Blood Symmetry (16 page)

‘Have you got a picture?' Burns said, frowning.

Angie flicked on the computer on the table and brought up an image of the blood pack, full to bursting. Beside it two small chalk marks were visible. I was still staring at the image when my turn came to speak.

‘We know that three of our four victims were on the Tainted Blood enquiry. We need the membership list urgently.'

‘You think they're working their way through it?' Angie's small eyes focused on me, sharp as gimlets.

‘It seems likely, when all of the killers' actions are linked to blood treatments. Last night there was an unusual degree of premeditation. They extracted pints of Adebayo's blood, before returning to the Barbican to splash it across his door. It's the opposite of the normal pattern of quick, sexually motivated abductions. I still think we've got two opposing personalities working together, one weak, one strong, making up for each other's deficits, united by a sense of mission. They've upped the ante since taking Clare; they may be keeping Adebayo alive to torture him too. The pair seem to adapt their methods with each victim, but the signature never changes.'

Tania stared at me. ‘Why are they using the Pure logo?'

‘The group campaigns for people who received infected blood from NHS treatments back in the Eighties.' I studied the picture of the blood pack, full of dark red liquid. ‘One of them could be a patient with a grievance. They're taunting us with their knowledge of medical history, and they won't just let Adebayo and Riordan go. They'll hurt them in a way that links to their theme; it's possible they're being held in a location connected to blood history. Mikey's my main concern. His
visual recall's extraordinary, so I'm sure he's got buried memories about the abduction. He's agreed to go back to Clapham Common this afternoon, but the visit has to be low key.'

Burns stared at me across the table. ‘Do you believe Riordan's still alive?'

‘I think so, but it's unusual for a victim to be held captive so long. Either she has vital information, or they're enjoying watching her suffer. She's being treated so differently from the other victims, she may know them. They may even be reluctant to kill her.'

Everyone round the table looked tense as the meeting progressed. At the end Burns discussed the next stage: the priority was to keep pressuring Whitehall to disclose the membership of the Tainted Blood panel. The professional histories of all four victims would be checked more thoroughly for connections and claims of medical negligence. More patients would be contacted and interviewed. Pure would be investigated thoroughly too. Wherever they were, the couple in question would have been overjoyed to be causing so much debate. The efforts to find Clare Riordan were doubling, media interest spinning out of control. If one of the victims died, Burns would be hounded by every tabloid in the land.

I stayed at the station to update my profile report. The deputy commissioner arrived at lunchtime wearing a thunderous expression, as if the new abduction was Burns's fault alone. The two were still locked in his office when I fought my way through the press pack. Roger Fenton shot me a sympathetic look from the edge of the crowd, as if he didn't envy me my job. The feeling was mutual. I'd have hated the tedium of waiting for stories to break, prying into people's secrets. It took me several minutes to get past them and breathe clean air again.

M
ikey looked frail when we set off for Clapham Common that afternoon. In the twelve days since his mum had been taken, he'd deteriorated from an athletic young boy to a pale-cheeked waif. Gurpreet sat on the back seat keeping his expression neutral, but I knew he had his doubts. My high-risk strategy could be cathartic, or it might plunge the child into a lasting silence. The new abduction had me clutching at straws. Any scrap of information might help track the victims down, even if it meant pushing Mikey faster than the care manuals suggested.

In the rear-view mirror a squad car followed at a discreet distance. I kept up a stream of chatter to put Mikey at ease. His shoulders were hunched with tension, even though the common must have looked very different from the morning when he went running with his mum. Now it was heaving with human activity: school teams playing football on the sports ground, kids chasing their dogs, new parents pushing buggies.

‘Are you okay, Mikey? We could do this another day.' His eyes were terrified, but his expression was determined. Having come this far it was clear he didn't want to fail. ‘We'll follow the path, then you can show us where it happened.'

