Strange Blood (4 page)

‘What did he do to her, Megan?' Delva's eyes were full of foreboding. ‘I know he stabbed her. But there was something else, wasn't there? The atmosphere in that road this morning when I was sitting outside in the car, it was just weird, as if people were afraid to come out of their houses.'

Megan looked away and Delva knew that she was working out what to say. They had only really got to know each other in the past few months. Not very long, really, she reflected. Megan must be wondering if she could trust her.

‘Let's just say he used the knife for something else. Something very sick that had nothing to do with actually killing her.'

Delva drew in her breath, her mind suddenly filled with a host of terrifying possibilities. ‘Do you think he'll strike again?'

‘If it's a stranger killing, I'm afraid he almost certainly will,' Megan said.

*   *   *

It felt strangely satisfying, lying in bed, remembering the smell of her perfume. Remembering how it had felt to kill her. Beyond the window the night sky was punctured with starlight. The connection was amusing. A signature as clear as day for those with eyes to see it. But they were blind and stupid. That much was obvious. Real intelligence was, after all, a star quality possessed only by the chosen few.

Chapter 3

When Megan got home the answerphone was flashing. The message was from her sister, asking how she'd got on in Dublin. Megan dialled the number and slid her arms out of her coat as she waited for it to answer.

‘Ceri, it's me … Yes, I got back ages ago but it's been a bit hectic since … Yes, I know, I've had the guy in charge of the inquiry over here, actually. Listen, I'm coming over to Wolverhampton tomorrow – can I call and see you in the afternoon?… Yes, okay. Give the kids a kiss from me … ‘Bye.'

Megan wondered what Ceri would say when she told her about Patrick. She was sure her sister had guessed that the trip to Dublin was more than just another academic conference.

A couple of weeks ago Ceri had asked Megan outright if she was seeing someone. ‘Your eyes are all sparkly,' she had said in a knowing voice. ‘Who is he, then?'

Megan had laughed it off, saying that what Tony had done was enough to put her off men for life. But Ceri was having none of it. ‘Come on, Meg,' she'd said, ‘just because you married a complete bastard doesn't mean you have to spend the rest of your life paying for it!'

She was right, of course. The irony was that for the past few months Megan had actually allowed herself to believe it. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Twenty past ten. She wondered how much longer Patrick was going to be. A little voice was nagging away at the back of her mind.
‘Why should he come back?'
it said,
‘What future does he have with you?

Megan had told Patrick about her inability to have children before they had started sleeping together. But the fact that he never seemed to want to talk about it was beginning to get to her.

*   *   *

It was half past eleven when she heard the sound of his key in the lock. She was still dressed, sitting in her study reading the pathologist's report. Patrick came padding up the stairs.

‘In here!' she called.

He poked his head round the door and cocked it sideways to read what was printed on the spiral bound file in her hand. ‘A little light bedtime reading?' His pale eyebrows arched and he grinned, walking across to her chair. He spun it back round to face the desk and started massaging her shoulders. She groaned and arched her back.

‘Come on,' he said, ‘I'll run us a bath.'

As steam billowed across the room he lit candles and poured geranium oil into a little terracotta burner. She stared at him in the flickering, hazy light, wondering what he was thinking. She had seen a new side of him in Dublin. It had been their first proper holiday together and he had been in his element, showing her the sights and introducing her to all his Irish relatives. There had been two little cousins, boys aged nine and seven, and she had stood watching him play football with them in the park. There had been a wistful look in his eyes when they came away but when she had asked him about it he had put his fingers on her lips as if he was afraid she might break the spell.

Trying to put it out of her mind, Megan climbed into the bath and lay back against Patrick's chest. He smeared oil across her shoulders and squeezed the skin silently. The only sound came from the occasional car in the street below. She forced her mind back to the meeting with Steve Foy. She knew Patrick would not ask her about it. Even though she was no longer his supervisor there were times when he held back, unsure of his ground.

‘Patrick,' she said slowly, her eyes half-closed, ‘when you were working in Holland did you ever come across a case of picquerism?'

