Down Among the Dead Men (8 page)

He turns back to the bedroom without waiting for a response.

Harris, as is her custom, is using the video camera function on her smartphone to take a 360. McGettigan will shoot an official video record if he hasn't done already, but Harris likes the scene to be available at a touch.

Christ help anyone who steals her phone, thinks Frank. One look at the image bank and they'd need counselling for years.

Frank finds a relatively clean patch of carpet at the end of the bed and stands, arms folded, looking down at the victim.

She's naked, legs splayed, feet turned slightly inwards, her painted toes clenched. Leather belts have been looped around the iron bedposts and are cinched tightly around her ankles. She has been stabbed repeatedly by someone using massive force. Frank can glimpse bone showing through several lateral slash cuts on her thighs. From the blood spray which arcs out across one side of the room and up a section of wall, it looks like her femoral artery has been severed. Frank feels his stomach lurch again.

Her face is obliterated, pulped. There's no chance of anyone making a visual ID from what remains. Moving around to the side of the bed, and holding his jacket to prevent it trailing in the gore, Frank bends close and notices some teeth scattered across the pillows. He wonders for a moment if there's any significance in her husband having been a dentist. If, as seemed inevitable, the second corpse currently dangling from the ceiling in the garage below had done this, perhaps knocking out his wife's teeth fulfilled some dark orthodontic desire.

Frank puts the brake on this line of thinking and chastises himself for amateur psychology. Koopman, his old boss, wouldn't have approved.

Just look at what's in front of you, dickhead. The pieces may come together later if you get lucky. For now it's enough to record it all.

Frank's queasiness is fading the longer he's in the room. Death's like that: you get used to it.

Some oily dark substance has leaked from the victim's head and joined the blood pooling in the corrugations of the twisted sheets. Like her legs, her hands have been tied to the bedposts using belts wound around her wrists. The belts don't match. Frank doesn't make anything of that, he simply notes the fact.

Harris is inspecting the woman's vagina centimetre by centimetre with the aid of a Maglite torch.

'She'll have been raped. Unless this is a sex game gone bad.'

Frank can't tell if she's making a joke and he's not going to risk Harris's wrath by making the wrong call in reply. Her disposition – never exactly what you might call sunny – can best be described as positively subarctic and has been like that since Thursday.

Since
it
happened.

Almost two days now and there's hardly been a civil word between them. Maybe I should have called her yesterday, thinks Frank. Who knows what's been happening between her and Linda since Frank hit the pillow on Friday lunchtime.

Harris points the beam of light at a relatively blood-free area of skin at the junction between thigh and pelvis. 'Could be dried semen.' She looks up at Frank now, her face a mask. 'See?'

Frank bends closer. There might be something there. He can't tell.

'I'll lay odds he fucked her after she was dead.'

McGettigan, the SOC photographer, glances up at this but says nothing.

Frank thinks she's probably right. From here there's no way of knowing, but when the thing shakes out and the reports are in he's pretty confident this will be the case.

A simple rape would be too commonplace for this charnel-house. Of course the fucker did her post-mortem.

More of them did than people would believe.

What did it matter, after all? Now the wife, the partner, the girlfriend, is that dead thing, and you're going to finish yourself before the night is through, why not go all the way into that yawning black abyss? It's not like there're going to be any repercussions. If he does turn out to be the guilty party, the last thing the tooth-tickler currently hanging from the garage ceiling downstairs would have been concerned with was leaving DNA behind.

Part of Frank worries that these thoughts spring so readily to mind with the solidity and heft of absolute fact. Part of him – the policeman part – is glad.

Seventeen

McGettigan, standing just outside the bedroom door, is loading his equipment back into metal boxes. It's just ticked past midnight.

'I'll get out of your way now, DCI Keane. I've already done the vid.' McGettigan gives Harris a brief nod. Some people connected to MIT still had problems with Harris's role in last year's Stevie White case and McGettigan is no exception. But since Merseyside Police, like all police forces on the planet, runs on an insatiable appetite for infighting, politics and backbiting that makes the Colosseum seem polite, Harris's transgression isn't the worst there's ever been in the department, not by a long way, but people do like to nurse a decent grudge when one comes along and Harris still has a bit of time left in the sin-bin.

