This and that,’ he offered eventually. She waited, a perfect paradigm of patience. As she knew he would, he found the silence intolerable. ‘Labouring and stuff . . . Fencing, digging, some stock work.’

Was he a murderer? She thought not, at least not her murderer; she found it impossible to imagine that he had any of the necessary skills – and, she had to admit, the Internet killer was undoubtedly skilled – to be her perpetrator. She had no doubt that he was capable of violence sufficient to hurt, to maim and ultimately to kill, but it would be a crude, unrefined act; something done out of frustration or shame, not because of a completely misplaced need to know, as her murderer seemed to be.

And yet . . .

Carter’s mobile phone began to ring. For a moment he didn’t react, was content just to stare, trance-like, into her eyes, then she said, ‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’

He looked then briefly at the screen, putting the phone back in his pocket almost immediately without saying anything. An expression of puzzlement was manifest on Beverley’s face. ‘Wrong number?’ she asked.

‘It can wait,’ was all Carter said.

She knew that there was something she was missing, but she could not identify it, and Fisher would be at the gates of the Grange soon. She glanced across at Eisenmenger who was looking at nothing in particular, as if caught by the same trance that had so recently entrapped Shaun Carter. Getting no help from him, she said merely, ‘OK, Mr Carter. Thanks for your help.’

He grunted and had closed the door before they had even turned away.

SIXTY-THREE

a hundred different faces

‘Inspector Frobisher’s not happy,’ announced Fisher as soon as he got out of his car. ‘Especially about you taking the keys to the Grange.’

Beverley might have been able to care less, but Eisenmenger doubted it considering her expression. As she opened the padlock and unthreaded the heavy chain free of the gates, she asked him, ‘What have you found out about this place?’

Fisher took out a notebook. ‘It was built in 1763 by Sir Thomas Hobbs. The family lived in it until 1856 when the grandson, Sir William Hobbs was declared bankrupt and the estate passed into the hands of a private consortium that turned it into a lunatic asylum. They, too, went bankrupt in 1911 and thereafter it’s been empty, apart from a short spell during the Second World War when it was used as a rifle training school.’

While he had been speaking, they were climbing into Beverley’s car and she was driving them along the gravel track. She asked, ‘Did you manage to get hold of any sort of plan of the place?’

Fisher’s look of fleeting panic told the story. ‘I didn’t know you’d want one,’ he explained.

Beverley said nothing. They had come to the inner gate and she gave the keys to Fisher and told him to unlock it. This done, they drove on towards the Grange.

It had once been magnificent. A Regency style was still apparent despite the decay. Three stories high but the top two were clearly very damaged by the weather of the decades that had passed since it was last occupied. Few of the windows had glass, and the large holes in the roof and the floors below gave the impression of a bombed-out building, one that had seen the worst of the Blitz; even so, the scale of the structure impressed. That and the intricacy of the surviving stonework that spoke of thousands of man-hours and startling levels of dedication and skill.

It was about eighty metres long, and built as a gentle curve at the centre of which was the main entrance that was about three metres high and closed by two doors that had once been painted in black paint, but were now peeling so badly that they were almost down to the original oak; heavy wooden struts had been nailed across them to make sure that even the most enthusiastic of visitors was deterred. In front was a semicircular gravel drive bounded by a low stone wall dotted with impressive urns that now sprouted only grass and weeds. In the centre was a bronze statue of a man in a frock coat and top hat; it was covered in verdigris and oxidized almost to jet. Grass and tall weeds grew everywhere, while much of the stonework was inexorably being covered and eroded by ivy and bindweed. It might have been a post-apocalyptic Britain that they saw before them.

There was quiet as they got out of the car; there were still the sounds of birds, still the breeze flitting through the trees, still the sound of their footfalls on the gravel, but these were still merely noises in a silence. There was a sense of deadness about the place, as if the air of decay was more than a passive creation of neglect but was an active thing, and one that seemed to be made by badness.

They whispered; what else could they do? Eisenmenger asked in a low voice, ‘What do we do now?’ Beverley reflected that he sounded unsure and even afraid, and that she did not recognize this particular John Eisenmenger.

