Saxon (7 page)

He looked at his Rolex – a real one, not a fake, mind. Telscombe Cliffs was about an hour and a half away. He had plenty of time before he had to meet his sister.

Wednesday, May 15, Brighton Mortuary, 4.00PM

Saxon and Parker attended the post mortems of Barbara Jenner and Penelope Field. It wasn’t exactly something they looked forward to, but a post mortem could provide vital information and Saxon was desperate for something to that might kick-start the investigation again. There was no way he would have missed this particular one. He also knew the pathologist and valued his input.

The pathologist was Dr Richard Clarke. He was a powerful man with a powerful personality that often left people in his wake reeling, wondering what had hit them. Some found his presence disturbing and intimidating. Others found him
charismatic and empowering.

Saxon was somewhere in the middle. He was not at all intimidated by Richard’s somewhat larger than life personality, although he could easily see how it could irritate or upset some people. Saxon viewed Clarke as an equal, both from a professional and a social point of view. He also quite liked him; he seemed to be such a thoughtful sort of person. Occasionally they played squash and had a drink together when their paths crossed at the gym. Clarke kept himself very fit and Saxon rarely managed to get the better of him on the squash court.

Parker’s reaction to the pathologist, on the other hand, was less favourable. He found Clarke to be loud and overbearing. Unusually for him, Parker tended to become tongue-tied in his presence and, when he could manage to utter a few syllables, they often came out in the wrong order. Nevertheless, he put his personal feelings about Clarke on one side, as always, because they were irrelevant.

They dressed for the occasion as required. Parker used to think that they looked like choirboys, but he no longer noticed. Fully togged up in protective clothing, they went to join Clarke and his team, and what was left of Babs and Poppy.

Apart from his day-to-day work as the area pathologist, Clarke was also the police doctor. It increased his workload dramatically – his excuse for taking on the extra work was that he always wanted to play Sherlock Holmes. Saxon couldn’t imagine how he managed to stay so fit; Clarke absolutely radiated energy and health, no matter how many times in the week he worked twenty hours a day. He envied the pathologist.

I’ll bet he does a marathon in less than three hours too
. Devoting more time to getting fit went on Saxon’s To-Do list every January 1st. And stayed there.

‘Good afternoon, gentlemen.’ Clarke looked up as they entered the mortuary. ‘Welcome. Do come in.’

The early afternoon had been devoted entirely to an extensive
examination of the victims as they had been found. It had taken the SOCOs quite a while in the morning to locate all the fingers in order to allow the fingernail scrapings to be done. While Jake Dalton was finishing that gruesome task, Melanie Jones had combed all the body hair of the two women, to see if anything fell out.

All orifices were checked for hidden objects. Buttons were matched and counted. Underwear was searched for any pubic hairs, which didn’t match those of the victims. Stab wounds were aligned with holes in dressing gowns and pyjamas.

The surgical examination was beginning as Saxon and Parker arrived. First, the visual inspection.

Clarke spoke into a microphone that was pinned to the collar of his green overalls. ‘Well, what have we here?’ he went on. ‘A bit of digging and poking by the look of things.’ Clarke had a somewhat theatrical manner on occasions and this demonstrated itself in a tendency to perform to the audience in his theatre. It could have been irritating. But Clarke was without doubt a consummate professional and Saxon forgave him his slight lapses into actor style. He and Parker stood in silence as Clarke went about the grizzly business of examining the body parts of the two women laid out before them.

This first visual inspection took at least half an hour, as Jake stepped in periodically to take photographs, measure the width and depth of each stab wound, and remove samples for analysis. The two men worked together smoothly, with little need for instruction or questions.

Once this first part of the examination was completed, Clarke made an incision across the back of Babs’ head and pulled the entire scalp over her face. This was done so that the pathologist could saw around the skull and remove the brain without messing up the face. It could all be put back so that the stitching was at the back of the head and not show if the deceased was to be viewed in their coffin. The major organs were removed after a
great deal of sawing and snapping of cartilage and slicing of muscle. Bits weighed, some liquidised, and some put in chemicals. Dr Clarke worked quickly and methodically through his routine, continuing his non-stop monologue into his microphone.

