Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation (22 page)

‘Jesus.’ Emma’s voice was bleak. ‘I don’t want to think what he’s doing to these people.’

‘If there are any,’ Lapslie warned. ‘Let’s get the facts first.’

‘Okay. I’ll be in touch.’

Emma rang off. Lapslie was about to put the mobile back in his pocket when it rang again.

‘Lapslie.’

‘DCI Lapslie? This is Patricia – Chief Superintendent Rouse’s PA. He wants to see you straight away.’

‘Does he have a telescope?’

A pause while she processed the comment and then threw it away. ‘He has a gap in his schedule at one o’clock this afternoon. Can I tell him you’ll be here?’

Her voice was sweetness itself, but there was an implicit threat lying behind the words. Even without the synaesthesia, Lapslie could taste it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Please tell him I’ll be there.’ Before she could go, he added, ‘And can you have a large coffee waiting for me, two sugars? Maybe some of those lovely bourbon biscuits as well.’ He rang off before she could make some comment about reducing police running costs by not catering for meetings of less that ten people.

Re-entering the church, he found that Sean Burrows’ team had started deconstructing the cats’ cradle of wire that was strung from side to side and floor to ceiling.

‘How’s it going?’ he called.

‘It’s a slow and laborious process,’ Burrows replied, crossing an open space towards him. ‘I’m already two men down. One of the wires snapped as we were taking it off the hook that’s attached to the wall. It whipped back and slashed across the face of one CSI and the hands of another. I’ve sent them off for stitches and for tetanus shots and HIV tests.’ At Lapslie’s questioning glance, he added, ‘We just don’t know what’s on these
wires. I know Catriona Dooley was clear of HIV, but there might be other blood here that we don’t know about.’

‘Emma’s found three more murders that tie in with the Dooley one,’ Lapslie confirmed, ‘although they don’t have the same wounds as the girl’s body did. But I take your point.’ He looked at the remaining wires. ‘Do we know what these things are made of?’

‘Curiously enough,’ Burrows said, ‘I’m leaning towards the view that it’s piano wire, based on the tension and the breaking strain. Musical instrument strings are one of the most demanding of applications for wires – far more demanding than big game fishing, for instance. They’re placed under high tension, they’re subject to repeated blows and repeated bending, they’re stretched and slackened during tuning and, while being expected to be up to scratch for concert performances, they are still expected to last for decades. They’re made from tempered high tensile steel. If I were making someone run through a funhouse strung up with lethally sharp wire, I’d want to make sure that it stayed in place and they came apart, rather than the other way around.’

‘Musical instruments,’ Lapslie mused. ‘Singers. Music teachers. It’s all connected somehow, but I can’t quite see the connections.’ He shook himself. ‘It would be nice if there were only one manufacturer of this wire in the UK, and we could trace who bought this lot.’

Burrows shook his head. ‘It comes in coils and gets sold by weight. No chance of tracking it down, in my opinion.’

‘What if it’s a high-quality make?’

Burrows pursed his lips. ‘In that case I might be able to track it down for you. But why do you think this is high-quality stuff? This is a torture device, not a musical instrument.’

‘Perhaps it’s both,’ Lapslie muttered, and moved away, leaving Burrows staring after him.

Over in the centre of the church, in a cleared area, he spotted a familiar figure crouched down awkwardly on the ground and scraping something into an evidence bag.

‘Jane? What are you doing out of your shell?’

Doctor Jane Catherall looked up at him. ‘Mark! I’d heard you were back, and then this happened. You do have a habit of presenting me with cases that are out of the ordinary. Thank you.’

‘Glad to help,’ he said, smiling. For some reason, he was very fond of the diminutive pathologist. Seeing her always cheered him up. ‘What’s the lowdown here?’

‘Blood everywhere, and traces of flesh on the floor,’ she replied. ‘I’m collecting up as much as I can. No way of telling how many people we’re talking about yet – I’ll have to identify how many unique DNA traces I have before I can tell you that, but I’ll certainly check the DNA against that of Catriona Dooley. Oh, and I’ve found a couple of dead pigeons as well. They must have blundered in and flown into the wires. That’ll have to be disentangled from any traces of human remains.’

‘I wonder what pigeon tastes like,’ he mused, thinking back to the carp and the swans.

