The Reaper (40 page)

‘Nembutal?’ Brook looked up. ‘That’s a barbiturate. Relatively harmless.’

‘So is Seconal and you’re right. It says here if they’re taken orally, they’re absorbed slowly. Injected into a vein it causes damage. It would have killed her.’

Brook received this information with a small measure of relief. ‘So she may have felt no pain.’

‘But why cut her throat as well?’

‘For show, like the Elphick boy,’ answered Brook. ‘What about the parents?’

‘Smack. They were both users so it was probably self-administered, which means he didn’t have to work hard to control them.’

‘That explains why they weren’t gagged.’

‘I guess.’

‘Would you like the good news, guv?’ asked Brook, nodding at his own reading matter. ‘Floyd Wrigley Petty theft, possession, affray, ABH, GBH. It goes on.’ There was no mention of rape and murder. Now there never could be.

‘Some comfort then,’ nodded Rowlands.

‘It gets worse, guv. Or better. DS Croft reckons Floyd was living off immoral earnings to fund his habit. They had nothing solid but…’

‘He was pimping his girlfriend? Classy.’

‘Not the girlfriend, Tamara, the daughter.’

‘Fucking…scum. How old?’

‘Eleven. There’s a note at the end of the autopsy. They asked the pathologist to look for it. She wasn’t a virgin, guv.’

Both fathers of daughters, one living, the other dead, looked at a space that couldn’t look back at them, that couldn’t see through the eyes, into their hearts where all the private things were.

Rowlands lit a cigarette and took a huge pull. ‘I don’t envy you, Brooky At least Elizabeth…’ Rowlands looked down at his coffee. In a trice that a gunfighter would have been proud of, he’d whipped out his flask and was replenishing his cup. ‘Look after Amy and little Theresa, lad. You only get one go at it.’

‘Guv…’

‘I know. Sorenson’s finished with you. But you’re here aren’t you?’

Brook examined his boss. He didn’t look well. Then again he never looked well.

Rowlands squinted up through the blue smoke drifting
across his face. ‘Ready?’ He finished his coffee at Brook’s nod and they manoeuvred themselves off the Star Burger’s unyielding bucket seats.

They walked together down Brixton High Street, not speaking, not looking at each other. Instead they looked at the second-hand Christmas illuminations, cast-offs purchased by the Council, on the cheap from Blackpool. They even studied the famous railway bridge, straddling the main road with its patronising ‘We’re backing Brixton!’ message, its cluster of business logos a knee-jerk, post-riots affirmation of capitalism. They looked but they didn’t see.

As they turned onto Electric Avenue, Brook had to make a conscious effort to stay half a pace behind Rowlands who was scanning the street to get his bearings.

He stopped outside a door sandwiched between two moribund shop fronts, daubed with posters for bands, concerts, jumble sales and obscure political groups. A constable squinted at their ID and stood aside. A gaggle of ghouls still loitered outside the murder scene four days after the event. They talked in lowered tones about the killings. They were shocked and horrified in conversation, but glowed inside, satisfied to be a spit from the spotlight of public infamy.

Brook glanced warily around for the empty boxes that The Reaper had left outside the doorway. They were gone. Rowlands passed through the entrance but Brook hung back.

‘You coming, lad?’ said Rowlands from the bottom of the stairs.

Brook smiled and followed his boss. He made to close the door but the constable put his hand out to keep it open. ‘They want fresh air up there, sir.’ Brook nodded.

The lounge was the last room at the top of the rickety stairs. Rowlands nodded to the two SOCOs on their knees still sifting and scraping and measuring and combing four days after the fact.

Brook took out glossy photographs from the dossier and started handing them to Rowlands who examined them against the layout of the room. It was bright now because the curtains had been drawn back. On the photographs the curtains were closed and the room was poorly lit. Rowlands looked around, getting the measure of what had happened here, acclimatising to where he could and couldn’t walk.

There was a tatty, if comfortable looking sofa at one end of the room. It had once been a faded blue but was now covered in black stains, particularly on the seat cushions where rivers of blood had dammed against the thighs of the man and woman, sat side by side. The rest of the sofa was a patchwork of blood splatter.

The bare floor had also been stained–dry-black pools, in contrast to the scuffed dirty brown of the boards. The bloodstains were edged in white chalk and tape to alert pedestrians. At the edge of one such stain the smooth circular regularity of the encroaching blood had been breached and part of a footprint was clearly visible.