He was trembling as we approached the stand of trees, passing a mound of floral tributes with messages from well-wishers. There was a scurry of activity when we arrived, two men melting into the thickets at the sight of uniforms. Drug exchanges must have been taking place there round the clock, even in broad daylight. The temperature fell by a few degrees as we entered the copse. Under normal circumstances, I would have enjoyed walking through woodland in the middle of autumn, but the place felt tainted; I couldn't forget that it was the scene of a brutal abduction. Mikey's steps faltered, like he might keel over at any minute. Gurpreet hovered
closer and I crouched down, bringing my face level with the boy's.

‘Was it here, Mikey?' He shook his head, pointing further down the path.

Once we got there he seemed calmer, as though his fears had been worse than the reality of seeing the place again. He pointed out where the car had been parked and the spot where the attack happened without saying a word. One of the uniforms took photographs, but the area had already been searched with a fine-tooth comb. I left Gurpreet with the uniforms and led Mikey to a bench.

‘Let's catch our breath.' He let me fold my arm round his shoulders when we sat down. I waited for him to speak, but the strategy failed. After a few minutes I attempted another question.

‘Do you know their names, Mikey? If you remember, you'll help us find her. You can tell me, or you can write them down.'

I pulled a notepad and biro from my pocket, but he sat motionless, eyes blinking rapidly. When his lips opened no sound emerged, exhaustion obvious as he tried to speak. I felt torn between my duty of care and the need to find his mother, but it was clear his ordeal needed to end.

‘You've done brilliantly; now let's get you home.'

Reliving the trauma seemed to have drained him as we returned to the car at a slow pace. I glanced over my shoulder as we walked away and spotted a woman in a dark winter coat at the edge of the clearing, near where the flowers had been laid. Our eyes met when she lifted her face. It was Clare Riordan's sister, Eleanor, her raised collar almost obscuring her face. There was a high whimpering sound, and when I looked down Mikey was white with panic, eyes riveted to his aunt's face.

‘It's okay, sweetheart. She can't hurt you.'

I tightened my grip on his shoulder, but felt him shaking as Eleanor slipped away into the trees. I alerted the uniforms immediately, telling them to find her and take her to the station. Why she would haunt the spot where her sister had been taken was a mystery, but my first concern had to be the boy's welfare.

Mikey dissolved into tears as soon as we got indoors. It was clear he needed me to stay, the anxiety locked tight inside him threatening to explode. I swapped night duties with Gurpreet and watched the psychiatric nurse's battered Volvo drive away, then I called Burns to let him know about Mikey's panic when he saw his aunt. Dusk was falling when I looked out of the window again, darkness wrapping the house as tightly as a shroud.

I
t's two a.m. when the man drags Adebayo's half-conscious body from the lab. Even though his mouth is gagged, the victim's whimpers are audible as they jostle him into the car.

‘We could give him more sedation,' the woman says.

‘Not yet. We have to get him inside first.'

They drive south without talking, the man's heart pounding as he concentrates on the road. The car fills with a soprano's high aria from
La Bohème
when he turns on the sound system. It eases his tension, until he hears the victim sobbing on the back seat.

He parks behind a tall building in Southwark. The site is unlit, the man's stomach tightening at the prospect of being caught. It's the outcome he fears most – for the woman, not himself.

‘Let's get this over with,' he mutters.

The woman leans over, kisses his mouth. ‘We're doing the right thing.'

The man is so tired when he climbs out of the car, he has to wait for his vision to clear before lifting bolt-cutters from the boot. It doesn't take long to break the lock. The place is full of ghoulish statues and pictures, obscene objects crammed into glass cabinets. So many lives were lost here, the place feels ghost ridden as he retraces his steps. Together they drag Adebayo on to the asphalt, leaving him slumped against the side of the car. It's the woman who forces him to stand. She
prods his shoulder with her blade, pain making him scramble to his feet then lurch forwards, swaying unsteadily at the centre of the circular room.

‘This is your last chance to tell us,' she hisses.

Adebayo shakes his head once, before the anaesthetic topples him. The man works quickly, strapping him to the operating table, ankles firmly secured. He stands back, watching the woman calmly putting on a plastic apron, then pressing another chloroform pad over Adebayo's mouth. His body bucks wildly against the restraints, then falls limp. When she turns to the man again, she holds out a scalpel on the palm of her hand.

