Midnight Murders (8 page)

He pushed the belt through the loops at the waist of his jeans, but even when the prong was hooked into the last hole, the belt hung slack. He pulled it tighter, marked the spot where another hole was needed, and looked around for something to make one with.

Lyn Sullivan knocked the door again. He opened it.

‘Good, you're up. Breakfast will be ready in ten minutes, and you haven't laid the table, but I can see why. You look smart.'

‘Smart?' he repeated, suspecting she was teasing him. ‘These are just a pair of old jeans.'

‘Old jeans and white shirts are the latest fashion. What's the problem? Belt needs another hole?'

‘I was looking for something to make one with.'

‘Give it to me. I'll use scissors.' She grabbed the buckle and pulled the belt loose. ‘I'll bring it back in a moment.'

Trevor brushed his damp hair away from his face with his fingers and stared at himself in the full-length mirror fixed to the wall beside the wardrobe. His clothes might be clean but they were worn, and he looked thin, tired and old. Just as his father had done just before he'd died. Was that where he was headed? An early grave? But his father had died of cancer, and he'd only been mangled in the line of duty.

It was probably as Peter constantly told him; lack of effort on his part. Sitting around all day doing nothing. He'd put action off long enough. It was time to take a step forward. He opened a drawer in the bedside table and took out his wallet. It held fifty pounds cash, and his credit cards. He was receiving sick pay so he had no money worries, and Peter had checked that the couple renting the flat he owned, but hadn't lived in for years, were paying their rent into his bank account.

Today he would aim for the gate. Once at the gate it would only be a small step to board a bus into town. He could have his hair cut, and buy some clothes. Possibly even take another bus out to see his flat. Check on both his flat and his car. It would be a beginning; and after he made a beginning he could decide on the rest of his life.

He felt sick to the pit of his stomach at the prospect of leaving the hospital, but he also felt a sense of exhilaration. For the first time since he'd been injured, he was going to take responsibility for himself.

The phone rang in Peter's bedroom what seemed like less than five minutes after he fell asleep. He stretched out his arm and picked up the receiver.

‘Mortuary, ten minutes.' The line went dead, but not before he recognised Bill Mulcahy's voice. He lay back and closed his eyes, recognising even as he succumbed to temptation that it was a deadly thing to do. If he didn't move right away, he wouldn't wake for another eight hours, and not even eight hours of blissful sleep was worth incurring Bill's wrath for.

He jerked himself out of bed and headed for the shower. Five minutes later, damp but dressed, he walked out to his car. He glanced at his watch; it was just after ten. Patrick must have worked through for there to be sufficient information to justify calling a meeting. He was still hungry. The eggs and Melba toast hadn't filled much of a hole, but he knew better than to eat anything before he visited the mortuary.

* * *

‘We're doing more tests. Early indications are it's a cocktail of several drugs. We've identified an anti-depressant, a tranquilliser, and a muscle-relaxant, effective to the point of paralysis when administered in large doses. I found curare in the bloodstream, but the effects were probably wearing off at the time of death, because she managed to tear her glued mouth open. We know that from the damage done to the skin on her lips,' Patrick dropped his scalpel on to the slab where his assistant had laid out Rosie Twyford again.

‘But she was paralysed when placed in the hole?' Dan asked.

‘Peter, how nice of you to visit,' Mulcahy called out sarcastically when he walked in.

Peter closed the doors behind him, fighting the smell of putrefaction that not even the stench of formaldehyde could kill.

‘The degree of paralysis would relate to the amount of drug ingested,' Patrick said thoughtfully in response to Dan's question. ‘There was a significant amount of curare in her bloodstream, but the torn lips, open eyes and amount of soil in her air passages suggest that she fought for her life as no unconscious person would have done. If she had been administered a high enough dose to cause paralysis, it was wearing off at the time of death. She was either conscious or regained consciousness, shortly after she was buried.'

‘We're talking about the first victim,' Dan explained to Peter.

‘Then this villain, whoever he is, likes to see his victims' reaction as he shovels dirt on top of them?' Bill suggested.

‘You could argue that, although I've come up with no evidence to support it other than she was alive when she was buried, and both her eyes were open when she was uncovered,' Patrick said carefully.

‘Michelle came up trumps. We think the first victim is one Rosie Twyford,' Dan said in his slow, Welsh lilt. ‘She was discharged from Compton Castle six months ago, but she returned for twice-weekly outpatient sessions with Dorothy Clyne. I rang Tony Waters early this morning, got him out of bed, and had him check her file. Her last appointment was a week yesterday and she was discharged as an outpatient.'