‘We look around,’ she said simply.

They made their way to the side of the house, seeing nothing but elegant decay, a peculiarly British scene. There were huge glasshouses there set among wide pathways; Eisenmenger could imagine that once a veritable army of gardeners had worked in them and that the weed-strewn rectangular beds around the decrepit buildings had once been perfectly laid out in arrays of bedding plants, roses, lettuces, carrots, onions and a hundred other plant types. There was a distant red brick wall that might have been made by Winston Churchill himself and that seemed to glow in the afternoon sunshine.

A very, very British scene indeed, but one that was somehow past and no longer part of reality.

When they made their way to the back of the Grange, they came rudely back to their present, for on a wide deep back patio they saw four tractors, three trailers, two Land Rovers, two white vans, two motorbikes, two quad bikes and a single orange, flatbed truck; one of the white vans had a registration number that corresponded with the one written in Len Barker’s blood. Beside these were piles of fencing posts and rails, bundles of stock fencing and barbed wire, huge bags of sand and gravel, and a large number of moveable steel stock fences. The back of the Grange was little better than the front; in front of them was a long low conservatory stretching away into what had once been cultivated gardens, but were now almost like pampas.

It was an impressive conservatory, not quite the kind of thing that might be found at the back of the average two-up, two-down terraced in Middle England. This one stretched for a hundred metres, was made of perhaps a thousand panes of glass, and had clearly once housed a formidable arboretum. Beverley considered options. ‘There’s no way that those videos on the web were shot in there,’ she said, indicating the ruined building.

‘There’s bound to be a cellar,’ decided Eisenmenger. ‘Places like this always had extensive wine cellars and the like.’

She turned to Fisher. ‘Does it?’ He just looked slightly scared and very lost, which led her to turn away in disgust; Fisher didn’t need to hear her imprecations to know that he was not her favourite sergeant. With not a little asperity, she told him, ‘Take a look on the far side of the conservatory.’

He was eager to comply and eager to make sure that he did nothing wrong. ‘What do I look for?’

It was an innocent question, but then all of Fisher’s questions were innocent, and innocence was not a thing that Beverley had much truck with. ‘Jesus Christ on a bicycle, Fisher. We’re on the trail of a serial killer. What the fuck do you think you’re supposed to look for? Liquorice bloody Allsorts?’

As an answer it didn’t give him much in the way of a clue, but he knew enough by now to shut up and try to look knowledgeable. He walked off, trying to give the impression that he knew exactly what he was doing; Eisenmenger looked after him with some sympathy, then asked her, ‘And what do we do?’

‘First we check the vans.’

Charlie had spent many of the last waking hours trying to come to terms with her decision to end it with John Eisenmenger, and failing. She now realized that she had mistaken the man for the job. Her training had taught her just how unbelievably complex the human psyche was, how one human being could present a hundred different faces to the world, how it could hold – and, more importantly, believe – a hundred different opinions, many of which were completely contradictory. Why, she kept asking herself, should it matter to her what his professional self found so fascinating? She knew from her reading and her education that such a morbid (frankly disgusting, if she found enough truth within herself to admit it) interest could be totally confined in one small compartment, and that there was no danger of leakage into the rest of the mind. She knew also that she could not judge a person by such a thing, that all human beings had such small compartments, places wherein lived the extremes, the unmentioned, the underside, the worst . . .

Yet, and for the first time in her life, she could not apply her teaching to her own life. This man whom she loved had shown a side to himself that she found intolerable and, in consequence, she now found herself to be intolerable. She was ashamed of herself. He had managed a trick that she ought to find admirable, for he could live a normal life in the knowledge of such atrocity; it spoke of great equanimity, or a degree of resolution that was admirable.

The more she thought about it, the more she hated herself.

