Cold Sacrifice (4 page)

‘So someone turned her over onto her back after she was dead?’ Ian repeated. ‘It’s quite possible whoever did that wasn’t the killer. Do we know for certain those teenagers didn’t disturb the body?’ He turned to the SOCO. ‘Or is it possible someone else turned her over?’

The SOCO shrugged.

‘I can’t say if someone else came along.’

‘But why would they have turned her over and then just left her?’ Rob asked.

‘To see who she was, or maybe to get at her pockets,’ Ian mused aloud. ‘She could have been robbed after she was dead, by someone other than the killer.’

‘Or maybe her pockets were emptied to stop her being identified,’ Rob suggested.

They discussed possible scenarios for a few minutes, but at this stage they could only speculate.

There was nothing else the SOCO team could tell them. After staring helplessly at the dead woman for a few minutes longer, Ian followed the inspector out of the tent. They couldn’t walk around the park area, which was being searched for footprints or any other evidence the killer might have left behind. The group of teenagers who had stumbled on the body were standing together just outside the park, under the watchful eye of a female constable. Ian suspected the youngsters might have shifted the dead woman’s position in order to comb through her pockets, although they all strenuously denied having gone anywhere near the corpse. Ian and Rob took their details and questioned them briefly on the pavement.

One of the girls shuddered, while another squealed in horror.

‘I ain’t going nowhere near that old stiff. Catch me!’

‘He ain’t telling you to go near it, bitch,’ one of the boys said. ‘The pig wants to know if she was like that before or what.’

‘Before what?’

‘Before we was there.’

‘Well, if we wasn’t there, how are we supposed to know what she was like? Them pigs is well thick.’

‘That’s why they’re pigs, innit?’

‘Hey, you,’ Rob interrupted sternly, ‘watch your mouth or you’ll be spending the night in a cell.’

‘Are you threatening me?’ The boy turned to his mates. ‘Is he threatening me? That’s police harassment, innit? You all heard it.’

No one bothered to answer.

They dismissed the group of teenagers. Now it was time to leave, Ian was unaccountably reluctant to go. He stood by the entrance to the park area, gazing around.

‘What are you looking at?’ Rob asked.

Ian shook his head. He wasn’t looking for anything specific. If there was any evidence to be found, the search team would discover it. He just wanted to get a feel of the place, to give the murder scene some kind of existence in his mind. But although the victim was real enough, it was impossible to visualise her killer without knowing anything more. They didn’t even know if she had been stabbed to death by a man or a woman.

‘Come on,’ Rob said, after Ian had been standing silently observing the sparse grass and withered bushes. ‘Let’s make a move. See if we can get some sleep tonight. We don’t want to be done in before we even get started.’

But the investigation had already started, and so far it wasn’t going well.

‘An anonymous victim, no sign of the killer, no witnesses, and no murder weapon,’ Rob said grimly before he walked off with a constable who was driving him back to the police station.

R
OB SET OFF BACK
to the station to write up his report, leaving Ian to question the old man who had been in the park when the teenagers had found the victim. Ian sympathised with the witness. It was difficult enough for Ian to view bodies at a crime scene or in the mortuary with his colleagues, when he knew what to expect. It must be traumatic to see a body without any warning, when you were out by yourself. Ian thought back to the first corpse he had seen, spreadeagled on a table in the morgue. Horribly white, its chest neatly slit open, the body had barely looked human. The clinical approach adopted by his colleagues ought to have made the situation easier for Ian to deal with, but he had struggled to reach the toilet before he threw up. He had managed to get his reactions under control since that first embarrassing incident, and was fairly confident he had succeeded in keeping his nausea a secret from his colleagues. But he had to resign himself to his predicament. He would never feel comfortable in the presence of death, and he came up against it regularly in the course of his work.