‘Unpleasant,’ Jane said, ‘if you’re talking about the common town pigeon. They eat carrion and garbage. Wood pigeon is a different matter. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason,’ he said. ‘Looking around, could this place have caused the injuries that Emma told me were evident on Catriona Dooley’s body?’

Instead of answering, she extended a hand to Lapslie. He supported her weight while she climbed painfully to her feet. The top of her head was on a level with his chin. ‘Yes, the injuries are completely consistent with wires either cutting through flesh like a cheese wire or snapping under tension and
lashing back. You see the same kind of thing with construction workers and, strangely, circus performers.’ She looked around sombrely. ‘I hate to imagine what it was like,’ she said. ‘Pitch black and cold. The poor girl, stark naked and terrified; probably starving, given that the stomach contents I found indicated that she’d been fed enough to keep her alive but not to satisfy her gnawing hunger pangs. Released into this death trap and allowed to blunder around, feeling the wires cut into her flesh, carving away whole slices which flapped against her body as she ran, feeling the hot blood splattering against her skin and gushing down her arms and legs; feeling herself growing weaker and weaker until she couldn’t go on any more and she sank to the ground, and died, alone and afraid.’

‘Not alone,’ Lapslie said. ‘Every noise she made was recorded. There was someone here, listening. Not watching, but listening.’

For a moment they both remained silent, each in their own world of imagination. Then Lapslie said, ‘You mentioned stomach contents. Do we know what she was fed on?’

‘Does it matter?’ she asked.

‘It might help us profile her captor and killer if we knew how he treated her. Was he kind or unkind? Did he recognise her as a human being or throw her scraps? It’s all part of the bigger picture.’

Jane Catherall shrugged. ‘Analysis of her bowels and her stomach indicate that she was fed on a largely liquid diet, but one that contained most of the nutrients necessary for life. I’d suggest that whoever was holding her captive either fed her on soup or food that was cooked and then liquidised. It wouldn’t have been terribly satisfying, and in the longer term it would have had a detrimental effect on her digestive system and her dentition, but I suspect that was the last thing on her captor’s mind.’

‘Why go to all that trouble?’

‘If her captor had just cooked meals for her, he would either have had to release her hands so she could feed herself, thus risking her attacking him, or he would have to feed her himself, which would take a lot of time. Liquidising the food and then letting her drink it is quicker and minimises time and risk.’

‘So we can surmise,’ Lapslie said, ‘that her captor was concerned for her welfare, so he made sure she was eating properly – at least, as properly as she could, under the circumstances – and was worried about her attempting to escape and overpowering him, which means that he is likely to be physically weak.’

‘Or not a him at all,’ Jane murmured.

‘Statistically, almost all abductors of women are men,’ Lapslie pointed out.

‘But there was no sign of sexual interference in this case.’

Reluctantly, Lapslie nodded. ‘Point taken. I’m using the words “him” and “he” as shorthand, but we might be looking for a woman.’

‘You’ve made another unwarranted assumption,’ Jane Catherall pointed out.

‘What’s that?’

‘You’re assuming that the care taken in the feeding indicates a degree of empathy. Of concern.’

‘Yes?’

‘It might alternatively indicate that he – or she – wanted her alive and in relatively good health in order that she be able to do something.’

‘Like run a lethal maze?’ Lapslie asked, looking around the church.

‘Oh, I think this was just a means to an end,’ Jane said. ‘Not an end in itself.’ She shivered. ‘I should get going. These DNA samples aren’t going to analyse themselves.’

Jane Catherall left, clutching her evidence bags, and Lapslie made his way to his Saab. He checked his watch. If he started out now he could get to Chelmsford in time to grab a bite to eat before seeing Chief Superintendent Rouse.

His mobile rang as he was driving. He touched the side of the Bluetooth earpiece – a new innovation in his life that Charlotte had persuaded him to try, now that his synaesthesia was quiescent.

He expected it to be Emma Bradbury on the line, but it was Charlotte calling.

‘Hi,’ he said, surprised.

‘Hi yourself. I thought I saw you in the corridor of the hospital last night. I waved, but you were talking to someone and you didn’t see me. You weren’t looking for me, were you?’

‘Sorry,’ he said, feeling vaguely embarrassed at being watched without knowing it. ‘I needed to find a psychiatrist in a hurry.’

‘You’ve got me worried now.’

