The Dying Place (3 page)

The peace in work was a good thing, he thought. Just over a year on from the case which had almost cost him his life, he should have been grateful for the tranquillity of boring cases and endless paperwork. At least he wasn’t lying at the bottom of a concrete staircase in a pitch-black cellar, a psychopath looming over him.

He had to look at the positives.

Murphy left the bedroom, stepping over paint-splattered sheets, paint tins and the stepladders which festooned the landing.

The cause of his late nights.

He’d gone into decorating overdrive, determined to have something to do in his spare time. Started with the dining room, which hadn’t seen a paintbrush since they’d bought the house a few years earlier. Now he was back living there, reunited with his wife after a year apart following his parents’ death, it was time to make the house look decent. Sarah was often busy in the evenings with lesson planning and marking due to her teaching commitments, so he would have otherwise just been staring at the TV, and he’d done enough of that when he lived on his own.

Sarah had started teaching just as they got married. Her past put behind her, a successful degree course, and a clean CRB check was all she needed. That, and a large amount of luck, given her ability to never actually be arrested for any of the stupid stuff she’d done in the past. Murphy had never expected that last bit to hold.

Murphy entered the kitchen just as Sarah was pouring out a cup of freshly brewed coffee. ‘Cheers, wife. Need this.’ He brushed her cheek with his lips as she slipped past him.

‘I’ve only got half an hour to get ready now, husband. Work out how to use the thing yourself, okay? Or we’re going back to Nescafé.’ She stopped at the doorway. ‘Oh, and remember you promised we’d go out tonight.’

Friday already. The week slipping past without him noticing. ‘Of course. I’ve booked a table.’

She stared at him for a few seconds, those blue eyes studying his expression. ‘No you haven’t. But you will do, right? Tear yourself away from your paintbrush, Michelangelo, and treat your wife.’

Murphy sighed and nodded. ‘No problem.’

‘Good. See you later. Love you.’

‘Love you too.’

They were almost normal.

The commute was shorter now than it had been in the months he’d lived over the water, on the Wirral – the tunnel which separated Liverpool from the small peninsula now a fading memory. Still, it took him over twenty minutes to reach the station from his house in the north of Liverpool, the traffic becoming thicker as he neared the roads which led into the city centre.

After parking the car in his now-designated space behind the station, Murphy entered the CID offices of Liverpool North station just after nine a.m., the office already bustling with people as he let the door close behind him.

Murphy sauntered over to his new office, mumbling a ‘morning’ and a ‘hey’ to a few constables along the way. Took down the note which had been attached to his door as he pushed it open.

Four desks in a space which probably could have afforded two. Their reward for months of complaining and reminding the bosses of the jobs they’d cleared in the past year. A space cleared for Murphy, his now semi-permanent partner DS Laura Rossi, and two Detective Constables who seemed to change weekly.

‘Morning, sir.’

Rossi looked and sounded, as always, as if she’d just stepped off a plane from some exotic country, fresh-faced and immaculate at first glance. It wasn’t until you looked more closely – and in a space as tight as their office, Murphy had been afforded the time to study her – and noticed the dark under her eyes, the bitten-down fingernails, and the annoying habit she had of never clipping her hair out of her face.

He said his good mornings and plonked himself down behind his small desk, checking his in-tray for messages. A few chase-ups on old cases, a DS from F Division in Liverpool South who wanted a call back ASAP. Routine stuff.

‘Anything new overnight?’

Rossi looked over from her computer screen, eyebrows raised at him. ‘Nothing for us.’

‘Come on. There must be something? I’m bored shitless here.’

As Rossi was about to answer, the door opened, DC Graham Harris sweating as he rushed in and sat down, shoving his bag under his desk. ‘Sorry I’m late. Traffic was murder near the tunnel.’

Murphy debated whether to give him a telling-off just to kill a bit of time, before deciding against it. He yawned instead, waving away his apology with one hand. ‘Where’s the other one?’

‘Not sure,’ Harris replied, removing his black Superdry jacket. Murphy had priced one of those up in town a few weekends previously. Decided a hundred quid plus could be put to better use.

‘Doesn’t matter. Not like I’ve got anything for him to do.’

‘Still quiet then?’

