Blood Symmetry (25 page)

T
he woman feels exhausted when they finally cross the small car park behind the laboratory at two a.m. The pair work fast, lifting the doctor's lifeless form into the boot without making eye contact, neither commenting on the marble pallor of her face, or the iciness of her skin. She regrets the mistake which caused the doctor's death – extracting too much blood stopped her heart. It angers her deeply that she failed to tell them another name. They must rely on Riordan again, but she's growing weaker every day. The woman pulls down the lid of the boot, then there's a loud click of metal as something falls from her pocket on to the tarmac. A gun lies at her feet, tarnished silver, small and compact.

‘Jesus,' the man hisses.

‘It's to protect us, that's all.'

‘Where did you get it?'

She gives him a scornful gaze. ‘From a man in a pub.'

‘A plain-clothes cop, probably.'

‘Of course not.' The patronising answer makes her grit her teeth.

‘Get rid of it, for God's sake.'

‘There's no way I'm going to prison.' She shoves the weapon back into her pocket, then turns away.

Her anger rises as she twists the key in the ignition. She loves night driving, but tonight the journey brings no peace, the car edging through the suburbs.

‘It's too much,' the man says. ‘We said we'd only hurt the decision-makers.'

She shakes her head. ‘Clare's not talking, so we need the child. We've got no choice.'

The woman's eyes focus on the road, refusing to acknowledge the judgement written on his face. She accepts the morality of what they've done. A whole generation has suffered and died; someone must take responsibility. Gradually her tension reduces as she steers a twisting line north, surrounded by lost souls. The city's casualties have risen to the night's surface: hookers on the London Road, vagrants huddled in a bus shelter, a young girl crying on a park bench.

It's impossible to avoid the street cameras on Borough High Street, so she raises her hood to shadow her face. After three more blocks they reach O'Meara Street. Satisfied that no one's watching, she leaves the car unlocked before they escape into the maze of buildings.

I
t was two a.m. when something woke me. Burns must have returned while I slept, but now he was stumbling around, dragging on his clothes in the dark. He swore quietly to himself when I switched on the light.

‘Clare Riordan's been found?' I asked.

‘It's a female, unidentified, five minutes from here.'

I launched myself out of bed on a wave of panic, grabbing enough warm clothes to ward off the autumn cold. Burns was busy listening to the announcements spilling from his radio as we drove the half mile to O'Meara Street. It turned out to be narrow and unremarkable, full of office blocks and Victorian houses that had seen better days, lit by the streetlights' orange glow. The crime scene bore an uncanny resemblance to the Old Operating Theatre: a church with a stained-glass window above the door and two thin bell towers. A railway bridge hugged its roofline so closely that the windowpanes must have rattled whenever a train rolled past. The sign outside announced that it was the Roman Catholic Church of the Precious Blood and the parish priest was Father Brendan O'Casey.

I steadied my nerves while Burns jogged towards the crime scene. If the body belonged to Clare Riordan, my next job would be to inform Mikey that his mother would never come home. I waited by the outer cordon while the uniform scribbled my name on her list. The WPC gave me a sterile suit and
overshoes, then led me down a narrow passageway once my ID had been checked.

‘Who found her?' I asked.

‘Father O'Casey; you'll find him in the church.'

Arc lights had already been set up in the car park, SOCOs crawling across the tarmac on hands and knees, eyes riveted to the ground. Tania and Angie walked towards me, the two women's greetings revealing their different personalities: Angie gave a double-handed wave, while Tania barely managed a nod.

‘The body's in situ,' Angie said. ‘I hope you're feeling strong.'

‘It's that bad?'

‘The priest fainted before the ambulance arrived.'

‘Where's Burns gone?' I asked.

‘To the station. The press have got wind of it; he's keeping them away.' She turned to face me. ‘Ready to see her?'

I grimaced. ‘No time like the present.'