‘Want to help?'

‘We agreed I'd organise it, you'd take care of the rest.'

‘So I'm the executioner, the guilt's all mine?'

The man stands motionless, absorbing the accusation in her gaze. It would be cowardly to leave; his fate has reduced them to this, yet he can't bring himself to look. The first slash of her knife almost brings him to his knees.

A
text arrived early the next day from Tania Goddard. It was a terse request to report to an address in Borough. A wave of anxiety hit me as I hailed a taxi. When I reached St Thomas Street, the crime scene was already behind cordons, the road commandeered. Sunlight glistened from the Shard's glass walls as I paid the cab driver. The building was less than a decade old, but already absorbed into the city's skyline, its jagged pinnacle piercing the clouds. Even at the worst of times, the city dazzled, old and new coexisting in harmony. The events unfolding at ground level were much less serene. CSI vans queued beside a Georgian terrace, St Thomas's Church festooned in yellow and black crime scene tape. My discomfort increased; the police only went to such lengths when a murder had been committed. I made an effort to suppress my fear that Mikey's mother had been found until the facts were established.

A young WPC instructed me to wait outside the Old Operating Theatre Museum. She wore a harassed expression as she checked people through the inner cordon. I belted my coat tight against the cold and studied the museum's façade. It was housed inside a narrow nineteenth-century church that I'd often admired when I worked at Guy's, two blocks away. It seemed odd that an operating theatre could have existed there, but a notice in the foyer explained that the church had once been part of St Thomas's Hospital. The garret had served as
its apothecary, providing hundreds of tinctures and medicines. It had also been the site of London's first operating theatre: medical students, including the poet John Keats, had packed the aisles to observe groundbreaking surgery.

The WPC scribbled my name on her list then handed me a sterile suit and plastic overshoes.

‘Put these on please,' she said. ‘And watch the stairs, they're a tight squeeze.'

I understood what she meant when I began the dizzying climb through the atrium to the garret above. The museum was dimly lit and ill-suited to dozens of police officers and SOCOs trampling between the low rafters. Bunches of herbs hung from wooden beams, showing how the place would have looked in Georgian times. Over the centuries their scent had impregnated the walls with eucalyptus, camphor, and a faint reek of formaldehyde. Glass display cabinets held equipment from the earliest days of surgery. I stared at a row of lint-lined masks which would have been used during operations. Anaesthetics were simpler then, a teaspoon of ether sending patients into oblivion, but the technique had been hit and miss; a few drops too many meant the patient would never wake up. The obstetrics section seemed packed with instruments of torture. One case held batons as narrow as walking sticks; in the days before pain relief, mothers in labour bit on them to stifle their screams, hundreds of teeth marks imprinted on the wood.

Tania strode towards me when I straightened up, glamorous as ever, even in crime scene overalls. She would have looked elegant in a paper bag, but today her expression was blank.

‘It's Jordan Adebayo,' she said. ‘Someone cut the padlock off the back entrance; it looks like they brought him in from the car park.'

‘That would take strength, wouldn't it?'

‘Not if they frogmarched the poor sod up the steps.' Tania's Tower Hamlets accent had grown more pronounced, distress sending her back to her roots. I followed her down a narrow passageway, a flurry of SOCOs pushing past in their white suits. ‘It's like Piccadilly fucking Circus in here.'

‘Has Eleanor Riordan been picked up?'

‘Not yet. She hasn't been home since you saw her on the common.'

Tania was so grim-faced I put my questions on hold. The passageway opened into a wood-lined amphitheatre, light falling from windows that studded the ceiling of the circular room. A skeleton hung on a wire beside the entrance, perfect teeth trapped in its jaw, grinning in welcome. He had probably stood there for centuries, teaching generations of medical students the laws of anatomy. The amphitheatre had been preserved in its original state too. Its raked seats would have allowed hundreds of trainee surgeons to spectate. So far I'd seen no sign of the body, but the room swarmed with activity. The air was sharp with unpleasant odours: meat left to fester, excrement, and the bitter tang of antiseptic. To distract myself I scanned the walls again. Someone had daubed Pure's logo on the wooden door: the familiar white and black smears, a supersized version of the marks left beside the blood packs on Gina Adebayo's doorstep.