He laughed. ‘Not for myself. I’ve got a case on, and I needed some advice. And for someone to look at a photograph and see if they recognised it.’

‘Never ask a psychiatrist what they see in a photograph,’ Charlotte said mock-seriously. ‘They spend so long asking patients to look at black and white patterns and tell them what they see that their perceptions are permanently biased.’

‘If I’d known you were there I would have bought you a coffee.’

‘That time of night the cafeteria is closed. It’s machine coffee or nothing. And besides, you were with another woman.’

‘Jealous, much?’ he asked.

She laughed. ‘Funnily enough, no. Do you want me to be?’

‘Absolutely not. That was Emma. She works for me, and she’s going out with an old East End villain of my acquaintance.’

‘I’m sure there’s a whole story there that you can tell me about tonight.’

‘You’re not working?’

‘No. You want to come over to my place? I’ve got concert tickets for tonight, remember?.’

He felt the colour drain from his face. Good thing she wasn’t there to see it. ‘Yes, of course I remembered.’

‘You’ve got a key. Just let yourself in.’

‘I will.’ He paused, wanting her to say ‘I love you’, wanting to say it himself, but the moment passed, and he said, ‘I’ll see you later. Take care.’

‘You too.’

The rest of the drive to Chelmsford Police HQ went without incident. He coasted over the raised entry road into the centre of the town just before noon and parked in the HQ car park. He walked away from the building, into the town, following a route that his feet remembered better than his mind did. After a few minutes he found himself standing outside a Café Rouge. It was the last place he’d had anything more than a passing conversation with his wife. Ex-wife. On a whim he went in, found the same table was free, and ordered the same chicken salad that he’d had last time. While he ate, part of his mind wondered exactly what he was doing. Trying to recapture a memory? Exorcising ghosts? The chicken salad which had been as adventurous as he could push himself last time he’d been there was now bland and nearly tasteless. He remembered the rice noodles and prawns and chicken that he’d eaten at the noodle house by the M25. In comparison with what he was eating now, they were bursting with taste.

He was a different person now.

‘“That is the land of lost content,”’ he said softly, ‘“I see it shining plain; the happy highways where I went, and cannot come again.”’

‘Sorry, Sir?’ The waiter had paused by his table.

‘Nothing.’

He left the meal half-eaten and walked back to the Police HQ. He got to Rouse’s office, and the redoubtable PA Patricia, just on the stroke of one o’clock.

‘Mark!’ Rouse’s voice boomed from inside. ‘Come in! Come in!’

Rouse wasn’t alone in the office. A woman was sitting at his meeting table. She was wearing a maroon jacket with a rough hessian weave over a white silk blouse, and trousers matching her jacket. Rouse, of course, was in uniform, with his jacket off.

‘Mark, this is Margarita Haringay. She’s with our legal services department.’

‘That’s a bit premature, isn’t it?’ Lapslie rejoined. ‘We’ve not even got a proper suspect yet.’

‘I said “legal services”, not “Crown Prosecution Service”. Margarita is here to give me some advice.’ He scowled at Lapslie. ‘Oh, sit down, for Heaven’s sake. You’re making the place look untidy.’ As Lapslie sat, he continued blithely: ‘We’ve had a complaint about your conduct.’

‘Do I need a Police Federation representative present?’ Lapslie asked mildly, although he could feel a small worm of concern start to twist and turn within his gut.

‘Do you
need
a rep?’ Rouse asked.

‘Don’t be cute,’ Lapslie snapped, getting to his feet again. The woman’s head lifted and she glanced at him, surprised at the tone of voice he was taking with a senior officer. ‘Given that I don’t know why I’m here, only you know whether I need representation or not. That’s the kind of cheap psychological trick you and I used to play on suspects who asked to see a solicitor the moment they were brought in for questioning.’

Rouse spread his hands wide on the desk. ‘Calm yourself, Mark. Calm yourself. This is just a preliminary—’

‘Hearing?’

‘—meeting. Please, sit down.’

As Lapslie sat once more, Rouse levered himself up from behind his desk and joined them at the meeting table. Sitting, he said, ‘You interrogated a girl named Tamara Stottart in the presence of her father, Stephen Stottart.’

‘I interviewed a girl who I believed had evidence in a murder investigation, yes. The interview took place in a family room, in the presence of another police officer as well as the girl’s father, and was videotaped as per standard procedure.’