The Keeper (21 page)

He remembered being gripped under the armpits and dragged across the floor, through a door into the darkness and down the stairs to the cellar that lay hidden and forbidden beneath the children’s home. The door to the animal cage had been opened and he was thrust inside, his bonds removed by practised hands, the door slamming shut, the metal wire of his prison shuddering as the adult voices moved away. He’d screamed then, screamed for his mother to come and save him, screamed for her forgiveness, although he didn’t know what he’d done wrong, what crime he must have committed to have been sent here. So he kept calling for her, fighting against the drugs that invaded his blood, until a face full of hate and retribution pressed against the wire, hissing at him, ‘Call her all you want, you fucking freak. No one’s coming for you. She hates you – do you understand? She hates you. This is your home now, so start getting used to it, because you’re going to be here for a very, very long time.’

Sean dumped his car in the ambulance bay at Guy’s Hospital and tossed the police logbook on to the dashboard to warn the hospital’s private security guards not to clamp it. He then used his usual entrance to the giant building, walking through the Accident and Emergency Department doors clearly marked ‘Hospital Staff Only’, nodding at the few faces he recognized and ignored by the rest who rightly assumed what he was. He headed for the main body of the hospital and the relatively new shopping-foodhall complex that was open to staff, public and patients alike. He entered the concourse and searched for his wife, who he’d arranged to meet for a rushed late lunch before he went to see Dr Canning for the post-mortem of Karen Green. He passed the ubiquitous chain cafés and found Kate sitting in Starbucks as they had planned, her head buried in clinical data reports. She hadn’t waited for him before grabbing a sandwich and coffee. He considered not bothering to get himself anything, but the service queue was mercifully short so he grabbed something that he wouldn’t have to wait to be toasted, ordered the simplest coffee he could find on the overhead menu-board and headed for his wife who hadn’t yet seen him arrive. ‘Excuse me. Is this seat taken?’

‘My, my,’ she joked, ‘who is this handsome stranger standing before me?’

‘A stranger, I’m afraid so. Handsome, I’m not so sure about that,’ he replied, pulling out a chair and sitting heavily.

‘Anyway, what brings you to my neck of the woods, Inspector?’

‘That missing woman I told you about.’

‘You found her? She’s here in Guy’s?’ Kate asked.

‘No,’ he said, unwrapping the sandwich he already knew would taste of nothing. ‘We were looking for one woman and found another.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The woman we were looking for wasn’t his first,’ he told her in a hushed voice, checking there were no eavesdroppers. ‘The woman we found – he’d already taken her.’

‘So now she can tell you where the other woman is?’

‘I’m afraid she won’t be able to do that.’

Kate immediately understood the inference. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and meant it.

‘Me too.’ They sat in silence for a moment without pretending to be interested in their lunch.

‘So I guess I won’t be seeing much of you for a while then?’

Sean shrugged his shoulders. ‘You know how it is.’

‘Yes, Sean,’ she sighed, her frustration at having to share him with so much horror and misery making her sad, ‘I know how it is.’

‘Things just got a lot worse than I expected. What can I do?’

Kate pulled in heavy lungfuls of air and puffed her cheeks. The coming days, probably weeks, would be hell as she tried to juggle her work and children with little or no support from Sean, but she understood the importance of the job he had to do. She thought of her own two girls and what she would expect of the police if either of them were missing: she would expect them to work without end, without sleep, without food or rest until her child was found. She wouldn’t let herself be a hypocrite. ‘What can you do?’ she replied. ‘You can catch the bastard, that’s what you can do.’

Sean actually managed a smile. ‘Thanks.’

‘So where you going after our luxurious meal?’ she asked.

‘Over to see Dr Canning for the post-mortem.’

Kate slouched in her chair and smiled without joy. ‘Well, I suppose I should feel honoured. I mean, how many wives are squeezed in between a murder scene and a post-mortem?’

‘I’m doing the best I can.’

‘That’s what worries me.’

‘You never know, I might get this one wrapped up sooner rather than later. Whoever I’m looking for has been leaving a lot of evidence behind – fingerprints, DNA – and he takes them in broad daylight. He’ll make a mistake soon enough, then the evidence will hang him.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘I hope so too,’ he said, glancing at his watch and standing, taking half the sandwich and leaving everything else. ‘I’ve got to go. Dr Canning’ll be waiting for me.’

‘Well, that was short and sweet,’ Kate said. ‘Is there any chance I might see you at home later?’