Fisher peered into the conservatory through cracked and grimy panes of glass; inside it he saw ancient rotted cane furniture, large numbers of dead, brown plants and trees, broken glass mainly from the ceiling and dust. He looked carefully at the dust but could see no sign that it had been disturbed. He moved on to the far side of the conservatory, then to the back of the house, out of sight of Beverley and Eisenmenger. To him, it all looked pretty deserted, and he was becoming more and more convinced that there was nothing to find here, but a fear of his superior’s excoriating tongue kept him looking, even if it was in a somewhat desultory fashion.

There was a lot more stuff around here – more fencing supplies, huge rolls of polyethylene sheeting and large metal hoops for polytunnels, bags of animal feed piled on wooden pallets – and it formed a sort of maze that obscured the base of the rear wall of the Grange. He thought he’d better at least show willing, so he edged between a tower made of bags of cattle feed supplement and another of bags of animal bedding; behind these was a row of fencing poles, leaning against the wall. He was surprised to see that there was, in fact, a narrow gap to his left, behind the animal bedding. He moved along it; its end was about four metres away and, when he reached it, he was surprised to see a set of stone steps that led down to a door. The door was completely hidden from view by a high pile of fencing rails, and it was open.

SIXTY-FOUR

less than a metre from her face

They found nothing that ought not to be found in the back of the vans, though. Mud, smears of faeces that Eisenmenger was fairly sure was animal in origin, straw, irregular strips of plastic and lengths of pink plastic twine. Beverley said, ‘I can’t see anything, can you?’ When he shook his head, she sighed. ‘I’ll get the forensics team to go over these.’

But before she could make the call, her phone rang; the screen came up with Fisher’s name. ‘Where are you?

‘On the far side of the conservatory, behind the piles of sacks. I’ve found something interesting.’

‘What?’

‘There’s a hidden passage between the sacks. It leads to a door that looks like a way into the cellars.’

‘OK. Stay put; don’t go in. We’ll be there in a moment.’

Eisenmenger felt an intense feeling of inadequacy; he felt as if he should be anywhere but where he was. ‘Shouldn’t we call for backup?’ he enquired.

He did not get the answer he wanted. ‘I want to check it out first; make sure that that moron hasn’t got it wrong. I don’t want to make myself look an idiot.’

They made their way quickly around the conservatory. At first sight they could see no way between the supplies; Beverley called Fisher again. ‘How do we get in?’

‘Look between the sacks of chicken manure and sheep feed supplements.’

‘Why don’t you come out and show us?’

There was a pause, but Eisenmenger who had continued to nose around, said then, ‘Here it is.’ He stood back to let her see. She cut the connection with Fisher, then walked down the path that Eisenmenger had found. At the end, they turned right, then came to the steps. Fisher was nowhere to be seen. Beverley muttered, ‘Fucking idiot.’

She made her way down the steps, surprised at how far down they led and somewhat concerned that the steps were slightly damp and slippery. Eisenmenger followed nervously. At the bottom she pushed the door a little further open. ‘Fisher?’ she whispered.

Two barrels of a shotgun came into view, less than a metre from her face.

SIXTY-FIVE

the snap of bone was clearly audible

Beverley quickly discovered that, if there was one thing more terrifying than having a shotgun pointed at you, it is having a shotgun pointed at you by a man who looks as terrified as Shaun Carter did. She also made several interesting discoveries about how quickly her mouth could desiccate and how bad a tremor could be. She tried to speak with the idea of uttering reassuring platitudes, but little more than a husky croak made it out of the voice box.

Eisenmenger was struck by how cold the air had become; there was a trace of damp, no more, as they stood there. There was some illumination, although it was far from adequate, coming from yellowed and cobwebbed globe lights in the ceiling. In it he could make out that they were in a vaulted corridor of unadorned brick, with rooms leading off it; each of the rooms was closed by a stout door in which was a single, small, barred opening. They were cells.

‘Where’s my sergeant?’ Beverley demanded. Carter gestured with his chin further up the corridor.

Eisenmenger retreated into intellectualism. ‘These are what? Padded cells for the lunatics?’

‘Move,’ was his only reward.

