Killing the Shadows (2000) (25 page)

As always, he thought, Fiona was succinct and to the point. And, as she had generously failed to remind him the previous evening, she had picked up on the possible significance of the bicycle straightaway. At the end of the formal report, she had attached a Post-it note in her small, neat writing.

I know,
it read
, that you have a couple of witnesses describing a running man near the scene of the crime. I don’t think this is your killer. Whoever committed this murder was together enough to make his escape in a much less attention-grabbing way. If I had to stick my neck out, I’d say the mysterious cyclist who hasn’t, as far as I can see from the statements, come forward to admit being on the Heath at the crucial time is a far more likely suspect.

Let’s talk soon. F.

Although the case of Susan Blanchard’s murder was officially closed, Steve had managed to shame his boss into allowing him a small staff to continue the inquiry that none of them would publicly admit to until and unless it produced a culprit who could credibly replace Francis Blake in the eyes of the public as well as the Crown Prosecution Service. He had one detective sergeant and two detective constables assigned full-time under his command, as well as a pool of goodwill among most of the officers who had worked with him on the original inquiry.

Mentally reviewing what the members of his team were doing, he decided to use DC Joanne Gibb for the records trawl. Joanne was a meticulous researcher and she was also skilled in developing relationships with officers both in other divisions and outside the Met. He’d seen her soothe and cajole hostile case officers in other forces, making them forget their resentment at having the big boots of the Met trampling over their patches. Nobody would be more dogged in tracking down cases with similar MOs to those suggested by Fiona; nobody would be better at extracting details from investigating officers.

Steve carefully copied out the parameters Fiona had laid down and left a note for Joanne to start on the job first thing in the morning. He stretched luxuriously, both relieved and energized by having put something positive in train. Tonight, he might actually sleep properly, instead of the ragged hours of tossing and turning that had been his recent lot.

He unfolded his long lean body from the chair and took his jacket off the hanger depending from the hook he’d super glued to the side of the filing cabinet immediately behind his desk. Functional, not aesthetic, like so much of his life, as Fiona had pointed out more than once from the earliest days of their friendship. Perhaps if he’d had Kit’s style, things might have worked out otherwise, he mused as he patted his pocket to check he had his keys. Pointless to speculate, he decided. To have had Kit’s style, he would have had to be a different man. And a different man might not have reaped the rewards of a constant friendship with Fiona as he had done.

Two strides away from the door, the phone on his desk rang. Steve dithered briefly, then turned back. “Steve Preston,” he said.

“Superintendent Preston? It’s Sergeant Wilson on the duty desk here. We’ve just had a fax from the Spanish Police. Francis Blake’s booked on a flight tomorrow morning from Alicante to Stansted. He’s due to land at eleven-forty-five. I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible.”

“Thanks, Sergeant. Do we have the flight details?”

“It’s all on the fax. I’ll get someone to bring it up.”

“Don’t bother, I’ll pick it up on my way out.” Steve replaced the phone and allowed himself to smile. Now there would be two lines of inquiry running tomorrow. While Joanne searched for the tracks of a killer, Detective Sergeant John Robson and Detective Constable Neil McCartney would be on the tail of someone who might lead them to the same man.

Definitely a turn for the better, Steve thought, his shoulders noticeably squarer as he headed for the door for the second time.

WWW

This was the only place that mattered. This was the sacred place, the sacrificial grove where morality became concrete. Everything in it was chosen. Nothing was accidental except for the shape of the room, about which he could do nothing. There had been a window, but he had covered it with a sheet of plywood then carefully plastered over it so that the wall was entirely smooth. Only the door interrupted the perfect balance of the room. That, however, was acceptable. It rendered the room symmetrical in the way that the human body was symmetrical about the axis of the spine.