Burns stood on the far side of the room, wearing the same clothes as yesterday, making me wonder if he'd been home at all. He was deep in conversation with Hancock, a head taller than the officers buzzing around him, as if he was the only adult in the room. His feelings were well concealed, but I knew he'd be blaming himself for the latest death. Guilt was obvious in his posture, every muscle locked in place.

‘Ready?' Tania was hovering next to me.

‘As I'll ever be.'

Except I wasn't, of course. I'd always preferred to witness a killer's approach first hand, but this time I was out of my depth. I'd seen plenty of crime scenes since becoming a forensic psychologist, but Jordan Adebayo bore little resemblance to the handsome man in his wedding photos. He was strapped to a wooden operating table, shirt hanging open to reveal a grossly distended torso. The colour had drained from his skin. And the reason was obvious: the pool of blood lying below his body extended for two metres.

Stale air was making my head swim. When my eyes blinked open again I forced myself to study the man's face. His throat had been cut so deeply that the pale tissue of his windpipe was exposed, jaundiced eyes protruding from their sockets. Tania's turquoise gaze was glassy when I turned round.

‘Is that how he was found?'

‘Covered by a surgical gown.' She nodded at a row of cotton robes, hanging from hooks on the wall. ‘The curator says it's from here.'

‘He died on the operating table?'

‘The police surgeon said it would have taken seconds, once his jugular was cut.'

‘The restraints are classic sadism, but this level of staging means they're enjoying themselves.' A fresh wave of sickness hit me as I studied the body again.

‘You need fresh air.' Her hand cupped my elbow.

‘I'll be okay.' I hated to admit defeat but my head was swimming. My eyes swept the scene again, then I stumbled out through the fire exit, suppressing my nausea. All I could hope was that Clare Riordan hadn't met the same fate.

When my eyes opened again the weakness was passing and Burns was leaning against the wall nearby.

‘Are you all right, Alice?'

‘I'll live. Has his wife been told?'

‘That's where I'm heading.' His frown showed his reluctance to share the news.

‘What do you know so far?'

‘He was injured before they arrived. There's a blood trail on the concrete.'

‘It's gathering speed. Adebayo was only kept a few days, delivered to a central London location, and killed with a theatrical flourish. They'll act again soon.' I spoke the words more for my own benefit than his. ‘We have to find out who was on that panel.'

‘Whitehall's still saying the information's classified by the Department of Health, but they'll have to give it to us now.' He took a step closer. ‘You look ill, why don't you go home for a few hours?'

‘I'm fine,' I snapped. My fears for Mikey wouldn't allow me to give up, no matter how weak I felt. ‘I'll need the crime scene analysis today, and I want to be at the autopsy.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Positive. I'm still concerned about Eleanor Riordan; Mikey had a panic attack when he saw her on the common yesterday.'

‘We're looking for her car.' He carried on studying me. ‘When this is over, we're taking a serious holiday.'

I attempted a smile. ‘Holidays aren't meant to be serious.'

He looked so bleak that I wanted to comfort him, but a noise rumbled behind me before I could move. A BBC press van was pulling into the car park. For once the reputable journalists had beaten the paparazzi; they must have been waiting outside the police station for the first flurry of activity. Two cameramen climbed out, followed by Roger Fenton, who cast a cool gaze across the melee of the crime scene. It made me wonder why he'd chosen a job which involved chasing
ambulances; either he had a genuine belief in freedom of information, or a vicarious love of danger. Of all the journalists pursuing the story, he seemed most obsessive, but I pushed my concern aside. If Fenton was involved in any way, why would he have tipped us off about the link to tainted blood? Burns traipsed down the steps to face them with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man.