Eisenmenger persisted, ‘I think that these were once wine cellars.’ He said it in that detached, interested, academic way that he had, the one that she had come to know, the one that was somehow one hundred percent, totally and completely inappropriate for the circumstances. He did not whisper it either, so that it echoed, as if refusing to die. From ahead of them, perhaps fifty metres distant, came a deep sonorous reply. ‘They were.’

Beverley did not regard herself as in any way prone to fancies, frights or fear, but there was something about that voice, that resonance, that darkness and that coldness that made her very, very afraid. The door opened; it did not creak and, indeed, it was the silence of the movement that was truly terrifying. An impressively tall figure stepped through, bowing slightly because it was so tall. It was ugly, too, a fact not masked by the broad smile it wore. Eisenmenger was intrigued but perhaps not surprised to see it wore a dog collar. ‘Welcome.’

She didn’t know what to say and, to judge from his expression, neither did Eisenmenger. The man said, ‘Shaun, bring our guests through.’

Eisenmenger was jabbed painfully in the middle of the back by the shotgun. They went along the corridor and through the doorway, the large man standing aside for them, exuding calmness and, inexplicably, joy. They found themselves inside a room in which were three long trestle tables on which were an array of open laptops. There were chairs set out for them, with Fisher occupying one of them. They were impelled to join him. Beverley asked him, ‘You all right?’

He nodded but didn’t speak. Carter took up station behind them. The big man stood in front, his back to the tables. ‘You’re arrival here is fortuitous,’ he said.

‘Who are you?’ demanded Beverley.

‘My name is Marcus Pilcher. I am the incumbent vicar of this parish.’

‘Do you know who we are?’

‘Specifically?’ he asked with a faint stretch of the lips. ‘No. But in a more general manner, I know that you are police.’

‘You are holding us against our will. That is a criminal offence.’

The expression didn’t waver, perhaps because he hadn’t heard; certainly his next words implied this. ‘I have something to show you. Something that validates my work.’

Shaun asked, ‘Shouldn’t we tie them up?’

Pilcher was aghast. ‘Goodness me, no, Shaun. They are my guests. They will help to spread the word.’

‘The “word”?’ asked Beverley. ‘Is this some sort of religious trip you’re on?’ She sounded scathing and Eisenmenger guessed that this was a deliberate tactic.

‘I am a seeker of the truth. If you think that is a “religious trip”, then yes, I am.’

‘You’re a homicidal lunatic, Pilcher.’

This was greeted with a shake of the massive head, nothing more. Eisenmenger guessed that Pilcher was too far gone to be affected by words. He looked at Shaun Carter. ‘What’s your role in this, Shaun?’

He got no direct response, although Pilcher explained, ‘Shaun, too, is interested in my work.’

Beverley snorted. ‘Shaun is interested only in the money and the flesh, I would guess.’

If she had hoped for a response, or at least a reaction, she was left without fulfilment, for Shaun only smirked. She tried again, asking him, ‘Was it your idea to put the wrong head and the wrong body together, Shaun? Your idea of a joke?’

Pilcher’s face registered brief concern, but he said nothing. Shaun’s face registered anger and, from the glance he threw at Pilcher, some anxiety. ‘You’re talking shit,’ he mumbled.

Eisenmenger saw this, and saw that Beverley had seen it too, probably more than he had seen. She smiled. ‘This is serious science, Shaun. It’s not a joke, you know.’

‘I know that.’

‘And the head in the slurry pit? How is that science? Or just you being a dick?’

With a grunt and sneer, Shaun stepped forward and brought the stock of the shotgun down hard on her right shoulder. She felt something snap – her collarbone, she guessed – and with it was washed over with pain. Pilcher shook his head. ‘There really is no need for this unpleasantness.’

Fisher looked aghast and began to rise, although Carter’s menacing look in his direction made him think again. Eisenmenger could only look on as Beverley swayed slightly in the chair; her shoulder was hanging forward slightly and blood was seeping through the fabric of her blouse.

It took an effort in which there was a long pause, but after a deep breath she said at last, ‘You haven’t got the brains of a woodlouse.’