‘Maybe, but don’t wait up. I’ll try and call you.’ He leaned across the table and kissed her lightly on the lips, embarrassed even by such a small show of public affection. She watched him walking quickly across the concourse, weaving his way through the other pedestrians, torn between her attraction to his intensity and the fear that one day she might lose him to his job. It left her feeling melancholy.

Sean pushed the last of his sandwich into his mouth and at the same time felt his phone vibrating in his jacket pocket. He forced the dry bread down his throat and checked the caller ID. It was Sally. He tapped the answer key. ‘Sally – you got something for me?’

‘Karen Green’s Micra just turned up in a car park in Mazzard’s Wood, Bromley Common, secure and undamaged.’ An image of tall trees leaning in the wind jumped into Sean’s mind.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘send someone to babysit the car until forensics can get to it, and make sure they give it a good once-over before taking it off to Charlton.’ He swerved to avoid bumping into an elderly couple passing him in the corridor. ‘I’ll be at Guy’s for another hour or so. Keep me informed.’ He hung up and immediately searched for another number in his phone, tapped ‘call’ and waited for an answer.

‘Hello,’ DC Zukov answered.

‘Paulo, how are you getting on with the tattoo inquiry? Any luck?’

‘Nothing yet. I’ve checked the Internet for the design and drawn a blank. And I’ve emailed a picture of the tattoo to most of the tattoo parlours in the area in the hope someone may recognize their own handiwork.’

‘Good. Keep at it,’ Sean told him.

He hung up and slid the phone back into his pocket as he exited the main entrance. Cutting across the front car park, he turned left and out of the main flow of pedestrians and headed towards the oldest part of the hospital. He passed the department marked clinical waste, with ominous-looking fluorescent wheelie bins waiting outside and walked through the swing doors discreetly signed ‘Pathology’. Pushing his way through the thick rubber strips that hung from ceiling to floor, he entered the autopsy suite.

Sean looked around the large room. Two bodies lay covered, awaiting attention while Dr Canning busied himself with the body of Karen Green. She was laid out on the examination table, a cold stainless steel surface with a shallow channel running along its middle that drained into a plughole, enabling the removal of blood and other fluids. He could see that Canning had already cleaned the body up in an effort to distinguish haemorrhaging from dirt.

At the sound of Sean snapping on a set of surgical gloves, Canning looked up. ‘Afternoon, Inspector.’

Sean ignored the nicety. ‘Any trouble moving the body from the scene?’

‘No,’ Canning replied. ‘I carried out a close examination of the area around the body, but didn’t find anything startling. I should think the evidence we’re after will be on or in her body.’ Sean nodded his agreement. ‘Aside from the throat, I haven’t opened her up yet, but I don’t expect to find any significant internal injuries other than the crushed trachea I’ve already discovered, which was almost certainly what killed her.’

‘What about the head wound?’

‘The skin on the back of her head has been split by a blow from a blunt, cylindrical object, but the wound’s not nearly significant enough to have contributed to her death.’

‘Could it be post-mortem?’ Sean asked. ‘The killer for some reason trying to draw us away from the real cause of death?’

Canning shook his head. ‘No, there was too much bleeding from the wound for it to be post-mortem, although it was inflicted very close to the time of death, which was about twenty-four hours ago. Perhaps your killer wanted to knock her senseless before committing the terrible deed.’

The image of the faceless man standing behind Karen Green in a dark forest raced into Sean’s mind, the blunt, heavy object being raised above his shoulder and then brought down hard on the back of her head, pitching her forward to the soft, wet ground. ‘Any signs of sexual assault?’

‘Numerous,’ Canning answered, ‘and probably committed over a period of time – a few days at least. She has semen in her vagina, upper and lower, as well as her anus. Both vagina and anus show extensive bruising consistent with non-consensual intercourse and there are signs of some tearing at the entrance to her anus that are consistent with the same. It would appear you are looking for a rather unpleasant individual.’

‘That much I already know,’ said Sean.

‘Just as you knew I would soon have a female body recovered in woodland to examine.’ Canning locked eyes with Sean, waiting for him to blink first. ‘I reckon it would take a sharper scalpel than mine to dissect that brain of yours.’

‘I’m not as insightful as you think,’ Sean confessed. ‘This isn’t the woman I was expecting to find.’

Canning raised an eyebrow. ‘Then am I to expect more ladies of the forest?’

‘At this stage, all we can do is hope for the best and be prepared for the worst.’