I spent that afternoon working at home, but the scene at the operating theatre kept returning whenever I slowed down. A dozen emails had arrived from colleagues at the FPU, reminding me that my day job was being neglected. Consultants were begging for funding decisions, increasing my guilt about neglecting my new role. My time with Mikey had knocked everything else aside. But, despite my best efforts, my profile report still wasn't conclusive. Only the hallmarks of two distinct personalities remained clear: one was measured and academic, the other daring and vicious enough to take huge risks. If I was correct, they were the perfect double act, compensating for each other's flaws. But I still couldn't fathom why Riordan had been kept alive so long, while Jordan Adebayo had died within hours. Leaving Pure's logo at the murder scene could be a double bluff or a telling signature. If the link was genuine, the killers were members of a group that was over a thousand strong. The final possibility was that Eleanor Riordan had a murderous axe to grind. I could understand her rage against her sister turning violent, but why would she attack other blood specialists? I needed to question her boyfriend, the novelist Luke Mann, even though he'd already been interviewed. Eleanor matched the profile for the impulsive, emotional side of the partnership. If Mann was involved, I would expect to meet a calm intellectual, capable of objectivity, even if his moral compass was broken.

I was still working when my phone rang at seven. It took me a while to realise that the woman's cultured London accent belonged to Emma Selby. I wondered whether she was calling from her office at the Wellcome Institute, its walls lined with books on the history of blood treatments.

‘I hope it's okay to call out of hours,' she said.

‘Of course, I was working anyway.'

‘Could we meet? I've been thinking about your case.'

‘That would be great.'

Emma was already at Bertorelli's when I reached Covent Garden, easily the most striking woman in the room. From a distance she still looked like the flamboyant student who'd stood out from the crowd at medical school, over a decade before. She wore a purple silk shirt with a jade necklace, hair a mass of glossy brown ringlets. A bottle of wine stood on the table beside two empty glasses. She was poring over a copy of the
British Medical Journal
, but abandoned her reading glasses when I arrived.

‘Sorry to drag you across town.' She smiled apologetically.

‘It's fine, especially if you're sharing that wine.'

Emma leant over to pour me a glass. ‘If someone's obsessed by places linked to blood medicine, there are some more you should consider.'

She handed me a list of nine locations, written in spiky black ink. Most were hospitals or pathology labs, but she'd included the Old Operating Theatre, which made me do a double take. The discovery of Adebayo's body hadn't been announced yet.

‘Why's the operating theatre significant?'

She took a sip of wine. ‘Some of the first surgical transfusions happened there, but techniques were hit and miss. The theatre floor was awash with blood at the end of each day.'

‘Not a great time to fall ill.' I carried on studying the list. ‘This is helpful, thanks. The investigation team will check them out.'

‘I needed to get it out of my system. I fret about things otherwise.'

‘Me too.' I topped up her glass. ‘But now you've passed it on, you can relax.'

Her smile reappeared. ‘Tell me what you've been up to since med school.' There was an intense expression on her face as she listened to an abbreviated version of my transfer to psychology, and my passion for forensic work.

‘The mind interested me more than the body. I'm fascinated by the reasons why people break the rules.'

‘Your forensic work sounds like my research. We're both peeling back layers to reach the truth.'

Her analogy was spot on. Investigations often felt like stripping wallpaper until I hit a solid wall of fact. I ended up staying until closing time, splitting the bill with Emma, who turned out to be an interesting companion. We covered a lot of territory: family, career, relationships. She told me that she had been seeing someone for years, but they had never lived together.

‘Sometimes I wonder why I care about him so much. He can be incredibly difficult.'

‘Easy options are normally dull,' I said, raising my glass.

After we parted company, I felt more upbeat. It had been weeks since I'd met a friend for a drink and chatted about something other than work. She reminded me of Lola: stylish and bright, with the same restless energy. Her quick wit and intelligence made me hope that we'd meet again, but there was a layer of secrecy under her extrovert manner. Several times during the evening it had been clear that something was preying on her mind. I could tell that she'd needed to escape from herself that evening, for reasons she hadn't revealed.