‘Grady also checked Rosie Twyford's bed-sit last night,' Mulcahy chipped in. ‘The keys we found on the corpse fit the front door, and Rosie's door. Grady spoke to the boy in the next room. The last time he saw her was the morning she left for her hospital visit. When she didn't return, he assumed she'd been kept in again. He did say that she appeared unusually nervous.'

‘He didn't think to ring the hospital and check?' Peter asked.

‘Apparently they didn't have that kind of relationship. They never got past “good morning, nice weather, good evening”.'

‘If she's the same girl Tony Waters was talking about yesterday, she has a family in Devon. Weren't they in touch with her?' Peter walked over to the tiled wall and leaned against it. The combination of the smell and the sight of the corpse was proving nauseating.

‘Devon police interviewed them this morning. There's a mother, stepfather and two stepbrothers. Sometimes she wouldn't get in touch with them for weeks.'

‘Then if she went missing a week ago – ' Peter began.

‘Someone kept her alive until last Saturday night, when Vanessa Hedley saw her being buried.'

‘Vanessa Hedley's story fits in with the facts.' Patrick took one of the beakers of strong black coffee that his assistant had prepared. Peter and Dan balked at the coffee, but Bill took one.

‘If I don't sit down soon I'm going to fall down.' Patrick went into his office and sat behind his desk.

Bill dumped his coffee on the desk, flicked back the pages of a notebook until he found a clean sheet, pulled a pen from his pocket and started to scribble.

‘Victim one, Rosie Twyford keeps appointment in Compton Castle last Monday then disappears. Nothing is heard or seen of her until Vanessa goes into the garden on Monday morning. On Saturday night Vanessa Hedley saw a bulky shadow burying a body in the grounds, and no one,' he glanced at Peter, ‘took any notice of her story until Monday morning, when she bullied the trainee into digging up the flowerbed. Then we find a corpse that we can now be certain is Rosie Twyford.'

‘Saturday/Sunday fits in with my calculations,' Patrick interrupted. ‘I'd say she died twelve hours either side of midnight Saturday.'

‘No closer?' Mulcahy pressed.

‘Can't make it any closer, sorry.' Patrick didn't sound in the least apologetic.

‘Which means that Rosie Twyford was kept alive somewhere around Compton Castle from Monday afternoon to midnight on Saturday,' Dan said.

‘Not necessarily,' Peter played Devil's Advocate. ‘She could have gone to stay with someone – a boyfriend perhaps.'

‘An abduction would fit in with her physical state; the dehydration, the starvation,' Patrick closed his eyes.

‘Waters took us around the whole of the old building.' Peter offered his pack of cigars.

‘Was there anywhere that could be used to hide a body?' Bill asked.

Peter recalled the rambling corridors, the attics blanketed with years of dust, the cellar walls lined with pipes. ‘If you knew the building, you could come up with a thousand and one places. There are corners of that place that haven't seen people or daylight in years.'

‘There were twenty-five needle marks in Rosie's arm,' Patrick reminded. ‘You need comparative privacy to inject twenty-five doses of muscle-relaxant, tranquilliser and anti-depressant over a period of days if you don't want to be noticed.'

‘Which indicates that she'd been held captive before she was buried,' Bill commented.

‘Unless she was a junkie,' Peter perched on the edge of the desk.

‘Nothing on her record card, according to Tony Waters,' Dan said.

‘Or in her bloodstream,' Patrick added.

‘If she was held captive and tranquillised, what's the motive? Sexual?' Peter asked.

‘No physical signs of a struggle,' Patrick said, ‘but there wouldn't have been if she'd been tranquillised. And there were no signs of forced rape, no tearing of tissues, no traces of semen, but I can't rule out sexual intercourse. Just no signs, no stray hairs, no fibres, no nothing.'

‘The other two victims?' Bill checked.

‘No semen in either of the vaginas, but the soft tissue has decayed in both bodies. One had been buried for approximately six to eight weeks, the other for about four months. But those are rough calculations based on condition and depth of the burials. I may have something more exact for you later.' Patrick looked grey, drained and exhausted.

‘You haven't slept?' Dan asked

‘I snatched an hour on a slab between PMs.'

‘I managed three,' Peter said unthinkingly.

‘Then you're set up for the next twenty-hour shift, Peter,' Mulcahy smiled

‘You get anything from the suitcase or handbags, Patrick?' Dan asked.

