Stop Dead (23 page)

‘What about DNA?’ she asked. ‘Is there any sign of female DNA on this body?’

Miles shook his head.

‘There’s no evidence of any contact, as far as I can tell. The water’s affected him of course, but apart from the injuries to his head and genitals, he looks reasonably intact.’

Looking down at the withered and bloated corpse, Geraldine wasn’t sure she would have chosen those words to describe the body.

‘I might find something more for you when I get a proper look at him, but he doesn’t appear to have put up much of a struggle. I’d guess he was taken by surprise. The killer’s been more careful this time.’

Geraldine stared down at the dead man. Even with swollen features and distended torso, the body was still recognisably that of an old man. He appeared to have been small and although it was difficult to tell, he gave an impression of frailty.

‘Maybe this victim was just easier to deal with,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t look like he would’ve put up much resistance.’

‘Yes, the joints are severely arthritic and he wasn’t exactly what you’d call robust.’

He pointed to the victim’s spindly legs.

‘He would have been easy to overpower.’

Having seen more cadavers than she could readily call to mind, Geraldine was taken aback to feel her eyes begin to water. She couldn’t help wondering whether the dead old man had a wife and children, anyone to mourn the violent death of this diminutive human being, or if he had lived on his own. Like her. On balance she wasn’t disturbed to discover that a victim could still touch her emotions after all her experience with death; nevertheless she turned her face away from the young pathologist. Some things were best kept private.

‘W
ill you tell him or shall I?’ Reg shook his head and gestured wearily towards her.

His tall figure looked slightly bowed and there were grey creases under his eyes she had never noticed before.

‘You can have that pleasure, Geraldine.’

‘You never thought it was him anyway, did you?’ Sam asked when the detective chief inspector had left the Major Incident Room.

The question sounded like an accusation.

‘No, but –’

Geraldine didn’t finish the sentence. They were all dismayed that a third murder had been committed while Guy was being held in the custody suite. Under normal circumstances they wouldn’t have been able to keep Guy in custody past Thursday night without a formal charge. The detective chief inspector had been jumping through hoops to extend the period they could hold him for questioning, while a team of officers had been tied up investigating the wrong man. And all the time the killer had also been busy, pursuing his dreadful business

*

The heavy door swung open. Its shadow moved slowly across the grimy floor. Guy suppressed a shudder. His rage had given way to exhaustion with the effort of keeping himself together. It wouldn’t do to show his alarm. Far better to tough it out and act as though he felt aggrieved, like any innocent man would do. It was an effort to keep his temper under control. Shouting only succeeded in making them even more smugly assured of his guilt. It was insane. Everyone he knew lost their temper sometimes. It didn’t make them all murderers.

‘What now?’ he asked.

He made no move to stir from the bunk where he was sitting, shoulders hunched forward, hands dangling between his knees.

‘Mr Barrett, you’re free to go.’

Still he sat without moving.

‘You’re free to go, Mr Barrett,’ the inspector repeated. ‘You can go home now.’

She smiled at him.

‘You mean – that’s it? I can go?’

For an instant he didn’t believe it. He thought it was a trick to catch him off guard. Then it crossed his mind that he ought to make a stink about wrongful arrest or something, but he couldn’t help returning her smile as he stood up and stretched his legs.

The relief as he strode out of the police station in his own shoes, his wallet back in his pocket, was like nothing Guy had ever experienced before. Every day of his life he had been free, but he had never before appreciated the joy of simply walking along the street. He had checked his cash and cards before leaving the station. It was all there. He was free, the sun was shining, and he had close on fifty quid in his pocket. Although he hadn’t been banged up for long, he felt as though he had been released back into the world after an absence of weeks, or even months. It reminded him of his first game of football after a long childhood illness. He whistled at an attractive girl who passed him on the street, short red skirt swinging with the rolling motion of her butt. He was free and life was full of possibilities. And he knew exactly where he was heading.