The BMW was parked on the far side of the car park, beside swathes of plastic sheeting that covered the asphalt like red carpet. Plenty of people had stood there already: the police surgeon, pathologist and photographer had finished their work already. But Hancock would be here for the rest of the night, bagging litter and poring over the car's interior, praying for DNA. He gave me a nod as he rose to his feet.

‘How are you bearing up?'

‘I'll live, Pete. When this is over, you owe me a strong black coffee.'

‘Too much caffeine addles your brain.' He pressed a torch into my hand. ‘You'll need this for a proper look.'

Pete's appearance showed the pressure he was under, white brows lowering in a deep frown, his skin sallow. TV shows did forensic scientists no favours by pretending they could conjure answers from even the most barren crime scenes.

I came to a halt once I had a direct view into the car's boot, my vision blurring. There was something surreal about the way Dawn Coleman had been folded like a piece of origami, dozens of test tubes strewn across her body. She lay on her side, knees curled to her chest, swaddled in black fabric. The collar of her blouse was so filthy it was impossible to guess its original colour. Her face was as pale as candle wax, lips such a dark blue they looked as if they'd been tattooed, her blonde hair matted with blood. I thought of her two teenage daughters coating her hallway in fresh white paint, concealing every blemish.

When I forced myself to look again, torchlight revealed the level of staging. The test tubes were the sort used in medical labs, each one containing a splash of bright red liquid. The Pure logo was drawn in chalk on the raised lid of the boot. Something shifted inside my stomach when I saw that her bound hands were raised like she was offering a last prayer. There was no way of guessing what kind of treatment she'd suffered, or where she'd been kept for forty-eight hours, but the need to know burned at the pit of my stomach. Years ago I'd spent time locked in captivity but, unlike Dawn Coleman, I'd had the good fortune to escape.

‘How long before the body goes to the mortuary?'

‘By morning.' Hancock's eyes scanned the ground again. ‘She needs identifying.'

I made my way inside the church, partly to clear my head, but also to locate the priest. Father Brendan was kneeling at the altar, which held a row of candles glowing brightly in the dark. His Irish brogue was audible from twenty paces, even though he was reciting a Latin mass. I perched on one of the pews to steady my nerve. Churches always had a calming effect on me, even though mysticism left me cold. Even at Sunday school I'd been unable to imagine anything
beyond what I could touch and taste and hold. A confessional box stood in the corner of the nave, the air heavy with incense and dust. The priest's words echoed from the vaulted ceiling. In the flickering light I could see that he was tall, grey curls springing from his skull in all directions. I expected him to be in his fifties, but when he eventually turned round, his face was boyish; he couldn't have been much older than me. He collected one of the candles from the altar as I approached, hands trembling as he studied my ID card.

‘Could I ask a few questions, Father?'

‘Of course. This is such a tragic thing.' His face clouded.

‘Were you saying a mass just now?'

‘A requiem. I'd have done it sooner, but shock got to me.'

‘That's not surprising; you've had a dreadful experience.'

‘I visit the sick and dying all the time, but that's different.' His voice lapsed into silence.

‘How did you find her?'

‘I saw the car when I drove home from a prayer meeting, late last night,' he said, frowning. ‘No one in their right mind would leave a BMW here overnight. Its doors were unlocked.'

‘Had anything unusual happened before that?'

He looked thoughtful. ‘It may not be relevant.'

‘Tell me anyway.'

‘Yesterday afternoon a man came to confession; he said he'd done terrible things. I could hear the pain in his voice.'

‘Did you see his face?'

‘The confessional grille blurs people's features, for anonymity. He'd gone by the time I looked for him.'

‘Can you remember what he said?'

‘Not in exact words, just how despairing he sounded.'

‘Would you recognise his voice, if you heard a recording?'

He rubbed his hand across his jaw. ‘I doubt it, I'm afraid. After a while one voice blends into another.'

I nodded. ‘One thing before I go, Father. Can you explain your church's name?'

‘The precious blood refers to Christ's sacrifice. He gave his life for us, didn't he?' His parting gaze was stern, as if I'd failed my first catechism.