‘After a cursory glance I sent them and the dog to the police laboratory for further tests.'

‘Right, Peter, that's your next stop, Mulcahy ordered. ‘Afterwards liaise with Michelle and see what she's come up with on Rosie Twyford's last movements. I want you to be there when she interviews everyone in Rosie Twyford's house.'

Patrick rose from his chair and pulled off his lab coat. ‘I'm for home and bed.'

‘One more question,' Dan said hesitantly. ‘Supposing we're right and the killer does pick his victims a week ahead, drugs them and keeps them somewhere in the hospital before burying them. What can you tell us about such a man?'

‘That's one for the police psychiatrist. I'm a scientist who deals in facts, not a shrink.'

‘But you've seen dozens if not hundreds of murder victims. Surely you're interested in the outcome. You must have an opinion?' Dan persisted.

‘Off the top of my head, he could be an impotent male dominated by a female, possibly a mother, wife, sister. Someone who wants to be in control, but isn't. But that is pure speculation.'

‘But it does give us one more thing to consider and work on,' Mulcahy said shortly. ‘And that's where we're all going now, gentlemen. To work.'

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘I
saw
him.' Vanessa Hedley glanced over her shoulder and around the room before moving her head close to Alison Bevan's and lowering her voice. Trevor, who was sitting across the breakfast table from them, found himself straining his ears to catch what Vanessa was saying.

‘It was dark,' Ali Bevan pointed out, ‘so how could you see anything?'

‘There was a moon,' Vanessa bit back. ‘I saw his features clearly. He was huge – massive. I knew he was evil. The eyes and the mouth are a dead giveaway and he had a cruel, vicious mouth.'

‘If you saw that much of him, and he saw you, aren't you terrified?' Ali asked.

‘Of what?'

‘That he'll come after you.'

‘She's right.' Roland Williams, a not so recovering alcoholic, leered. ‘The murderer could be here, in this room, listening to every word you're saying.' He glanced around the dining room, which was crowded with patients, domestic staff and nurses. ‘You're the only one who can identify him. He could be watching you, waiting his chance to grab you, rape you – '

‘That's enough, Roland,' Carol caught the tail end of his conversation as she passed their table.

‘Sorry,' Roland apologised insincerely eying her breasts beneath her thin dress.

‘Rape?' Ali hissed as soon as Carol disappeared through the door. ‘I didn't know the victims had been raped.'

‘Of course, he raped his victims,' Roland was enjoying himself. ‘Why else would he kill them, and try to hide the bodies. He probably stripped them, played with them – then – '

‘The murderer isn't here.' Vanessa cut him short. The one topic of conversation guaranteed to excite Roland, and keep him pontificating for hours, was perverted sexual activity – usually as practised by primitive tribes only he had heard of. And she wanted to keep everyone's attention fixed on her and her story.

‘I'm only trying to warn you, ladies.' Roland slurped his tea. His double chin wobbled as he licked drops from his fat, wet lips. ‘I'd hate to think of anyone kidnapping one of you, tying you up, stripping you – ' He bent his head close to Ali's. ‘Stroking your breasts, putting his fingers in – '

Trevor dipped his spoon into his uneaten porridge and stirred it, mixing the crust of sugar into the glutinous mass of oats. Once a detective, always a detective, he reflected. He hadn't wanted to get involved with this case, but he hadn't been able to stop himself from listening to Vanessa, or forming the conclusion that, for all her boasting, she didn't have a clue what the killer looked like. Shadows in moonlit gardens were easily distorted. They merged with bushes and trees, wavered with the wind, contorting figures, making them appear larger and wider, or taller and wispier than they were. Vanessa's “massive killer” could have been a small man wearing a padded anorak. And he doubted that the killer had come close enough to the window for Vanessa to see his eyes.

He'd looked out of his ground-floor bedroom window that morning and watched an officer point out one of the burial sites to a colleague. He hadn't been able to discern the constables' features beneath their helmets in daylight. So what chance had Vanessa of seeing the murderer's features as he'd shovelled earth on top of his victim? But if the killer heard Vanessa's prattling, would he realise that?

Trevor glanced around the room. Apart from Lucy Craig, Roland Williams and Alison Bevan, who were listening, enthralled, to Vanessa, everyone appeared to be minding their own business. He recalled a few of the stories forced on him by his fellow patients, when he hadn't wanted to listen.