The streets around the park area had been cordoned off. The witness was standing just outside the park, beside a uniformed constable. Neither of them was talking. Old and frail, Frank Whittaker’s distress was evident. He was unnaturally pale and was smoking feverishly, exhaling out of one side of his mouth to avoid blowing smoke in the constable’s face. In his youth Whittaker must have been a hefty bloke, but his frame was bowed, as though aged by a serious illness. He looked up apprehensively when Ian went over and addressed him by name. The cigarette trembled in his hand, and he looked cowed, as though he had been caught out doing something wrong, although there was no reason to suspect he was implicated in the stabbing. Ian reassured Whittaker that he only wanted to ask him a few questions about what he had seen.

Despite his nervous manner, Whittaker’s account was straight-forward.

‘I go out every evening, unless it’s really raining hard, and sometimes even then. My wife insists I need to get out of the house more, since I retired. She isn’t happy unless I go out for a brisk walk, twice a day, morning and evening. Doctor’s orders. But the truth is I don’t go as far as she thinks.’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘I only walk as far as the park where I can sit on a bench and have a quiet smoke. The wife doesn’t approve, you see. So I have a smoke in peace, she thinks I’m getting my daily exercise, and we’re both happy.’

After taking a long drag on his cigarette, he chucked it on the ground, crushing it beneath his shoe.

Although Ian hadn’t asked what he was doing there, he seemed to think he ought to account for his presence.

‘I come here because it isn’t far, and it’s usually quiet. There’s sometimes kids hanging around but they usually turn up later on. Apart from that there’s never anyone here in the evening, and there’s a bench to sit on, if it’s not wet. So I came here this evening, like I often do, and blow me if there wasn’t someone sitting on the bench in the rain. There’s never anyone there.’ He paused.

‘What do you remember next?’

‘I remember I was surprised, because I never saw anyone sitting there before, not in the evening. And who would want to sit on a park bench in the rain? So I took a look as I was walking by –’

He hesitated.

Ian looked up from his notebook and saw that the witness was looking down at his hands as he fumbled with his cigarette packet.

‘What did you see?’

He waited for him to finish fidgeting with his lighter. The end of the cigarette made glowing patterns in the night air as Whittaker gesticulated while he spoke.

‘I was looking straight at her as I walked past, because, like I said, I was curious. I looked her straight in the eye as I went past. She didn’t even blink and I couldn’t help noticing she wasn’t moving. Then I saw a dark stain on the front of her jacket and went closer to see if she was all right. I think I already knew she was dead, really. She was so still. I mean, it’s not natural for a woman not to react in any way when a strange man approaches and stares at her, is it?’

Concerned and curious, he had craned his neck forward for a closer look. As he did so, a cloud had drifted away from the moon, throwing a shaft of light down on the inert figure on the bench. When she didn’t respond to his calling out, he had taken a step nearer and tapped her gingerly on the shoulder. Still she didn’t react. As he dithered, he had heard voices and shouts of laughter from a gang of teenagers loitering nearby. There was no way back to the street without risk of being spotted, so he hid behind a tree trunk and waited for an opportunity to get away.

‘Why did you hide?’

‘I was scared of being mugged. And seeing that dead woman had me all shook up.’

He had little else to tell. The kids had started jeering at the woman on the bench, then one of the girls started screaming and that set them all off. Next thing Whittaker knew, they were all on their phones, summoning the police.

‘Why didn’t you call us?’

‘I haven’t got my phone on me. Don’t tell my wife, will you? She’ll kill me if she knows I’ve come out without it.’

F
ROM THE OUTSIDE IT
was a perfectly normal detached house in Canterbury Road, an ordinary residential street. Even now, when he opened the gate, he felt a tremor of apprehension in case he had come to the wrong address. It was hard to believe that behind its closed curtains this place was sacred. The property was reasonably well maintained, although behind a tall hedge the garden had been left to run wild. Grasses and brambles grew to waist height with here and there a flowering weed providing a bright splash of colour against an urban wilderness of foliage. The path, cracked and uneven, was barely visible between the encroaching plants. He approached the front door with a familiar sense of awe, knocked three times, paused, then knocked again. It was opened by a tall man dressed in black who gazed at him with a stern expression.

‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve come to see the leader.’

‘Everyone wants to see the leader.’

