Strange Blood (2 page)

‘Right, Richard! If you'd like to make yourself comfy in that chair by the window we'll get the show on the road, shall we?' Barry strode across the room, a wide grin on his face, snapping down the conservatory blinds. Delva shot him a withering glance which he immediately mimicked, despite the fact Richard Ledbury was looking straight at him.

‘I have to apologise for Barry,' Delva whispered, settling herself into a chair opposite Richard's. ‘He's an excellent cameraman but his way of handling grief is to be very upbeat. Please try not to let him upset you.'

Richard nodded, lowering his head and squeezing his nose and chin between the palms of his hands. Delva bit her lip, making a silent prayer for the man to get through the next ten minutes without going to pieces.

Tears, yes. We don't mind a few tears.

A voice rang in Delva's ears. Des, the news editor, briefing her before she left the office this morning.

Quite effective really, long as it's not full-blown hysterics. You'll have to cut if he really blubs.

Sitting here now, looking at Richard Ledbury's face, the memory made her ashamed of her profession.

Barry leaned across and handed her the microphone. ‘Now Richard,' she said gently, ‘I'm just going to ask a couple of questions, that's all. I just want you to talk about Tessa, describe what sort of person she was. Don't worry if you have to stop. We can edit it afterwards. Barry's just going to take a soundcheck and then you tell me when you're ready to go.'

The lights went on. Richard flinched. Dazzled by the blue-white beam he looked like a frightened rabbit caught in headlights. This was the moment, Delva knew, when most people backed out. The lights brought it home in a stunning flash. This was television and
they
were going to be on it.

But as the camera rolled Richard Ledbury became a different person. Delva could hardly believe it. She was holding her breath, waiting for him to shake his head, put a hand up to the camera, break down. But he calmly described his wife, her beauty, what a wonderful mother she was to their three children, the fact that she was a Sunday school teacher; all without shedding a single tear.

When she asked him if he would like to make a direct appeal to people watching, he looked straight into the camera and delivered a perfect fifteen-second soundbite. He sat patiently while Barry took cutaways of his hands clasped together in his lap and even agreed to filming a second set-up in the garden, walking up to the sundial and looking at it with just the right expression on his face.

The only other time Delva had seen such a flawless performance was when she had interviewed a student who had apparently been first at the scene when a women was stabbed to death in a multi-storey carpark. He had described in a calm, even voice how he had held the woman's hand and cradled her in his arms as she lay dying. Delva could still remember his face. It had been just as calm and devoid of emotion as he stood in court the day the judge sent him down for life.

But Richard Ledbury was no such devious actor, Delva was convinced, although she would have found it difficult to explain why. It had nothing to do with the fact that the police had already ruled him out. It was more a kind of sixth sense she had developed through interviewing so many people. Like a tiny lie-detector wired into her brain.

What she had just witnessed was the courageous act of a man who, in the midst of almost overwhelming grief, had pulled out all the stops in honour of the woman he had loved. Somehow he had held himself together in the firm belief that this appeal would help the police track down her killer. Delva had gone along with it because she had to. In her experience these appeals rarely achieved anything other than upping the viewing figures for the evening news.

Delva shook Richard Ledbury's hand and watched as the policewoman walked with him down the drive to the car. ‘He was great,' she said, in answer to Detective Superintendent Foy's questioning look. ‘Don't know how the hell he did it. Deserves a medal, poor man.'

Foy grunted something she couldn't hear and pulled a slip of paper from his pocket. ‘These are the numbers to give out on air, okay? The incident room's at Tipton Street nick.'

‘Right.' Delva tucked the paper into her bag. ‘What about a profile? Any chance of getting something on tonight's programme?'

‘Afraid not,' Foy said, ‘We've been trying all weekend to get hold of Dr Rhys. Evidently she's gone walkabout in Dublin. Due back tonight.'

‘Oh.' Delva frowned. Des was going to be disappointed. He had been counting on a studio interview to follow Richard Ledbury's appeal.