'I'm off,' says McGettigan and waddles out of the room. He passes Theresa Cooper on her way in, clipboard in hand, paper-booted and suited. Seeing Frank at the scene is a mild disappointment to her and Frank can read that on her face. Cooper is currently the only female of her rank at Merseyside MIT and she's hoping to angle that singularity into further promotion down the track. Being named lead on this investigation would help – even with Frank Keane as official SIO – but her boss's arrival doesn't bode well. Since taking the disgraced Perch's role at MIT Frank has had precious little time as an investigator. Cooper doesn't know it, but it's precisely this that has brought him out tonight.

Frank's not sure how long he can stick life on the fifth floor at Canning Place.

For one thing, MIT – the Major Incident Team, his unit – are based at Stanley Road. Now his desk is supposed to be at Canning Place, he feels even more strongly that Perch moved his office there
for no better reason than to be less than tongue's length away from the brass.

Frank has made plans to have his office moved back to Stanley Road.

He already spends almost every day there, just as he had done prior to promotion, but it's going to take longer than Frank likes to get the forms signed and the protocols agreed.

Still, whatever the reasons, Frank's appearance at
her
crime scene isn't the most welcome news for DS Cooper.

Cooper points at the victim. 'Got a few confirmations, sir. Family name is Peters. Paul and Maddy. Both dentists with a longstanding practice in Southport. No prior domestic call-outs. No criminal records. I've got a couple of the uniforms taking preliminary statements from the neighbours but so far nothing out of the ordinary reported. There's a teenage son too: Nicky, missing. DC Caddick is trying hard to track him down.'

At this stage, with no details made public, Caddick's doing this as discreetly as possible. Frank's sure that'll change unless they get hold of the boy soon. The last thing they need is for Nicky to find out about this horror from some source other than the police. Frank doesn't want to think right now about the son being a victim or, perhaps worse, involved in the slaughter.

'No other children, thank God,' Cooper continues. 'Ferguson's looking at the body in the garage now.' She's all business but the pallor of her skin betrays her. Keane knows how she feels.

'I hate murder-suicides too, Theresa. Did I miss the memo? Married life a bit sticky? Kill the missus and top yourself. Fuck me.'

Cooper smiles weakly. Well, I tried, thinks Frank.

'Anything else?' he says.

'There are ashes in the fireplace in the living room. It's one of those log burner things. Not gas. The ashes look fresh. I took samples and sent them in with one of the techs.'

'Interesting. Not really log fire weather, is it?'

Cooper shakes her head. 'I'd say it was clothing in there.'

Frank nods. 'Probably.' He frowns. 'Maybe the dentist burnt his clothes for some reason.'

'I think they're in the garage,' says Cooper. 'There are some
clothes there, anyway. I haven't had time to check the sizes yet but I think they'll be his.'

'Any blood on the clothes in the garage?' says Harris.

'None that I can see. Maybe traces once we look harder.'

Frank frowns. The clothing in the log burner – if the ashes turn out to be cloth remnants – is a puzzler. With the working hypothesis of murder-suicide it would make sense for there to be blood on the dead man's clothes. If he committed the crime, why burn any clothing if you are going to kill yourself anyway? Add the disappearance of the teenager, and the murder-suicide theory is already fragmenting.

Frank turns back to the bedroom. Stick to the job in hand.

'Ferguson's already been in here, right?'

'Yes, sir.'

'OK, well, once he's finished in the garage make sure the miserable Scottish bastard has a word before creeping back to Castle Dracula, right?' Cooper nods. Ferguson is one of the county pathologists. Despite his undoubted expertise, he and Keane have differing opinions, mainly concerning which brand of red team they follow, Ferguson being – despite his birthplace, or maybe because of it – a Manc at heart.

Misery findeth misery, reflects Frank.

'Who called this in?' he says, a little sharply, his mind having briefly strayed to bleak thoughts of Old Trafford.

'The dentist's brother. Only lives round the corner.' Cooper checks her clipboard. 'Terry Peters. Eight-forty. Came round and got no reply. Seems that the family was supposed to be home. The brother got worried and let himself in. He's back home with a uniform. I'm off there soon to get a full statement.'