Eager to conclude the autopsy and get back to the office, Sean directed Canning’s attention back to the body on the table. ‘When I had a cursory look at the scene, I saw a tattoo on the underside of her right forearm – a phoenix, I think.’

‘You mean this?’ Canning rotated her forearm to expose the garish little picture. ‘Not a tattoo, Inspector – a transfer. Common enough, but not usually found on an adult. Did she have any children?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps she worked with children, a nursery or infant teacher?’

‘No,’ Sean repeated. ‘Children weren’t a part of her life.’

‘Then you have another mystery on your hands.’

Sean thought for a moment. ‘She was about to go travelling, to Australia and possibly beyond. Maybe she wanted to appear more exotic, but didn’t have the courage to get the real thing?’

‘That I wouldn’t know, Inspector. Conjecture is your field of expertise, not mine.’

Sean took a long hard look at the body, noting the injuries he’d already observed when he’d first seen her lying in the woods – the split lip showing signs of healing, the grazing and bruising on her fingers and knee – none of which required Canning’s skill to explain. But there were other bruises too, more clear now her flesh had been cleaned: small, round injuries that looked as if they had tiny burns at their centres.

‘What are these?’ he asked, his finger hovering over the strange marks. ‘They look like bruises with burns in the centre.’

‘I’ve been trying to fathom out what those are,’ said Canning. ‘Almost like cigarette burns surrounded by a cylindrical bruise. I’ll have to run some simulation tests and see if I can reproduce the effect, find out what caused them.’

Sean pointed to a square-shaped bruise that also showed signs of burning. ‘Any ideas what made that mark?’

‘It’s an older injury,’ Canning explained, ‘at least a week or so. I’ve seen it before, although not very often.’

‘Then you know what it is?’

‘That, Inspector, if I’m not mistaken, is an injury caused by a stun-gun.’

‘Caused at the same time as she was abducted?’

‘More or less – best as I can tell.’

‘So that’s how he incapacitates them: as soon as they open the door, he hits them with the stun-gun and then goes to the chloroform?’

‘It’s quite possible,’ Canning agreed. ‘Will that narrow the field for you? The sale and ownership of such an item in this country is highly restricted.’

‘I doubt he obtained it legally – probably picked it up on the Continent and smuggled it into the country, but we’ll check. Anything else for me, other than the superficial stuff? Anything I can use straight away?’

‘Well …’ Canning began, pricking Sean’s interest, ‘when I was swabbing the body I could smell traces of cosmetics. I took a closer look and, although it’s too early to say, I believe she had recently applied both cream and perfume to her body. Looking at the general state of her, I would say she hasn’t been allowed to bathe for several days, which is why the traces remain, but still, cosmetics of this type generally don’t stick around for more than four or five days. I noticed the police report said she’d been missing for eight to nine days, which means—’

Sean cut across him, his head flooding with thoughts and images that made almost perfect sense, yet contradicted so much. ‘Which means they were applied while she was being held captive. He made her put them on.’

‘Or he put them on her,’ Canning offered.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Sean dismissed the suggestion. ‘Clearly she didn’t have access to washing facilities for at least the last few days, but if the cream and perfume aren’t fresh it could mean that round about the same time he stopped allowing her to wash he also stopped giving her them to use.’

Canning opened his mouth to speak but Sean raised a hand to silence him, his fickle brain dangling the answers tantalizingly close before snatching them away. He slowed his mind, relaxing and concentrating at the same time, clearing the fog of a thousand unrelated thoughts to allow the answers to come.

‘He treated her well at first,’ he began, ‘gave her food and water, somewhere to wash. She was special to him, so special he gave her body cream and even perfume, as if she was his, his lover, but then something changed. Something changed and she became nothing to him, nothing more than a problem to be removed. He didn’t feed her any more, or allow her to wash or even wear clothes, and there was no more pampering with cosmetics, just rape and torture. And when he couldn’t stand the sight of her any more he took her into the woods and killed her like a farmer would kill an old sheep dog that couldn’t earn its keep, without feeling or remorse. And then he left her cold and unclothed in the woods and went back to the woman he’d taken to replace her. He went back to Louise Russell and the cycle started all over again. But who did Karen Green replace? Or was she the one you coveted above all others, the one you fantasized about for years before taking her?’ He froze for a few seconds, then turned back to Canning. ‘The swabs you took from her body, with the cream and perfume samples – can I take them with me?’