‘Pick-what?' he said, taking his hands away.

‘Picquerism. It's when someone gets a sexual thrill from cutting flesh. Keppel wrote about it – you know, the profiler from Washington State?'

‘Oh, yes, I think I do vaguely remember something … the Clairemont killer, wasn't he into that sort of thing?'

‘That's right.' Megan shifted her position, sending a surge of water towards the taps. ‘I just wondered if you'd ever come across anything like that.'

‘Can't say I have, really. I mean, it all depends on interpretation, doesn't it? How do you distinguish between someone who goes apeshit with a knife because they're pissed or in a jealous rage and someone who does it for kicks? Unless they tell you, that is…'

‘I know.' She leaned her head back against his chest. ‘The thing is, there was no ejaculant and in the photographs Steve Foy showed me some of the stab wounds looked quite superficial. That's a feature of picquerism. You get shallow, incised wounds as well as the deeper ones that actually kill. And in this case he hung around long enough to carve a pattern on her head as well.'

‘You what?' Patrick sat upright, making the water slap the sides of the bath.

‘He carved a five-pointed star onto her forehead.' Megan eased herself into a standing position and stepped onto the cork mat, reaching for a towel. ‘According to the pathologist's report it was done with something thin and sharp.' She looked at Patrick, whose face had taken on an expression of horrified fascination. ‘It would have to have been something double-edged, because it was done in one continuous line, like this.' She ran her fingernail across her forehead the way Foy had demonstrated with the photograph.'

‘Something like a stiletto knife, then,' Patrick said slowly, ‘or a dagger.'

‘Yes,' Megan said, ‘or even a blade he's customised himself. Anyway it was a different knife from the one he stabbed her with. The pathologist reckons that would have been too blunt by the time she was dead.'

‘So why a star?' Patrick asked. ‘A
five
-pointed star, did you say?'

‘That's right.' Megan wrapped the towel around her and perched on the edge of the rattan chair next to the bath.

‘Sounds a bit occultish, that, doesn't it? You know, pentagrams and all that?'

‘Hmm.' Megan smiled. ‘I was wondering if you were going to pick up on that. One of Foy's team suggested it too, evidently. But there was nothing else to suggest black magic. It could be something the killer did deliberately to mislead the police.'

‘Yes,' Patrick said, sliding back down to submerge his shoulders in the water. ‘It's the kind of thing you can imagine some twisted bastard cooking up, isn't it? I mean, some of the stuff prisoners tell me when I'm interviewing them, books they're reading, that sort of thing…' He reached for the shampoo and poured the green liquid into his hand. ‘They're into all the literature on profiling, you know. They must come out of jail with all sorts of ideas…'

Megan nodded. ‘That's another thing I was thinking about – prison, I mean. The level of forensic awareness suggests that whoever did this has probably been inside at least once already. Either that or he's had a near miss with the police.'

‘No prints?' Shampoo floated onto Patrick's eyebrows as he tipped his lathered head backwards into the water.

Megan shook her head. ‘He must have been wearing gloves the whole time. I think they would have to have been those thin latex ones – the kind surgeons wear. I don't see how he could have done something as intricate as that pentagram in ordinary gloves.'

‘Well you can get those from loads of places,' Patrick said. ‘I think they even sell them in chemist shops.'

‘Hmm, I didn't think of that.' Megan stared at the dripping candles on the window ledge. ‘I was making a list of workplaces where someone would have access to gloves like that, but yes, he probably just walked into a chemist and bought them.' She shivered and drew the towel up around her shoulders. ‘He used a gag, too, but I don't think that's going to lead us very far. It was one of those white dishcloths, the kind you find in thousands of houses, not to mention schools, factories, restaurants … the list is endless.'

‘Did Steve Foy say whether there'd been any rapes in the area lately – anything that might be linked?