He had papered the walls with lining paper. The wallpaper he wanted had been discontinued years ago, but that was of no consequence. He’d made a stencil of the stylized leaf pattern that had run down it in stripes, had paint specially mixed to replicate the exact hues of green he remembered, and meticulously made a perfect copy. Then he’d covered it in a light coat of colourless yacht varnish, so that any splashes or smudges could be readily cleaned off without damage. That, he felt, was one improvement he could comfortably make.

The floor had been easy. He’d bought the old parquet tiles from an architectural salvage yard. Maple, the man had told him. From the offices of an old woollen mill down Exeter way. It had taken a few evenings to lay them in the closest possible approximation to the remembered arrangement, but it had been a task more boring than truly challenging.

The light fitting had come from a junk shop out on the Taunton road. It had been the very first thing he’d bought, the item that had in fact given him the idea for this magical place. It could have been the original, so closely did its three frosted bowls match his memory. As he gazed at it in wonder in the dingy shop, it came to him that he could make the place live again, reassemble it just as it had been, and make of it a temple to the dark desires it had bred in him.

The furniture was simple. A plain pine table, though the scars on this surface were different from the ones he recalled. Four balloon-backed pine chairs, worn dark along the top from the regular wear of hands pulling them out and pushing them in. A small card table covered in faded green baize, where the tools of his vocation were arrayed, their shining steel glittering in the lamplight. Surgical dissection knives, a butcher’s cleaver, a small handsaw and an oilstone to make sure they were always laser-sharp. Beneath the table was a stack of polystyrene meat trays of various sizes and an industrial-sized roll of cling film.

The killing took place elsewhere, of course. It didn’t matter where. That was irrelevant to the meaning of the ritual. The method was always the same. Strangulation by ligature was the technical term, he knew that. More reliable than hands, which could slip and slither on skin slick with the sweat of fear. The crucial reason for this choice of means was that it did least traumatic damage to the body. Stabbing and gunshot wounds created such havoc, destroying the perfection he craved.

Then came the cleansing. Naked to match his sacrifice, he lowered the stripped body into the warm water and opened the veins to allow as much blood as possible to seep out, to prevent the ugly stains of lividity from spoiling the appearance of his oblation. Then he would drain the bath and refill it. The body would be carefully purified with unscented soap, the nails scrubbed, the effluents of sudden death washed away, the body purged of every defilement.

Finally, he could set about his task. Once the process had begun, he could afford to waste no time. Rigor would start within five or six hours of death, making his job both more difficult and less precise. The body, laid out on the table, pale as a statue, was his votive offering to the strange gods of obsession that he had learned must be placated all those years ago.

First, the head. He sliced through the sinews and complex structures of the throat and neck with a blade so fine that it left a trace no thicker than a pencil line when he removed the knife to exchange it for a cleaver to separate the skull from the first vertebra. He put the head to one side for later attention. Then he made a Y-incision like a pathologist. He peeled the epidermis back, carefully rolling the body so he could remove the skin from neck to toe, stripping it off like a wet suit till he had revealed a cadaver that resembled an anatomy illustration. The shucked skin went into a bucket at his feet.

Then he plunged his hands into the still-warm mass of the abdominal cavity, gently lifting the intestines and internal organs clear before slicing them free and placing them in a pile to one side. Next he broke the diaphragm and carefully removed the heart and lungs, putting them symmetrically on the other side of the torso.

He moved down to the wrists. He severed both neatly, the disar-ticulation causing him no problem. His career in the butchery trade had provided him with all the basic skills, which he’d refined to an art, he confidently believed. Never had the human body been so perfectly dissected nor so reverently.

The feet were next. The elbows and knees succeeded them, followed by the separation of the remaining upper limbs at hips and shoulders. Now he was working swiftly and surely, jointing the torso with the efficient movements of an expert at home in his specialism. Time flew by as his hands worked methodically, until all that remained was a mound of jointed meat, the head facing outwards at the top of the table.

Now, his excitement was at a peak, his heart pounding and his mouth dry. With a soft moan, he took his penis in his blood-slicked hands and carefully slid it into the open mouth that sat like a totem in front of him. Holding the head by the hair, he thrust into the slack-jawed orifice, his body shuddering with his ecstasy.