Both Saxon and Parker had taken the precaution of eating well – but not too much – beforehand, but Saxon, needing an escape from the reality of the process happening before him, looked at the opposite wall and wondered if Clarke actually felt queasy when he dissected someone’s remains, or whether the feeling wore off after several procedures.

On the other hand, maybe he had counselling to blank the feelings. Maybe it didn’t bother him; maybe he didn’t care. Far from feeling uncomfortable or even neutral about what he was doing, Clarke seemed actually to be enjoying himself.

It struck Saxon that the look on Clarke’s face was similar to that of a pianist in deep concentration as he entertained a hall full of people at a concert. It was consistent with his view that Clarke had possibly missed his vocation, hence the feeling that many people expressed, both admirers and critics, that Clarke was playing to the audience.

Eventually Clarke finished both the autopsies, leaving Jake to stitch up and tidy what little remained of the bodies. Switching off his microphone, he took off his apron and threw it with his surgical gloves in the bin. He devoted some considerable time to washing his hands and spoke to Saxon over his shoulder as he did so.

‘Paul, I can’t tell you much I’m afraid,’ he began. ‘All I can tell you is that they were stabbed by a right-handed man, probably the same height as me, and that’s undoubtedly what they died from. Stab wounds, a bit obvious really, don’t you think?’

‘Funny you should say that, Richard,’ Saxon responded quickly. ‘I did notice that there was rather lot of blood around the place, and it’s true that both the victims seemed to have one or
two holes in their bodies.’

He smiled and lowered his voice. ‘They teach us to notice things like that, usually just after we join the force,’ Saxon said dryly.

Clarke looked at him with eyebrows raised. ‘Sorry, Paul, that’s all I can say. I can only tell you how they died.’

‘You’re sure that there was nothing under their fingernails?’ Saxon tried not to sound desperate.

Clarke just gave him a look over his glasses.

Saxon continued. ‘Sorry, forget it, Richard, I’m just clutching at anything – you would have told me if you’d found anything.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just that we are going nowhere fast with these other cases, and I can’t even tell if this bastard is the same killer.’

Clarke held up one hand, now a very clean hand. ‘There is one thing that may be of use to you.’ He directed them back to the body parts of Barbara Jenner and they gathered obediently around the table. ‘If you look at the way her hand and fingers were severed,’ he went on, ‘you’ll see that he cut carefully between the joints. He didn’t touch the bone once.’

He looked up at Saxon. ‘It’s typical of all the amputations. This man knew exactly what he was doing. Maybe he’s a butcher or a slaughterhouse worker.’

‘Or a doctor,’ said Parker hesitantly.

Clarke stiffened and looked briefly at Parker. He smiled at him and then turned back to Saxon. ‘That’s for you two to discover.’ He stopped smiling and shook his head. ‘Sometimes I think that my job is far simpler than yours.’

Wednesday, May 15, Telscombe Cliffs 6.00PM

To say that Keith Jenner was pissed off was something of an understatement. He looked once again at his watch. But no matter how expensive it was, it couldn’t deliver his sister at the time she had said she would be there.

She had never missed an appointment. He would have a thing
or two to say to her when she eventually turned up.

But that wasn’t his biggest worry. No, his main concern was that his reasons for failing to deliver the stuff on time would surely fall, not on deaf ears, but on the kind of ears that are just not interested in excuses, no matter how good.

He climbed out of his van, lit a cigarette and sat on the grass verge. Trying to stay calm, he looked up and down the lane and then at his watch again. He had always thought that this was a stupid place to do the handover, but he had faith in Babs and, as usual, he’d given in to her better judgement. She was always the clever one – besides he’d always held the belief that women were far more cunning than men.

She’d told him that the spot was perfect because Telscombe Cliffs was one of the few villages that could be accessed by only one road. She’d explained that this kept the flow of traffic down to the minimum. In addition, the road was cut into the side of the Downs and there were few trees in the area, so he could see well in advance if a car was approaching from either direction. His instructions from Babs were that if he saw a police car coming his way, then he was to puncture a tyre and that would be his excuse for being there.

He tried her mobile for the fifth time. Little did he know that it was trying to ring but the battery was just too wet as it swam around inside a plastic evidence bag in the storeroom at Brighton Police Station.