‘Off the record,' Foy lowered his voice, ‘I didn't used to have a lot of time for profilers.' He sniffed and glanced around the door at the waiting car. ‘I mean, what the hell's the use of knowing the bugger you're after had a hard time from his mum and left school with no qualifications?' He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I went on one of her courses at Heartland University a couple of months back. Pretty impressive, isn't she?'

Delva nodded. She had the distinct impression he had been about to add ‘for a woman', but had checked himself just in time.

*   *   *

On the plane Megan stared at her mobile, puzzled. She had fished it out to switch off when the pre-flight blurb reminded her, but the screen's blank face told her she didn't need to. Odd, she thought. She could have sworn she'd turned it back on when they arrived at Shannon Airport on Thursday afternoon. Had it been off all weekend? She frowned as the plane began to move forward and turned to Patrick, but his eyes were closed. She groaned. Only he could manage to fall asleep on a flight that was less than an hour long.

She settled back in her seat, her dark brown, kohl-rimmed eyes lingering on him. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, his blond wavy hair sliding forward over his eyes. He looked really young when he was sleeping. The corners of her mouth turned up in a bittersweet smile. They made an odd couple. Welsh-Indian and Irish-Dutch. Sometimes she tortured herself, imagining what a child of theirs might have looked like.

Never in her life had she been so happy and so miserable at the same time. Up until last week it had been their secret. Or so she'd thought. It had been difficult these past few months, pretending nothing was going on. Watching the students flirting with him in the coffee lounge, unaware that he was fresh out of bed with their Head of Department. But if they'd fooled the students they hadn't fooled the staff. She flushed, remembering the look on her secretary's face as she'd wished Megan a good holiday. The invoice for the airline tickets had given her away. A slip of paper with Patrick's name alongside her own, left face up on her desk. She cursed herself for being so stupid.

It would be easier now he was moving to Liverpool. He would hardly have to come to Heartland at all apart from the odd visit to the library. She hoped that for the office gossips, out of sight would be out of mind.

As they walked across the tarmac at Birmingham International she flicked her mobile back on. It rang out immediately. ‘Damn!' She frowned as she pressed it to her ear. ‘Three voice messages.'

Patrick's eyes flicked to her face as they stepped onto a moving walkway. He said nothing.

‘They're all from Steve Foy.' She bit her lip, the line between her eyebrows deepening.

‘Who?'

‘Detective Superintendent from Wolverhampton nick.' She paused to pull her passport from her bag, punching out numbers as soon as they were waved through. ‘Remember the course we ran on serial sex offenders last term?' She looked at Patrick, the phone clamped to her ear. He nodded, still not quite with it. ‘He was on it,'

‘The mouthy one with red hair?

She nodded. ‘Messages sounded a bit frantic.'

‘Wonder what he wants?'

As she waited for Steve Foy to pick up she caught a flash of something like panic in Patrick's eyes. But her attention was distracted by the sight of a headline on a board outside a newsagent's kiosk:
PRAYERS FOR MUM KILLED IN ‘FRENZIED' KNIFE ATTACK.

For once, Foy was short and to the point. While she listened she walked across to the kiosk and bought a paper. As she pressed the ‘End Call' button Patrick emerged from the gents' toilet.

‘What was it?'

Megan handed him the newspaper.

*   *   *

It was nearly eight o'clock when Steve Foy arrived at Megan's house. Patrick had gone to clear the last of the stuff from his flat and wouldn't be back until much later. She was glad. She didn't want Foy to know she was having a relationship with the PhD student he'd sat alongside at the sex offenders course.

‘On your own?' he said when she showed him into the living room. He raised an enquiring eyebrow.

‘Were you expecting someone else?' She looked at him, unblinking.

He looked away. ‘Have you eaten?'

‘Er … I had a snack on the plane.'

‘Good,' he said, dropping a pile of photographs onto the coffee table. ‘Because you won't want anything after you've seen
these.
'

Chapter 2

‘As you can see', Foy said, handing Megan another photograph, ‘it's definitely not your run-of-the-mill domestic stabbing.'