All passion spent, he stood with his fists on the table, leaning forward and breathing as heavily as a marathon runner at the finishing tape. The sacrament was over. Nothing remained but the disposal.

For most killers, that would have presented insurmountable problems. If Dennis Nilsen had managed to develop a more practical way of getting rid of his victims, he would probably have been reducing the homeless statistics of London for years.

But for a man who owned a wholesale butchery company, it was a simple matter. He possessed dozens of freezers filled with packs of meat. Even if anyone ever made it through the padlocks of the freezer that his staff knew was his own private cache, they would see nothing more suspicious than dozens of freezer packs. Human flesh, fortunately, looked much like any other kind once it was slaughtered.

D
usk on Hampstead Heath had never lost its magic for Fiona, especially at this time of year. By early October after a hot summer, full daylight exposed the dust dulling the turning leaves, the faded tones of the grass, the parched grey of the earth. But as the sky purpled in a hazy sunset, the colours resumed their depth and richness, providing maximum contrast with the city spread out below her.

Unlike the Heath, the London streets lost all definition in the gathering twilight. The dying sun dazzled off occasional windows in the taller office buildings, flashes of fire studding the amorphous grey mass like synapses sparking in a brain. It wasn’t the wild and varied landscape of the Derbyshire hills, not by any stretch of her imagination, but it reminded her that such places not only existed but were part of her mental map, there to be regained at need. It was a refreshment, of sorts. In the week since she’d read the news of Jane Elias’s death, Fiona had made her way to the Heath at least once a day. Now she settled on a bench at the top of Parliament Hill, content to do nothing more demanding than people-watching for a while.

Some of the passers-by were familiar from her walks on the Heath; dog-walkers; joggers; a gaggle of skate-boarding boys about to broach their teens; two elderly women from her own street who strode briskly past with a nod of acknowledgement; the bookshop assistant practising her race-walking. Others she’d never seen before. Some were obvious locals, often deep in conversation with partners or children, feet automatic at every junction on the path. Some were obvious tourists, clutching maps and frowning over their struggles to identify landmarks in the dim vista below. Some refused to fit neatly into any category, their pace anywhere between an aimless stroll and an intent hike.

Which category had Susan Blanchard’s killer fallen into, Fiona wondered? Suddenly alert, she asked herself what had prompted that thought.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t visited the Heath regularly since the murder, although she had tended to avoid the path that passed the crime scene. But why had that thought popped into her head now?

Fiona scanned the path in both directions, convinced she had registered someone or something that had subconsciously triggered thoughts of the murder. It couldn’t have been the thirty-something couple, the man with their baby strapped to his chest. Nor the middle-aged man with his black Labrador. Nor the two roller-blading teenage girls giggling over some anecdote. Puzzled, she looked around.

He was hunkered down in a hollow about fifty yards away, perhaps twenty feet from the path. At first glance, he looked like a jogger. Lightweight sweat pants and a T–shirt, training shoes. But he didn’t appear to be breathing hard, as someone who had toiled up the slope would inevitably be. Nor was he staring out at the view. No, he was watching the two girls on the roller blades as they swooped in circles round a wide junction of paths, their voices shrieking laughter and insults at each other.

When the girls moved off, their bodies hidden from his line of sight by a clump of bushes, he stood up, gazing back along the path to see who else was coming. For a few minutes, no one seemed to capture his attention. Then a pair of adolescents strolled into view, arms entwined, the girl with her head on the boy’s chest. At once, the man’s pose became more alert. His hands thrust into his pockets and he dropped back into his crouch.

Fiona watched the boy and girl out of sight, then got to her feet and took several paces in the direction of the man. She ostentatiously stared across at him and took out her mobile phone. As soon as he realized what she was doing, he straightened up and started running down the slope towards a path that wound through dense shrubbery.