‘What size?’ asked Rowlands.

‘The file reckons ten,’ said Brook. ‘Thereabouts.’

‘And what’s Sorenson?’

‘Size eight.’

‘Told you so.’

‘We can’t say for sure it’s the murderer’s shoe, guv.’

‘Well it ain’t the milkman’s.’

To one side, under the window, lay a small mattress
with a couple of thin blankets for cover–perhaps the place of work for one wretched human being.

In the middle of the room there was an old straight-backed dining chair, lying on its side, facing the sofa. Another apron of black spewed out from where it had toppled. Black-red sprays extended out from the mass of the pool-like flares under the great initial force of the severed artery. These thin jets of blood had escaped at several different angles. The girl, Tamara, had contested her fate, despite the drugs. Shed been bound, gagged and doped up but still fought against the ebbing of her scarred life.

What had she thought of the world in those last few terrible moments, Brook wondered? Tied to a chair, cold in vest and knickers, throat sliced by a stranger, facing her parents, drug addicts, who sold her for sex and were only able to stare back, saucer-eyed, uncomprehending, as their daughter convulsed herself into oblivion.

‘Why her? Why the Elphick boy? Why the children?’ muttered Rowlands.

Brook approached the top-of-the-range CD player. He squirreled a look at Rowlands who nodded back at him.

‘Alright, don’t rub it in, Brooky.’

‘Has this been dusted for prints?’ Brook could tell from the powder residues that it had, so he switched it on before the SOCOs could reply. He opened the CD tray. It was empty. Brook reached into his overcoat and pulled out a thin plastic case. He flipped out the disc and fed it into the machine. Mozart’s Requiem crept out of the speakers positioned in opposite corners, barely audible. Brook turned it up so the music flowed over them. This would be the only beauty young Tamara would have known in her life.

The SOCO boys turned round at the noise.

‘Atmosphere, lads.’

Rowlands examined a crime scene photograph and moved closer to the gas fire. He could still see the glint of broken glass on the boards. ‘This is where the picture frame was smashed, Brooky.’ He peered at the trickle of blood on the wall above the hearth.

‘Maybe it was in the way of his message,’ offered Brook.

‘Yeah but why not just move it? Why would he smash the glass and remove the actual picture? He didn’t take souvenirs in Harlesden.’ Rowlands moved over to the sofa. ‘Floyd sat here, the woman, Natalie, this side.’ Rowlands’ tone conveyed his raised eyebrow. ‘Interesting. Look.’ He pointed to the photograph of Floyd Wrigley’s body. ‘There’s more than one cut here. It was a struggle. Like the killer had trouble. Or maybe there was a smaller, weaker accomplice.’

‘Look at his neck though, guv. There are some weights in the bedroom. He worked out. A real vain bastard.’

‘So?’

‘Well, in a condition of heightened adrenaline, combined with the effect of the heroin, there’s no telling how his neck muscles would react. They could have seized, making them difficult to cut.’

‘Maybe. I’m not complaining, laddie. One less piece of shit on the streets.’ Rowlands pulled out a glossy print and handed it to Brook. ‘This is interesting.’

‘What am I looking at?’

‘The back of his neck. See that mark.’ Rowlands indicated the long thin weal on Floyd Wrigley’s skin.

‘Yeah.’

‘What do you think caused that?’

‘No idea, guv.’ Brook became self-conscious under his superior’s gaze.

Rowlands wasn’t used to his sergeant not having the answers. ‘Maybe the killer helped himself to a trophy. Maybe Floyd wore a chain and the killer yanked it off as a keepsake.’ Brook said nothing. Rowlands turned to the SOCO boys still groping around on their knees. ‘Are there any family photographs in the flat, fellas? There’s no mention in the inventory.’

They both looked blank and shrugged back at Rowlands. Then one said, ‘You’ll have to ask DS Croft, sir.’

‘Do you mind if we look around for any?’

Another shrug. ‘Go ahead. We’ve finished in the other rooms, sir.’

Brook and Rowlands set to work. It didn’t take long. Wrigley had clearly sold everything that wasn’t required for sleeping or sitting. No camera, no photographs.

‘What are we looking for, guv?’

‘Snaps of the flat, family portraits, anything that might give us a clue about what was in that picture frame or what was round Floyd’s neck.’