If a quarter of Roland's stories were true, he had done some very peculiar things with men and women, singly and in groups, and not only under the influence of drink. Last week he had caught sight of Roland retreating into a sluice room with a brown paper bag under his arm. He had assumed the bag contained alcohol, which was banned in Compton Castle. Had it contained something more sinister?

Michael Carpenter's sole topic of conversation was his ex-girlfriend, Angela, who had jilted him. It was common knowledge that he was incarcerated in Compton Castle because he'd set fire to her house, and almost succeeded in burning her entire family to death. Had Michael decided that the only way to hold on to a girl of his own was to kill and bury her in a grave known to no one except himself? That didn't seem far-fetched when he recalled Vanessa's railings against those who had prevented her from putting her husband in a grave where she would have had absolute control over him.

‘Go on, Vanessa,' Lucy pestered. ‘Tell us what he
really
looked like?'

‘I've told you. Huge – with thick black hair, and a mouthful of white teeth. Enormous muscled arms like the wrestlers on television. He picked up the spade as though it was a toy, and brandished it above his head – '

‘Not hungry, Trevor?' Lyn, in a polo-neck red sweater, black jeans, and smelling of magnolias, took the empty chair beside him, making him suddenly and painfully aware of the shabbiness of his own clothes.

‘Not for porridge.'

‘Do you want some toast? Fresh toast,' she coaxed. ‘Not those cold rubbery slices made ten minutes before anyone gets to eat them.'

‘Sounds good,' he admitted.

‘I'll help you make some in the ward kitchen. You know where it is?'

‘Yes.' If Lyn had brought him the toast, he would have eaten it, but he hated going into the ward kitchen. It was always full of people, staff as well as patients.

‘Come on, then.' She left her chair and waited for him.

‘Lyn,' he asked as he followed her into the corridor. ‘Can you get hold of Peter Collins for me?'

‘I could try. But with everything that's going on he'll be busy. But you could walk down the tunnel to the main hospital. The police have set up their mobile headquarters outside the back door.' She allowed Trevor to go into the kitchen ahead of her.

If Trevor wanted to see Peter Collins, he'd have to make an effort to leave the ward, and that was the moment she'd been waiting for.

‘I didn't expect to see you at work for a few days. Have your cuts healed?' Carol asked when Lyn entered the kitchen.

‘They weren't as bad as they looked.' Lyn glanced at the scars on her palms that weren't covered by plasters. She turned to Trevor. ‘There's the toaster. Bread's in the enamel bin next to it. Be an angel and pop a piece in for me.' She took the electric kettle from the work surface behind Carol, and filled it, effectively blocking Trevor's exit from the galley.

‘Ladies.' The male nurse, Karl Lane joined them. ‘Any tea going?' he smiled at Lyn. Trevor saw the smile and was stung by a pang of jealousy. Not jealousy because Karl Lane was looking at Lyn, but because the glances they'd exchanged had reminded him that there were people who had fulfilling private relationships away from the public eye. Something he hadn't experienced in years. He felt angry and empty because his own private life consisted only of his mother, married brother, sister-in-law, nieces and nephews – and Peter Collins. And fond as he was of all of them, not one of them could act as a substitute for a loving girlfriend – or wife. If only –

He pushed the thought from his mind. There were too many “if onlys” in his life.

‘Toast's burning,' Carol called out. She finished her tea. ‘It's time I was back on my ward to check that none of my little darlings have gone a wandering.'

‘What do you make of all this, Carol?' Karl asked.

‘All what?'

‘All these bodies.'

‘Oh, yes, they've found more haven't they? What do you want me to make of them?' She turned the question back on him.

‘What does Tony think?'

‘The last time I saw Tony,' she recalled her husband's pale face as he'd stumbled into their bed as she was getting out of it that morning, ‘he was too tired to think.'

‘Do you think the killer's a patient or a member of staff?'

‘It has to be a patient,' Lyn said. The other two turned and stared at her. ‘Well it does, doesn't it? It's obvious. This is a psychiatric hospital.'

‘So they tell me.' Karl took the tea she handed him.

‘In my opinion we should stop playing guessing games and leave it to the police,' Carol went to the door. ‘I've enough on my plate running my ward and my house. I can't cope with a murder hunt as well. See you later.'

Trevor's hand trembled as he offered Lyn a plate of toast he'd buttered and cut into triangles.

‘Thank you,' she smiled. ‘You know Karl, don't you, Trevor?'

‘We met last Sunday.' Karl held out his hand to Trevor. ‘But we weren't introduced. You're a police officer, aren't you?'

‘I was,' Trevor corrected.