It took Guy a few attempts before he managed to fit his key in the lock and open the door. He staggered along the narrow hallway to the toilet, eventually flinging himself onto his bed to savour the familiar tangy odour of the sheets. He fell asleep almost immediately. It was eight o’clock when he opened his eyes, groggy with alcohol and sleep. At first he thought it was morning and he had been woken by his alarm. It took him a few seconds to realise it was the evening, and his phone had disturbed his sleep. With a groan he turned on his side and waited for it to stop. It was Amy calling, and he didn’t intend to have anything more to do with her. After all her protestations of love her behaviour had been unforgivable. She had tried to manoeuvre her way out of trouble by using him as a scapegoat. He wouldn’t put it past her to have deliberately set him up. She might have been planning to kill her old man all along and blame it on him. He had seen a film where that had happened. He couldn’t remember the ending, but no doubt the dupe had taken the rap for the conniving woman. Amy was clever enough to do that, and he had been stupid enough to fall for it. At twenty-three, he should have known better.

The phone stopped and he breathed a sigh, stretching out in bed, enjoying the comfort. After a moment the phone rang again. And again. Finally he caved in and answered it.

‘Guy? Guy? Oh thank God.’

Amy sounded hysterical. The neediness that Guy had once found endearing now infuriated him.

‘Where are you? Are you alright?’

‘No thanks to you.’

His voice sounded slurred with sleep or alcohol, or both.

‘I need to be with you,’ she gasped, her voice choked with sobs. ‘Come over, please. I’m all on my own.’

She broke down.

‘Leave me alone,’ he yelled into the phone.

He was startled by the force of his own fury. He hadn’t realised quite how angry and disappointed he had been with her.

‘No, no, you don’t understand. I’m all on my own here. My poor Mitzi…’

For a second he was confused, listening to her babbling incoherently. She was crying so hard that he could barely make any sense of anything she said; something about her dog. He couldn’t have cared less about her stupid dog, or her.

‘She’s gone, she’s gone,’ she kept repeating.

Clearly she was more upset about losing her bloody dog than about the death of her husband. He wondered how she would react if anything happened to him, once she tired of his attentions.

‘Get off my case, you bitch. Don’t call me again. Don’t ever call me again.’

He hung up and chucked the phone on the bed. Generally useless at remembering what anyone told him, he couldn’t forget what the inspector had said. Silently he mouthed the words to himself.

‘Mrs Henshaw doesn’t see things as you do … Amy Henshaw made a statement accusing you of murdering her husband.’

A moment later the phone started its shrill summons again. Guy rolled out of bed clutching it.

‘It’s over between us. Get the message and stay the fuck out of my life. I don’t know what the hell I was doing with you in the first place. Leave me alone you sad old cow!’

Switching the phone off and throwing it across the room, he rolled over and went back to sleep.

L
ike Sam, the sergeant Geraldine had worked with in Kent had been repulsed by corpses, but Ian had made a far better job of covering up his discomfort. Even so, he had frequently paled when confronted with a cadaver and had even on occasion rushed from the room when the victim’s appearance was particularly gruesome. Geraldine smiled as she thought about her ex-colleague.

‘I don’t know what’s so funny,’ Sam grumbled.

Accustomed to her colleague’s irritable mood when they were about to view a body, Geraldine no longer made any attempt to distract her young colleague by talking in the car on the way to the morgue.

Geraldine had never understood how she retained her own composure so easily, but she had always viewed dead bodies as no more than pieces of evidence in the jigsaw of a case. As her first detective inspector had impressed upon her, in a murder enquiry the dead were vital. Several officers had exchanged smiles at his inept turn of phrase.

‘Is something amusing you, Geraldine?’ he had demanded, turning on her like a predator.

‘No, sir.’

An arrogant man, patronising towards his team, he had taken every opportunity to undermine the female officers in particular.

‘I hope you’re not going to pass out on us,’ he had said sharply, the first time he and Geraldine visited the morgue together. ‘We’ve got no room for weakness here.’

Concealing her indignation, she had entered the examination room determined not to react to the body. To display even a flicker of an eyelid might be interpreted as a sign of feminine weakness. But she had felt only curiosity on seeing the corpse.