An hour crawled by and Jenner kicked his van a few times.

‘Fuckin’ bitch…where the fuck are you? Can’t rely on anyone,’ he shouted at the sky. He climbed back into his van and drove erratically back to London – barely able to suppress his rage and his fear.

Wednesday, May 15, Brighton Mortuary, 6.30PM

Their business at the mortuary was finished, thankfully. Parker had already disrobed and was on his way to the door, desperate
for a cigarette.

Steve Tucker waited in the background for Jake to finish stitching, so that he could play with his hose.

Melanie Jones was avoiding any kind of contact, eye, verbal, or physical, with Tucker. She kept one eye on Jake, to ensure that she left with him, if not before. There was no way she was going to be alone with Tucker, not even in the interests of positive reinforcement, not even to please Jake. Being alone with Tucker and a dead body didn’t count.

Saxon and Clarke shook hands, agreeing to meet up for a game of squash later in the week, other priorities permitting.

At that late stage in the afternoon, both Saxon and Parker were more than relieved to get into some fresh air. They were aware of the late-afternoon traffic: mothers collecting their kids from after-school activities; sales reps on their way home; trucks and vans heading back to base. Saxon and Parker’s day was far from over. Parker lit a cigarette as they both sat on a low wall outside the mortuary.

‘Christ, that man gives me the creeps,’ Parker shuddered. ‘It beats me how anyone can spend their working day chopping people up like that. He’s got to be a bit weird.’ He paused, suddenly realising that Saxon and Clarke socialised occasionally. Saxon said nothing.

Parker changed the subject abruptly. ‘Don’t know where we’re going with this one, boss, I really don’t.’ As he spoke, he let the smoke out through both nostrils and his mouth at the same time, as if fumigating himself from the trials of the day, and the smell of death in the mortuary.

Saxon said nothing for some minutes, just sitting still and gently biting his lip. Without warning, he jumped to his feet and half ran to his car. ‘Come on, Parker, let’s get a bite to eat and then have another look at the house. Sounds daft, I know, but it’s calling me, I just know it has something to tell me.’

Wednesday, May 15, 29 St Nicholas Lane, Sewel Mill
,
6.45PM

Cecil Hayward looked back towards the kitchen window. He could see Edie pottering around in the kitchen, preparing dinner. They tended to eat their main meal in the evening, although his doctor had suggested that it would be better for both of them to eat more heartily at lunchtime, and then have a light supper.

‘Yes, indeed,’ Cecil had said. ‘I remember my father used to say “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a lord, and dine like a pauper,” although he never did.’

‘Well it was good advice,’ Dr Marks had replied. ‘Very sound, and it would be a good idea if you could both apply it.’

Cecil agreed and it should have been easy, now that they were both retired. Although retired or not, Edie was still a busy woman, always running around from one thing to another. So it just wasn’t practical to have their main meal at lunchtime, and they continued to have dinner at around 7PM every evening. Including this evening. Wednesdays were usually something with mince.

To tell the truth, it didn’t really bother Cecil that his wife was quite occupied. Bit of a relief really. He and Edie hardly saw each other during the day, which suited him just fine. He had his regular activities. There was the garden to look after and his shed to take care of.

He finished putting his plants to bed and locked the door of the shed carefully. He fitted a heavy padlock too. All done.

He smiled as he walked into the kitchen and the smell of shepherd’s pie hit his nostrils. It was one of his favourites.

Wednesday, May 15, Hazel Lane, Sewel Mill, 8.00PM

Parker was enjoying the ride as they drove towards Anvil Wood House. He had no problem being chauffeured, particularly by someone of such senior rank. The car wasn’t too shabby either. They had a good view of the surrounding countryside, although
it was getting quite dark now, because you’re up quite high in a Land Rover Discovery. Then he noticed they were slowing down.

Saxon was usually a nervous passenger and preferred to drive himself rather than be driven. And he loved his Discovery with a passion. He was aware of Parker’s quizzical look as the car slowed and they pulled off Hazel Lane onto the narrow grass verge, but he said nothing. Parker went back to his surveillance of the moonlit scenery.