Rossi winced and turned in her chair, almost knocking over the single plant they had in the office. ‘What did you say?’

Murphy leant back in his chair, smirking as he watched the young DC as he realised his mistake.

‘Er … nothing. I mean … nothing new?’

Rossi moved towards Harris, ‘You said the fucking Q word,
che cazzo
?
Say it again, I dare you.
Cagacazzo
.’

‘What? I don’t … I didn’t mean …’

Murphy sat forward, palms out. ‘Calm down, it’s just a stupid superstition. No reason to start anything, okay?’

Rossi turned towards him, her features relaxing as she saw his face. ‘
Va bene.
It’s okay.’ She sat back in her chair and went back to her computer screen.

Murphy worried that Rossi calling a DC a dickhead in Italian was going to be the height of excitement for the day.

He needn’t have.

A few minutes later the other DC who was sharing the office with them came bursting through the door. New guy, just transferred. Murphy had enough problems remembering the names of those who’d been there years, without new ones being thrown into the mix.

‘We’re on. Body found in suspicious circumstances outside the church in West Derby.’

Murphy jumped up out of his seat at about the exact moment Rossi turned on Harris.

‘What did I tell you? You had to say the word, didn’t you.
Brutto figlio di puttana bastardo
.’

Murphy knew Harris had understood only one of the words Rossi had spat at him as she grabbed her black jacket from behind her chair. ‘Knock it off, Laura.’

Rossi muttered under her breath in reply to him. He had to hold back a laugh. ‘Come on. Let’s just get down there. You know how these things can turn out. It’s probably nothing.’

Which was perhaps a worse thing to say than the Q word.

2

Dead bodies. Decayed or fresh. Crawling with maggots, flies buzzing around your face as you examine them in light or darkness. Or, a serenity surrounding them, framed in a pale light as if time has come to a stop for them. There’s no tangible difference, really. They’re all the same, each with their own tale to tell, how the end has come.

It doesn’t matter how many times you see one, it never gets easier. Not in reality. You can kid yourself; pretend that you’re immune to it, that it doesn’t affect you any more. That’s all it is though – a pretence, a deception. A way of getting through it.

There was a simple answer in Murphy’s opinion. Seeing death makes you contemplate your own … and most people spend their lives actively trying to avoid their own death. Even those risk-takers jumping off cliffs with a tea towel as a parachute are only giving themselves the thrill of cheating death. They’d leave the tea towel behind if they really wanted to die.

Once the initial shock kicks in, an unconscious mental process clicks into place and professionalism takes over. Makes you forget about what it is you’re dealing with. That’s the way Murphy thought of it. He imagined a shutter going down in one part of his mind, thoughts and feelings closed away and a detachment appearing.

The only time it took a bit longer for that process to occur was when they were below a certain age.

This one was on the cusp.

West Derby is a small town just past Anfield, around fifteen minutes from the city centre. Only a few minutes away from the more infamous estates of Norris Green and Croxteth, it was also the home of Alder Hey Hospital and Liverpool F.C.’s training ground, Melwood.

Now it would gain its own little piece of notoriety.

Murphy stood in the gravel entrance to St Mary’s Church in West Derby – Croxteth Park off in the distance – having arrived a few minutes before the forensic team and pathologist, by some miracle. On the steps leading into the church lay what they’d been called for. A young white boy, or maybe a man. He could never tell age these days. Laid on his side, one arm tucked beneath him, the other draped across himself. Eyes closed over a destroyed face. A mask of smeared blood – an attempt to wash it off, perhaps? – which did little to deflate the impact. Open wounds on the cheeks, skin splitting on numerous areas. Red flesh on show above his mouth, his nose misshapen and swollen. Eyes puffed up under the swelling. A faded scar just below his eyebrow was noticeable only as it seemed to be the lone part of his face that was untouched. The grey-silver of healed skin stark against the surrounding reds, browns and blacks.

Rossi finished talking to a uniformed constable and walked back towards Murphy. ‘Well?’ he said as she reached him.

‘Two twelve-year-old lads found him. They were walking through the park to school and spotted him. Thought it was a tramp at first, but looking closer they saw his face and realised he wasn’t breathing. They pegged it, right into the vicar, or whatever they call them, who was arriving for the day. He was the one who called it in.’