At that, Carter stepped back, but only to aim another, mirror-image blow to Beverley’s left shoulder. This time, the snap of bone was clearly audible and this time the pain was enough to wash her away. She tipped forward with a low grunt, then collapsed out of the chair. Both Fisher and Eisenmenger started to go to her assistance, but the barrels of the shotgun swung round on them; Shaun Carter was grinning and shaking his head, clearly hoping one of them would do something rash. Pilcher didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss. He was at the keyboard of a large, widescreen laptop. ‘Look at this,’ he said. Eisenmenger could only describe the pride and satisfaction in this strange man’s voice as truly chilling.

SIXTY-SIX

in his left hand a scalpel

The screen came on, the picture shockingly clear. It showed Rebecca Lancefield, naked, head shaved, electrodes applied to her scalp, her chest and her ribs. She was awake and she was terrified; there were bruises clearly visible around her throat. Pilcher had by now the other laptops up and running, five in all; they showed the telemetric read-outs that Eisenmenger was used to from the webcasts. Pilcher came to stand behind Eisenmenger. ‘I did this experiment four hours ago. Watch!’

Eisenmenger knew that he ought to be immune to what he was being forced to watch, but he wasn’t; far from it. He was experiencing the fear that he knew from watching well-made horror films – the awfulness of watching someone he had come to know and identify with go through a terrible experience – but this was orders of magnitude worse. He wondered what was going to happen, how she would die, and these were questions he would ask during such films, but then it would be idle, disinterested speculation; now they were asked with a degree of dread that he had never before known. He could only beg God that it would not be slow electrocution. Fisher looked just plain sick.

From behind Lancefield, a figure appeared; the face was not visible but the frame was clearly that of Pilcher. It was dressed in black and wore black leather gloves. Lancefield looked around; there was no sound, but she was talking animatedly, hysterically; she was crying now, struggling at her implacable bonds. The telemetry readings were going wild; her blood pressure was peaking wildly, her pulse was over one-fifty and rising, and her blood was becoming less acidic because of her rapid panting; the EEG readings were just chaotic.

Pilcher said ruminatively, ‘The guillotine was too quick. It happens in an instant. I see that now.’ He was sorrowful, but only because he had missed a trick, not because he had indiscriminately slaughtered.

As if by saying something he could delay what was happening in front of him, Eisenmenger said desperately, ‘Why did you kill the old woman, Pilcher? You did, didn’t you?’

He looked uncomfortable, even annoyed, at that. There was a distinct hesitation before he said apologetically, ‘She was dying anyway. It was an act of mercy . . .’

Eisenmenger suddenly understood. ‘You couldn’t resist, could you? This is all an excuse for glorying in killing.’

‘No!’ His eyes moved to Shaun and Eisenmenger braced himself for pain, but Pilcher suddenly held up his hand to stay his assistant as attention once more turned to the screen.

Lancefield’s remonstrations had produced no effect.

Pilcher had in his left hand a scalpel.

Fisher moaned quietly and Eisenmenger closed his eyes, imploring a God he did not entirely believe in to make it go away. Pilcher was staring at the screens intently. He glanced around at Eisenmenger, saw that his eyes were closed and said, ‘Please watch. You are here to bear witness.’

Shaun tapped him on the shoulder with the shotgun and he opened his eyes. He looked into Carter’s face and saw feverish excitement; he had been wondering what he got out of this, and in that look he now understood. There was a degree of savage pleasure written across his features that chilled Eisenmenger, as if he were looking into the heart of darkness; Pilcher might be mad, but Carter was just plain bad. On screen, Pilcher’s right hand was gripping the side of Lancefield’s face, pulling it up and away from the shoulder; the left with the scalpel was just penetrating the skin. He must have been tremendously strong for it was clear the Lancefield was struggling violently, yet producing almost no movement of the neck. The blade bit deeply and blood welled up immediately; that it was blood there could be no doubt; no fake blood, no matter how expensive the film ever quite got the viscosity and the shade quite right, never managed to capture the fact that blood is alive, is in many ways life.