They drove to the morgue in silence and entered the cold corridor where Miles was waiting for them. With lanky frame and large grinning teeth, his gloves and apron stained with blood, he looked like a character out of a horror movie as he turned and led them to where the victim lay spread-eagled on the table.

‘Here he is,’ he said cheerfully.

He caught sight of Sam’s expression, and his smile faded.

‘Are you alright?’

Sam nodded.

‘She’s fine,’ Geraldine reassured him, glancing at Sam whose face had gone white.

‘I’m fine,’ Sam echoed weakly.

‘Good, then let’s crack on.’

Miles turned his attention to the body.

‘I gather there was no identification on him?’

‘We’re working on that,’ Geraldine replied.

‘Hmm. Well, he was in his late seventies, I’d say, not very well nourished, and he had a variety of health issues going on. He was small, not much over five foot, and had advanced arthritis and was developing scoliosis of the spine giving his shoulders this hunched appearance. He suffered a coronary some years ago, but he was basically healthy.’

‘Sounds like it,’ Sam muttered.

‘What I mean to say is, he didn’t die of natural causes.’

‘People fished out of the canal generally don’t.’

Geraldine threw Sam a cautionary glance, vexed by her surliness. No one liked to see dead bodies, but there was no need to antagonise Miles. It wasn’t his fault the old man was dead. It was important the pathologist remained committed to helping them. Any tiny piece of information he could provide might prove crucial in solving the case. Without his full co-operation they might only hear the minimum facts of the examination, and Geraldine wanted more than that. She wanted Miles to feel comfortable enough to share his gut reaction with them.

‘As you can see, the method of killing was the same as that used in the Henshaw and Corless cases.’

Gazing down at the cadaver, its skin hideously wrinkled and discoloured, Geraldine could distinguish little similarity between the other two bodies and this one. They could have belonged to different species. The pathologist swept the victim’s hair aside to reveal an ugly gash on the side of his head, alongside a large area of bruising.

‘He was hit on the left side of his head, a severe blow which probably knocked him out, and almost certainly killed him.’

‘So it might not have knocked him out but –’ Sam had barely begun to speak when Geraldine interrupted her.

‘Go on, Miles.’

Sam scowled and fell silent.

‘He was hit here,’ he indicated the victim’s genitalia, ‘in exactly the same way as your earlier victims.’

‘So this was the same killer?’

‘I’d say so, yes.’

‘Is there any doubt about it?’ Geraldine pressed him.

‘No. I’d say not. Of course I can’t be a hundred per cent sure but I’d say there’s no doubt really that the same person committed all three murders, unless the killers were communicating with each other about their methods. It’s an identical murder.’

‘But very different victims.’

Geraldine gazed at the grotesque cadaver. It looked like a monstrous frog with its skinny legs and bloated torso.

Miles shrugged.

‘That consideration doesn’t really fall within my remit. All I can tell you is that the three bodies have been killed in the same manner. That the three murders were carried out by the same hand is a matter on which you can speculate, but it’s not a matter of scientific interest. He hadn’t eaten since around midday but had been drinking shortly before he died, beer from the look and smell of it. Not an excessive amount but he might have been intoxicated, depending on his tolerance. Like I said, he’s a small man.’

‘Did you find any female DNA on this victim?’ Geraldine wanted to know.

‘For goodness sake,’ Sam said before the pathologist had a chance to reply. ‘Look at him. He was hardly likely to be gallivanting around with women. He could barely stand up on those.’

She gestured at the dead man’s frail legs. Miles inclined his head at Geraldine, pointedly ignoring Sam’s outburst.

‘I believe so.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Wouldn’t it have all been washed away in the water?’ Sam asked.

He shook his head impatiently.

‘Not necessarily. But this victim hadn’t engaged in pre-mortem sexual intercourse.’

They all glanced down at the shrivelled body, none of them voicing their thoughts.

‘So it’s not the same as Patrick and George at all,’ Sam said.

‘The cause of death was the same. The disposal of the body was different in each case. As for the motive – well, as I say, that’s not for me to determine.’