My eyes struggled to adjust when I stepped from the candlelit church into the harsh glare of arc lamps. Even though it was the middle of the night, people were milling by the side of the road. Gawkers always fascinated me. This lot varied in age from a couple of young men who looked the worse for wear, clearly on the way home from the pub, and an old man who should have known better. Roger Fenton was the only journalist in sight, which made me wonder who had tipped him off when Burns had been fighting to keep them away. The intensity of his gaze gave me another twitch of discomfort, despite the team's certainty that he had no connection with the crimes. He had passed me key information, and been first at Jordan Adebayo's crime scene too. If he was one of the abductors, his job allowed him to follow the investigation's every move; but why would a reporter suddenly turn killer? I blinked my eyes shut for a moment, aware that my closeness to the case might be clouding my judgement.

When Tania and Angie walked towards me, I decided to speak my mind.

‘Could one of you check Roger Fenton's alibis again? The guy's an expert on the Tainted Blood enquiry.'

Tania raised her eyebrows. ‘The only link is that he joined Pure in 2012, but you said he did that for research purposes.'

‘Humour me, please. Look at him again.'

‘I'll see what I can do.'

She and Angie exchanged a look of disbelief, as if the request proved I was cracking under the strain. I stayed silent on the way to the station, perched in the back of Tania's car, redrawing my image of the killers. Whoever had murdered Dawn Coleman had a strong sense of symbolism; their enjoyment of high drama had been part of Jordan Adebayo's murder too, but this time the site was religious instead of historic. Maybe their biggest thrill came from imagining witnesses' faces as they peered into the boot of the car.

B
urns was holding court back at the station. His expression had changed, panic replaced by stoicism, but his team looked exhausted. The incident room smelled of heat and entrapment, dozens of people locked indoors for days without respite. I watched him organising the crowd, more by body language than instruction. The heft of his shoulders ensured that any request was granted instantly, but his confidence seemed to falter when he spotted me, like I'd caught him play-acting. Once the briefing began, his swagger returned. He gazed around the room steadily, as though he was awarding points to the best listeners.

‘The case has taken a new direction. Now we have proof that the killers are politically motivated; they're killing government advisors on the Tainted Blood enquiry. There are ten names on the list; Dawn Coleman's the fifth to be taken. Lisa Stuart's still missing, and they're holding Clare Riordan. We have to make sure that the remaining five get round-the-clock protection until the killers are found. Let's run through what we know so far. Alice, do you want to start?'

When I rose to my feet, the team watched with varying degrees of scepticism. ‘I still think we may be looking for a couple who know Clare Riordan, professionally or personally. It's rare for a hostage to be held this long; the killers may
blame her most for denying the patients compensation, or they're using her to gain information. We're looking for a couple with reason to harm all five victims. The suspects include Sam Travers, Clare's lover, still bitter about her rejection. His work as a film-maker put him in touch with dozens of medics, including Lisa Stuart. Most urgently of all we need to find Eleanor Riordan. She's disappeared from home before without telling her boyfriend, but there's an outside chance she could be working with a man with a blood fixation. It's unlikely that she's been taken, because the killers always leave a sample of a new victim's blood within twenty-four hours. Any of the tainted blood victims could be seeking justice for the illnesses they've received, so you need to take each one of the names on Pure's membership list seriously.

‘The killers chose a religious site this time because they're on a moral crusade, convinced that right's on their side. We also know that they're obsessed by the history of blood medicine. I think it's likely that Riordan's being held at a location linked to their theme, so it's worth checking abandoned hospitals and health clinics. Location analysis suggests that the killers are based in south London, targeting victims inside a two-mile radius of Walworth. Clare Riordan's son escaped from the killers there; he seems certain that's where his mother's being held. More street searches in the area would be a good place to start.'

Burns gave me a quick nod of thanks, but I didn't get the chance to say goodbye. When I paused by the doorway he was motionless in the centre of the room, people whirling around him, like a ship's mast in a storm. It must have consumed all of his energy to project so much calm while Clare Riordan was still being held, vulnerable to the same fate as Dawn Coleman.