'Neighbours?'

'No one in on the left.' Cooper inclines her head one way. 'The other side is a doctor. Chief Merseyside cardiologist, no less. I got a short statement but no one there seems to have anything very useful just yet. Heard nothing, saw nothing. A few vague ideas about car movements but so far couldn't say which house they came from.'

Cooper's mention of the high-ranking medic reminds Keane of the Birkdale demographic they're dealing with. Step lightly, dickhead. Doesn't the CC live somewhere round here?

'He came upstairs? The brother?'

'Must have done. Why, sir?'

Frank shakes his head. 'No reason. Just seems a bit funny. Would you go snooping around uninvited in your brother's house?'

'I haven't got a brother,' says Cooper. 'But I know what you mean.'

'And check about a dog,' says Frank. 'If you haven't already. This house looks like it'd have a dog.' He's thinking about the walled garden outside. From what he could see it was well tended but the grass had none of the bowling green smoothness some of the other houses in the street possess. No point in a perfect lawn if your faithful hound is taking a dump there every day.

'No dog,' says Cooper.

So much for the great detective. Frank makes a note to think a bit harder before he speaks next time.

Cooper turns to leave and Frank catches a fleeting gnomic glance pass between her and Harris. Without quite being able to pinpoint why, Frank knows that he is the unspoken subject. There's something prurient in Cooper's enquiring expression.

As Cooper's back disappears down the landing, Frank raises his eyebrows at Harris but she doesn't take the bait, her face blank. Frank puts the moment into the sprawling mental warehouse in which he keeps his vast collection of unanswered questions about women.

'What else?' he says. Even if he and Harris are striking sparks off each other, she is still one of the best crime scene readers Frank knows.

Harris scans the rest of the room. Other than the horror on the bed it's neat and tidy. The bed itself sits to one side of the big bay window and faces the unused fireplace. At one side of the room is a large freestanding wardrobe. The carpet underfoot is good quality, a clean, plain weave, and the space is at once both modern and Victorian – a neat design trick to pull off.

'No struggle,' says Harris. 'Before, I mean.' A row of family photos on the ornamental iron mantel above the fireplace seem to nod their perfectly aligned agreement. Several of the images show a smiling man and woman with a dark-haired child: presumably
Nicky before adolescence claimed him. Some of the frames are dotted with blood. The splatter patterns will be analysed later, although Frank knows that unless something fishy turns up soon, there will likely be very little in the way of investigation into what still might prove to be a murder-suicide. Despite the blood, the frames are undisturbed and the images trace the child's growth from beaming infant to scowling teen as effectively as a time lapse movie. On a side table in front of the bay window a slim vase sits undisturbed, free of dust. A clean house.

Frank stops and turns back to the bed. Something about the vase has raised a question.

At the head of the bed he bends towards a clear patch of sheet and, lowering his nose to the cotton, sniffs deeply.

Harris raises an eyebrow. Frank ignores her and inhales again.

'Fresh,' he says. 'I'd bet they were clean on.' It's another off-note in the scene. 'They've got that washed smell. Expensive cotton too.'

'And?'

'She never knew.'

'Um?' Harris isn't sure what Frank's talking about. He points at the sheets. 'If things were bad between them, would there be clean sheets on the bed?'

'They could have been put on days before.'

Frank shakes his head. 'No. They're fresh.'

Harris raises an eyebrow. It's a point.

She has been at eight of these cases. In almost all of them the physical environment betrays the sense of a world decaying long before the act that ends it. Unwashed plates. Puddled dirty clothes on the landing. Unfed dogs. Domestic call-outs on the police log.

A woman who puts fresh sheets on the bed isn't thinking that the evening could end like this. Not that it makes much difference. Frank's sure when the investigation starts digging they'll find what made the dentist snap. It may not have been anything to do with the woman on the bed. Gambling debts. Mental illness. Liverpool being beaten at home by Wigan. Any fucking thing. Frank can recall a case in which a husband killed his wife and then tried to top himself in a row about the outcome of
Britain's Got Talent
.