‘It depends how wide an area you take into account,' Megan said. ‘I mean, if you take the whole of Wolverhampton there are dozens of sex offenders on the books. It'll take a while for Foy's lot to check them all out. But Pendleton's not actually in Wolverhampton. It's about ten miles out – one of those big greenfield estates. According to Foy the only sexual offences they've had so far this year are a serial flasher and some guy who allegedly raped his fourteen-year-old cousin and got her pregnant.'

‘And they've been eliminated?' Patrick pulled out the bathplug and reached for a towel.

Megan nodded. ‘The flasher's on remand in Winson Green and the other bloke was in hospital on the day of the murder because the girl's brothers beat him up.'

‘Sounds like a delightful place.'

‘Well it's not as bad as some of the estates in Birmingham,' Megan said. ‘My sister nearly bought a house there once.'

‘Bet you're glad she changed her mind, then, eh?' Patrick buried his head in the towel and rubbed his wet hair, not noticing how Megan's face had clouded.

‘By the way,' he said, his voice muffled, ‘when am I going to get to meet these relatives of yours?'

Later, when they lay in bed, Patrick reached out for her in the darkness. His hand caressed her face, lingering over the tiny jewelled stud in her nose. ‘You know,' he said with a soft chuckle, ‘I've been sharing a bed with you three or four times a week for the past five months and I've never seen you take this out…'

‘Oh I do when you're not around', Megan whispered back. ‘I leave it on the bedside table next to the glass with my false teeth in…'

Patrick grabbed her and started tickling her until she begged him to stop. ‘Come here, you disgusting woman,' he laughed, sliding his hands around her waist and up towards her breasts. She flinched suddenly and he pulled back.

‘What is it?'

‘I'm sorry, Patrick. I … I just can't, that's all.'

‘Hey, it's alright … it's no problem.'

‘It's not that I don't want to,' Megan said, stroking his arm, ‘I mean, you're going off to Liverpool in the morning and it's going to be ages before we're together again, but…'

‘Is it the photographs?'

‘Sort of.' She sighed. ‘I just can't get them out of my head.' How could she explain that it was not just the gory images Foy had left behind? That the snap of Tessa Ledbury with her daughter had triggered a far more personal pain? She felt confused and guilty. How could her own sense of loss possibly be more disturbing than what she had seen in the last few hours?

‘I used to get that.' Patrick stroked her arm. ‘Whenever you close your eyes you see them, don't you?'

‘Yes,' she mumbled, unable to tell him what was really on her mind. ‘You'd think I'd be used to it by now, wouldn't you?'

‘I don't think I ever got used to it.' Patrick rolled onto his back, staring at the shadows on the ceiling. ‘I suppose I just drifted into doing what all cops do. Medics as well, come to that,' he said. ‘I took refuge in sick humour. It's terrible, I know, but that's what we all did.'

Megan bit her lip. ‘I can't imagine ever being able to do that,' she said. ‘Maybe it's different when you're surrounded by people who're all seeing the same type of thing. I think what I've started doing is even worse, though.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Oh, take no notice of me,' she said, ‘I'm just becoming a bit too cynical for my own good, that's all.' She raised herself on one elbow and leaned across to touch his hair. ‘Patrick,' she said softly, ‘would you just hold me?'

*   *   *

It was still dark when the radio alarm by Delva Lobelo's bed crackled into life. She sat bolt upright in bed and stared at the glowing numbers of the digital display. Four fifteen. For a moment she blinked at it, confused. Then she slid her legs out from under the duvet and reached for the gold-embroidered red kimono draped across the ottoman at the end of the bed.

Delva hated the early shift. It messed her body clock around. Often she would try to take a nap in the afternoons to catch up on her sleep but it was fatal. She would wake a few hours later when it was still light and fly into a blind panic because she thought it was morning and she had overslept.

Right now she felt particularly groggy. She had been dreaming about Richard Ledbury. It had been a disturbing, sexual dream and now she was awake she felt weighed down by guilt. She got ready as quickly as she could, not bothering with make-up or breakfast. She would feel better when she got to work. There would be people to talk to, bulletins to prepare. And bright lights to chase away the lingering shadows of the night.