Megan had to force herself to study the picture. The first few had been inoffensive enough, straightforward establishing shots of the house, its position in the cul-de-sac, the layout of the back garden. But now he had moved on to shots of the body
in situ.

The photographer had begun this sequence with a close-up of Tessa Ledbury's upper body. Had she not known, Megan would have been unable to tell that the body was female, so mutilated was the flesh. The whole area of the breasts was punctured and slashed with stab wounds.

With a barely perceptible sigh Megan laid the photograph down and put out her hand for the next one. The evidence of vicious, uncontrolled stabbing had turned her stomach, but at least she had been expecting it. The report in the
Evening Mail
had made it pretty clear that this was not a quick, ‘clean' killing. But what she saw next shocked her. Tessa Ledbury's face stared out of the picture, mouth gaping and folds of white fabric protruding from her lips. But it was not the gag that caught Megan's attention. The hair had been scraped back from the woman's face with what looked like a pair of tights. In the middle of her forehead, stretching from the hairline to the bridge of the nose, was a five-pointed star. Its lines were so thin that at first glance Megan thought it had been drawn on with a pen. But as she lifted the photograph closer to her face she could see that it was dark red.

‘A knife?' she said in a whisper, to herself rather than to Foy.

Foy nodded. ‘Looks that way. The whole thing was done in one continuous stroke.' He bent closer to Megan, peering at the image in the photograph. ‘He started at the hairline and cut down diagonally.' Foy's stubby finger moved along the pentagram, pausing over Tessa Ledbury's right eyebrow. ‘Then he went up to the left side of the forehead, across to the right, down to the left eyebrow and back up to the hairline.'

Megan stared wordlessly at this sick piece of art. The first thing that struck her was that it had been done
post mortem.
That much was obvious from the lack of bleeding from the incised lines. She looked at Foy. He had held back some of the details of the case at her own request. She had not wanted to be swayed by any theory, any suspect the police already had in mind. As he handed her the next picture she wondered what other macabre acts she was about to witness

Now she saw that Tessa Ledbury was completely naked. A wide shot showed her lying on a double bed, her arms protruding from her sides at right angles to her body and her legs wide apart. There were blood spatters on her neck, her arms, her abdomen and her thighs.

Megan put the photo on the table. ‘Any ejaculant on the body?'

‘No. In fact there's no evidence of any sexual activity at all.'

‘Hmm.' Megan stared intently at the image. ‘I think she's been displayed.'

Foy frowned. ‘What do you mean?'

‘It looks as if the body's been arranged in a way that's deliberately humiliating; arms wide open, legs apart.' She brought the photograph closer to her face. ‘Then there's the cutting, the slicing.'

Foy raised his eyebrows. ‘Go on.'

‘Ever heard of picquerism?'

He shook his head.

‘It's what's termed a secondary sexual mechanism. The high number of stab wounds could mean the killer got a sexual thrill from the act of stabbing or cutting flesh, rather than performing the sex act itself.' Megan sat back in her armchair. Her shoulders ached from being hunched up over the photos. ‘It's the same with the arrangement of the body,' she said. ‘It could indicate that the killer was prolonging his sexual dominance of the victim by posing her after death. If that's the case he wouldn't have an orgasm either in or on the victim – he'd save that until later when he's well away from the crime scene, in a safe place.'

Foy said nothing for a moment. He stared at the pile of photographs, rubbing his chin. ‘What about the star?' he said suddenly. ‘I mean, okay, the guy gets off on mutilating a woman, that much I accept, but a five-pointed star – a pentagram – there has to be some significance in that, don't you think?'

‘You mean the occult,' Megan said, ‘black magic, that sort of thing?'

Foy folded his arms and pursed his lips. ‘It's not just me. One of my team was heavily involved in a child abuse case up north where occult practices were suspected. She's a bit of an expert on it now. Her name's Kate O'Leary. Anyway, soon as she saw the body she said, “You know what we've got here, don't you Guv?”'

Megan sifted through the remaining crime scene pictures. ‘Was there anything left in the bedroom or at the house? Anything that might be connected with a black magic ritual?'