Eisenmenger was thankful that at least he could not see Lancefield’s face, for that he suspected would have been beyond him, would have made him faint to escape the horror. A glance at Shaun Carter gave him a glimpse of such intense excitement, it was almost pornographic to behold. The blade began to slice through the flesh and it had not gone far before the flow of blood increased exponentially, became a fountain, ebbing and flowing but never dying; the carotid, he thought, but it was a melancholy whisper, ashamed of itself. The struggles, still effectively suppressed, became spasms. The hands withdrew. Lancefield’s face was a caricature of humanity, had become animalistic in its agonies, its terrors, its dying, as the blood spurted; there was no sound but he could hear her as she keened; he could also smell that ferric odour of the blood that coated her, feel it’s tackiness as it began to clot.

Real-time Pilcher turned to them. ‘Watch. Watch the EEG, and the eyes.’

And what else could they do?

Beverley groaned softly on the floor.

It lasted for long, long moments, a time that was stretched yet thick, in which he held his breath while his heart pounded slowly in his chest and in his head. Gradually the flow of blood subsided, the spasms became twitching, the opened mouth became slack. Pilcher stared intently, then suddenly pounced on the keyboard. Everything froze. ‘There!’

There it was again. A faint spark in the eye. Just that.

Pilcher indicated the EEG read-outs. Eisenmenger was not overly familiar with the complex read-outs of electroencephalograms, but that was alright, he had Pilcher to help him. ‘At the same time as we observed the ocular phenomenon, and just as the activity in the beta wave tails off, there is a small but undoubted spike in theta wave and then in delta wave.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Theta activity is typically seen in young children; delta activity in babies. Interestingly, these spikes are occurring in untypical areas of the brain, which I have yet to explain. The timing of the spike, however, suggests to me some sort of regression; I think it is the unburdening of the soul, a cleansing so that it reverts to its virginal state.’

Eisenmenger wanted to argue, but he knew better than to argue with a delusion so entrenched; he wanted to scream, too – scream that this codswallop had to end – but he knew too that it would make no difference either. He tried a different tactic. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

Pilcher seemed pleased. ‘Yes . . . Yes . . .’ He was thoughtful for a moment then he said to Shaun Carter, ‘We could repeat the experiment, could we not, Shaun?’

Shaun’s look was one of perpetual discontent, but the prospect of further death seemed to cheer him. ‘Which one?’ he asked eagerly. Eisenmenger had the feeling that Shaun’s idea of a good night in was one involving slaughter and plenty of it. Beverley moaned again; she began to move her arms but this caused only more moaning. ‘Her?’ he asked Pilcher.

Pilcher’s expression suggested that he was humouring his assistant as he said with a slight smile, ‘Why not?’

SIXTY-SEVEN

the Rapture

Pilcher walked across to the far side of the room where there was a door that led deeper into the cellars.

The shotgun came round to bear on Eisenmenger and Fisher. ‘Pick her up.’

Eisenmenger glanced at Fisher; he was unsure what to do, was looking to the sergeant for a lead; Beverley might have had a low opinion of him, but he was all Eisenmenger had. He was surprised, then, to see a change had come over Fisher. The slightly startled, slightly unsure, totally uninspiring look that he normally presented to the world was missing, replaced by something that Eisenmenger judged to be determination. The sergeant stood slowly. He waited while Eisenmenger did likewise, never taking his eyes from Carter. The end of the gun was about no more than a metre from his chest.

Carter repeated, ‘Pick her up.’

Beverley was quite still now, lying between Carter and his captives.

Fisher took a step forward. It was not a large step. He leaned down, glancing briefly at Eisenmenger to suggest that he should do likewise. He said quietly to Beverley, ‘Sorry, sir.’

He grasped her around the torso, and Eisenmenger did likewise. As gently as they could, they lifted her; she seemed to be conscious, although barely. They brought her to her knees where she slumped down. Fisher said to her, ‘Come on.’

And then in an instant, he straightened up to face Carter; in the same movement, he grabbed the barrels and forced them upwards. He said to Eisenmenger, ‘Run!’