As the door swung closed behind them, a girl came running down the stairs. She had long fair hair and looked very young.

‘What do you want?’ she asked in her turn.

‘I’ve come to see the leader.’

‘Everyone wants to see the leader.’

He had hoped to be taken to the leader straight away, but he wasn’t going to complain about being greeted by a female disciple. It was better than waiting alone. Without a word he followed the girl upstairs to a small bedroom where she slipped out of her robe and welcomed him to the house. The bed was narrow and had a musty smell but the girl was sweetly perfumed and lithe.

When she was getting dressed again, he repeated his request to see the leader.

‘Everyone wants to see the leader,’ she replied with a dreamy smile.

‘You don’t understand,’ he protested. ‘I’ve waited long enough. Tell him I’ve earned the right to see him. I’ve done what he asked.’

‘Wait here.’

The girl skipped away leaving him to pace impatiently up and down the narrow space between the small bed and a grey plastic chair in what was more of a box room than a bedroom. The walls were bare, apart from a picture of the leader who stared down at him with huge dark eyes. His skin looked white in the picture, but there was nothing weak about his expression. He remembered the first time he had met the leader in the street, apparently by accident. Since then he had studied the leader’s teachings and knew that nothing happened by chance.

After a long time, the girl returned. Smiling, she held out a white robe identical to her own.

‘Put this on. The leader will see you now.’

He stood up, experiencing an unexpected flicker of fear. Everything had seemed so clear the last time the leader had spoken to him. Having sent the other disciples away, the leader had put his request very simply.

‘All the gods ask of you is one simple act of devotion, one small sacrifice to prove you are worthy to accompany us on our journey into the light of salvation.’

It hadn’t sounded like a small sacrifice. Shocked, he had dared to challenge the leader.

‘Why her, of all people?’

‘You know the answer to that,’ the leader had answered gently, ‘just as you know what you must do.’

Now that he was going to see him again, all at once he wasn’t sure he had understood the leader’s intentions correctly. He pulled the robe over his head. The fabric that appeared to fall in soft folds on the other disciples felt rough against his skin.

‘I’m ready,’ he croaked.

He was speaking as much for himself as for her, but the girl was already walking away. He followed her slim figure back down the stairs and into a room off the hall where more white-robed disciples sat facing each other in two rows. On a dais at the far end of the room sat the leader himself, gazing down the rows towards the newcomer.

‘You are welcome.’

The voice rang out, seeming to echo inside his head as the leader addressed him directly. He nodded, too overcome with emotion to speak. He was in the inner sanctuary. Nothing else mattered.

‘Look at this man,’ the leader told the others. ‘Look at him carefully.’

Ten pairs of eyes turned to stare at him. He stood quite still, unable to drag his eyes away from the leader’s face.

‘This man wishes to join us,’ the leader said, staring at him as though reading his thoughts. ‘He wants to become a disciple. He is willing to make the supreme sacrifice and dedicate his life to our cause.’

Embarrassed, he wanted to explain that it wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice really. His life wasn’t that great. While he wondered whether he dared speak, the leader handed each of them a small portion of ambrosia, food of the gods. As if by magic, a silver goblet appeared in the leader’s outstretched hand.

‘Drink from the cup of salvation,’ he intoned.

‘Drink from the cup of salvation,’ the disciples chanted in chorus.

‘He is welcome here,’ the leader said softly.

He thought he would faint with joy as he gazed into the leader’s hypnotic eyes. The room seemed to spin until all he could see were those huge dark eyes, gazing into his mind.

‘I have done what you asked.’

‘Approach.’ The leader smiled at him. ‘We will call you Warrior.’

‘Thank you,’ he stammered.

His legs crumpled beneath him and he collapsed on the floor at the leader’s feet.

Two disciples lifted him into a chair. The leader stared at him, his eyes glowing with kindness.

‘Is anything troubling you?’

Warrior hesitated.

‘Tell me what is in your mind,’ the leader insisted gently.

‘I want to stay here. Let me come and live with you, and be your disciple.’

The leader shook his head, his expression sad.