‘They notice anything?’

‘They’re a bit shaken up, but adamant they didn’t see anything else. They walk past here every day apparently.’

Murphy finished snapping on a pair of latex gloves, his faded black shoes similarly covered, and bent down to look at the body closer up, wincing as he looked at the victim’s face.

‘How old do you reckon?’ Rossi said from above him.

‘Not sure. Can’t really tell with these kinds of injuries to his face. All these kids look much older than we ever did at that age.’

‘That’s probably just us getting old.’

Murphy grunted in reply and went back to studying the face of the male lying prostrate on the ground. A thick band of purplish red around his neck drew his attention.

‘Fiver says it’s strangulation.’

‘I’m not betting on cause of death, sir.’

Shuffling shoes and shouted orders interrupted Murphy before he could respond. He looked up, trying to effect a look of innocence as Dr Stuart Houghton, the lead pathologist in the city of Liverpool, bounded over. The doctor had grown even larger in the past year, meaning he moved slowly enough for Murphy to pull away from the body before Houghton arrived on the scene.

‘You touched anything?’

‘Morning to you an’ all, Doctor,’ Murphy said, avoiding meeting the doctor’s eyes.

‘Yeah, yeah. What have we got here?’

‘I thought you could tell me that.’

A large intake of breath as Houghton got to his haunches. ‘We’ll see.’ He snapped his own pair of gloves on and began examining the body.

‘How long?’ Murphy said after watching Houghton work for a minute or three.

‘Rigour is only just beginning to fade. At least twelve hours, I’d say. Body has been moved here.’ Houghton lifted the man-boy’s eyelids, revealing milky coffee eyes staring past him, the whites surrounding them speckled with burst blood vessels. A thin, cloudy film pasted across them.

Murphy stepped to the side as Houghton’s assistant finished erecting the white tent around him. ‘Anything on him?’

Houghton finished fishing around the pockets of the black joggers which the victim was wearing. ‘Nothing at all. Was expecting a psalm or bible quote or something, given where we are.’

Murphy shrugged. ‘Could be nothing religious about it. Something we’ll be looking into, obviously.’ A religious nut or someone with a grudge to bear against the church. Murphy didn’t like the thought of either.

‘He’s been laid here on purpose, in this manner. Almost looks peaceful, just curled up. Like he just came here, lay down and went peacefully. As always, first glance is deceiving. Looks like he was strangled with some kind of ligature. Not before he was quite severely beaten.’ Houghton paused, rolling the torn T-shirt up over the victim’s flat teenaged stomach. Wisps of fine hair tracing a line towards a recessed belly button, barely visible behind angry red markings turning purple and black. ‘Bruises to his abdomen. Some old, some new. This boy was beaten severely before death. I’m guessing four … no, five broken ribs. Pretty sure there’ll be more broken bones to find as well. Also, there’s his face of course.’

‘This has been going on a while then. The older bruises, I mean.’

‘Could be. I’ll have more answers after the PM of course.’

Murphy nodded before beckoning over a forensics tech from the Evidence Recovery Unit – ERU – towards him. ‘Prioritise this one, Doc. The media will be all over us before we know it. Dead teen in suspicious circumstances and outside a church, with these injuries? Easy headlines.’

Houghton sighed at him in response, but before he could give a fuller answer Murphy moved away to meet the ERU tech – a white-suited woman with only her deep green eyes on display before she removed the mask covering the bottom half of her face.

‘Yes?’

‘I want a fingertip search of the whole area of the church. Inside and out. Pathways which run alongside it as well. I’ll see how far we can cordon the place off.’

‘We know the drill. Just make sure none of your uniforms get in the way.’

Murphy attempted a smile, which obviously looked more sardonic than he’d meant, judging by her reaction – a roll of the eyes and a turn away. He was always making friends.

‘Laura?’ Murphy called, Rossi lifting a finger which told him he was to wait whilst she finished talking to Houghton. She’d always got on well with the doctor, annoying Murphy no end. He still wasn’t exactly sure what he’d done in the past to piss off the old bastard, but was now so used to it he wasn’t sure he was all that arsed.