But Eisenmenger could not. How could he escape and leave Fisher and Beverley? His morality refused to allow him to run. All he could do was stand and watch, spectate; it suddenly occurred to him that that was all he had ever done.

Fisher and Carter were fighting to control the direction of the barrel, the former trying to force it up, the latter down. Beverley beside them was swaying slightly. Pilcher was striding across the room, his face no longer one of benevolence. Eisenmenger realized that he had to do something, that to stay the bystander would be to be an accomplice. He added his strength to Fisher’s, but Carter was strong. Although Fisher and Eisenmenger had forced the gun to point towards the ceiling, he managed to twist them both so that it swung around in an arc. Just then, Beverley rose from her knees, then toppled forward, crashing into the three of them. She screeched with the pain but her weight was enough to unbalance the three of them and they, too, lost footing and crashed to the floor. The gun, pointing at Pilcher, went off; both barrels discharged simultaneously. The noise in that confined space was for a moment beyond endurance, a physical force that subsumed them all completely, made them for an instant insensate, as blind as they were deaf. Pilcher was standing two metres from them, his face one of surprise. There was a hole where once his abdomen had been; it seemed to Eisenmenger that there was smoke rising from the bloodied ruin of muscle, skin and gut. Pilcher was looking down at it as the look changed from surprise to puzzlement, then lastly to something akin to joy. He looked directly at Eisenmenger, then whispered, ‘I can feel it! I can feel it!’

He dropped to his knees quite suddenly. A jolt of pain passed across his face, then he sucked in a huge chestful of air, as if savouring something. ‘Oh, the Rapture!’

He slumped backwards, still upright, head bowed down, and was dead.

For a second no one moved, then Fisher, with a titanic effort, rose to his knees. He grabbed the gun by the barrels and swung it in a huge arc against Carter’s head.

EPILOGUE

but he only thought about it

Lancefield was cremated with full honours, her role in the apprehension of Marcus Pilcher told sparingly, her obvious psychological problems overlooked. There was a good crowd at her funeral and perhaps no one noticed that her father was not in it; Beverley, still confined to the hospital following surgery on her shattered collarbones, was also absent. Fisher was commended for his bravery, Beverley’s promotion made permanent. After the funeral, Eisenmenger went to see her. She had a room in the Nuffield Hospital, a private hospital near GCHQ and they sat together, the open windows bringing in hot summer scents. He had smuggled in a bottle of champagne and with this they toasted Lancefield.

‘She was a fool. She had a bright future ahead of her,’ she mused.

‘Her life fell apart,’ he pointed out. ‘That’s hardly her fault.’

Beverley was scathing. ‘Shit happens. How you deal with it is all that counts. Nothing else. She paid the price.’

‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum.’

‘I never did believe that crap. If you ask me, too much good is spoken of the dead. They’re like all the rest of us; fools, shits and madmen.’

Before he knew he had spoken, he asked, ‘And in which of those categories would you put Helena?’

For a moment she said nothing, merely staring at him; she was wondering what to say, whether to be honest or kind. She admitted at last, ‘Good question, John. Was she mad or just a fool to give you up?’

‘Or was she mad or just a fool to take up with me in the first place?’

She sipped more champagne, wondering why her mouth was dry. ‘Feeling sorry for yourself?’

‘I do seem to be bad news for those around me. Clive at the mortuary calls me Dr Death. Maybe he’s not far wrong.’

‘Even in the midst of life . . .’

‘Some more so than others.’

There was a silence, neither finding anything more that was easy to say until she put down her glass, wincing at the pain she still felt whenever she moved her arms. ‘John . . .’

He looked up, breaking away from reverie, raising his eyebrows in question. She took a deep breath, wondering why she felt so fucking awkward. ‘I seem to be immune to your curse.’

He thought about this. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘You do, don’t you.’

She wanted to say so much more, but found that she couldn’t. He poured more champagne.

As he was leaving, his mobile phone rang; it told him mutely that it was Charlie. He thought about answering for a few moments.

But he only thought about it.