‘There's nothing preventing you from being one again if you want to rejoin the force.' Lyn bit into her piece of toast.

‘I'm not sure what I want any more.' Trevor picked up his own toast, which was singed and black around the edges. He'd kept the burnt pieces for himself, and made fresh for Lyn.

‘I can understand that.' Karl stole a piece of Lyn's toast. ‘Police duty must be almost as bad as working here; no let up, all the hours God sends, and – '

‘Dealing with the dregs of society,' Trevor supplied, intuitively.

‘Present company excepted. But forgive me; I don't work on this ward. I'm on manias, and they're different to assessment and depressions. More loopy. See you, Lyn.'

‘He didn't mean that. It's just that this job can get to you,' Lyn apologised.

‘I can imagine.' He dropped the barely nibbled toast back on to his plate.

‘It's one of the terraced houses on the hill leading up to the heights,' Michelle explained to Peter. ‘From the outside they look small, door in the middle, bay windows either side, and three windows above, but they're surprisingly large inside. There are six bed-sits in there, and they share two bathrooms and two kitchens.'

‘I don't think that recommendation is sufficient for me to want to uproot myself.' He was tired of listening to Michelle's chatter.

The police laboratory was attached to the forensic science unit of the university in the neighbouring town, forty miles away. Normally he would have enjoyed the drive as he regarded driving time as thinking time. But he found it impossible to enjoy anything in Michelle's company.

‘I only spoke to the man who lives in the bed-sit next door to Rosie Twyford's,' Michelle confessed. ‘He said the walls are thin, so if she'd returned after last Monday he would have heard her.'

‘Did you ask him if she had any friends she might have been staying with?'

‘No. He said Rosie had only moved in three months ago, I checked the date, and it ties in with her discharge from Compton Castle.'

‘And in all of three months she never once stayed out all night?'

‘I didn't think to ask him.'

‘You wouldn't.'

She fell silent. Peter saw her bottom lip quivering as he turned a corner, but he felt no remorse for giving her a hard time. If she wanted to be a copper, she had to get used to everything her superior officers were likely to throw at her. If she couldn't cut it, she'd have to find another career; one more suited to a girl who needed nannying.

He slowed down, signalled and took a slip-road off the motorway, turning into the network of narrow suburban streets that surrounded the town centre. Mindful that she may be asked to visit this place alone sometime, Michelle tried to follow his route, but Peter took turning after turning, delving deeper and deeper into a mixture of 1930s and 1950s housing, until she began to wonder if he was deliberately following an unnecessarily complicated route to confuse her.

Eventually he pulled up in a car park that fronted a huge red-brick, flat-fronted block set with steel casement windows. A sign outside declared it to be UNIVERSITY ANNEX B.

‘We're here,' Peter announced.

Michelle jumped out so quickly she jarred her ankle, but she would have sooner died than admit to feeling pain in front of Peter. She allowed him to lead the way through the double doors into the lobby. As she'd expected he made no concessions to her presence, not even checking to see if she was behind him when he pressed the lift button.

The police laboratory was on the top floor and, as in the mortuary, the smell of rotting flesh was overwhelming. They noticed it the moment the lift doors opened. Peter made no comment as he pressed the bell for attention, but he took grim pleasure in the sight of Michelle fumbling in her handbag for a tissue. When the door to the laboratory opened, the stench intensified – choking and breath-taking.

The first thing Peter noticed when they walked in was the dog laid out in all its putrefying glory on a steel-topped table, strategically placed beneath a window. The suitcase and the handbags were laid out on two other tables. All the hard surfaces were covered with a grey film of fingerprint powder.

‘Sergeant Collins, isn't it?' A white-coated, grey-haired man nodded to Peter. ‘Recognise you from that last drugs haul. Thomas, Phil Thomas.'

‘I remember you.' Peter looked at Phil's hand before shaking it.

‘How's life on the Drug Squad?'

‘Wish I knew,' Peter moaned. ‘Been seconded to Serious Crimes.'

‘Dan Evans's lot?'

‘That's the one.'

‘And this is?' Phil smiled at Michelle.

‘Michelle Grady,' she held out her hand and wondered how long she could last in this atmosphere. She was certain the moment she took a deep breath, she'd throw up.

‘New?' Phil asked her.

‘Does it show?'

‘Only the eagerness. Old hands like Sergeant Collins here are never eager about anything, even their days off.'

‘Seen it all before.' Peter wished Phil would spare a thought for those who hadn't grown accustomed to the foul atmosphere.