Brook shook his head and looked at his boss. ‘It must be a souvenir. Like you said.’

‘Exactly.’ Rowlands nodded. ‘Which gives us a different MO.’

‘Perhaps he had no choice, guv. Perhaps, when he moved the frame, he cut himself.’

‘On the picture and not the glass? There were no traces of anything on the glass. No prints, blood, nothing.’

‘It’s a puzzle, guv.’

Rowlands suddenly looked at Brook, his face animated. ‘Maybe it’s not a different MO. Maybe he took something from Harlesden that we don’t know about.’

Brook laughed. ‘You’re on top form today, guv.’

‘One of us has got to be,’ Rowlands snapped back. There was an awkward silence. ‘I’m sorry, lad. I didn’t mean that. I know what you’ve put into this case. I’m glad you’re not getting too involved.’

The awkwardness returned. Rowlands turned away and laid a consoling arm on Brook’s shoulder for a few seconds.

‘Forget it, guv. If Wrigley’s got any relatives that aren’t in hell with him, Croft should find out what was in that frame.’

Rowlands nodded. ‘Good thinking, lad.’

Brook broke away and went behind the sofa to check the last view of the parents, as he had in Harlesden. As with the Elphicks, they would have watched as their daughter died, and afterwards, seen the word SAVED written on the chimney wall, in the blood of their child.

‘Why SAVED and not SALVATION?’ mused Brook to himself.

‘There could be a pattern. Something biblical.’

Brook couldn’t suppress a curt laugh. ‘You’d know, guv.’

‘Cheers.’

‘It’s more likely lack of space or time, if not blood.’

‘One thing puzzles me. If the killer brings this CD player as some phoney prize, like you say, why let the killer in? With Floyd’s habit, I would think he’d just take the box at the door and keep it to exchange for drugs. Why let him in to set the thing up?’

‘Our guy wouldn’t hand it over unless he was allowed
in to set it up. Part of the prize. Or maybe the parents didn’t let him in. If they were tripping the light fantastic, maybe they were bombed out on the sofa.’

‘The girl.’ Rowlands nodded, his eyes and lips clenched.

‘Yeah. How easy could it be? He comes in, sees the parents in the state they’re in. He puts the girl under with the chloroform then ties and gags her then binds mum and dad. Just in case. Then the injection…’

‘Enough to kill her?’

‘Sure, but not before he gets to cut her throat.’

‘Then why give her the injection, lad? He didn’t do that with the Elphick boy.’

‘No, guv. But he didn’t have to. He’d smothered the boy before he hung him. Maybe Sammy and his missus weren’t as upset as they should’ve been, as they would’ve been if they’d actually seen him die. He cut off the fingers to show the Elphicks he was dead. But it wasn’t enough. So now The Reaper feels the need to slaughter the girl while her parents watch.’

‘So he gives her a lethal dose of barbiturates because he doesn’t want her to suffer. What a prince.’ Rowlands looked away deep in thought. Both men considered the scene. Mozart’s portentous choir flowed over them.

‘What makes someone with a life that shit cling on to it with such force? In her shoes…’ Rowlands stopped himself in time. He snaked a look at Brook who pretended to be absorbed in something else. ‘So then what, lad?’

Brook took a heavy sigh and found his bookmark in the drama. ‘My guess is that he’s already set up the CD player. He’s brought Mozart’s Requiem. He wants to hear it as he works. Or he wants the Wrigleys to hear it.

‘There was a wet towel in the bathroom sink. My guess is he’s revived mum and dad to make them watch. Then he cuts the girl’s throat and stands back to watch Floyd and Natalie’s reaction.

‘It should be a good show. The girl’s struggling for all she’s worth. She knocks over the chair, fighting with as much strength as she can muster.

‘But maybe Floyd and Natalie are on Cloud Nine and don’t know what’s going on. It’s worse for the child than it was in Harlesden, but it doesn’t make the parents suffer. They’re too far gone.’ Brook’s voice began to soften and he looked away as though watching a re-enactment unfolding in the middle distance. ‘He wants them to see. He wants
him
to see. He hates Floyd Wrigley. He’s scum–the lowest form of life on earth. What he’s done with his life demands punishment. He’s wasted it and ruined others. Even watching his daughter choke on her own blood won’t settle the debt.’ The other officers exchanged a look and stopped to listen. ‘Because you don’t care, do you? You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You fear your own death, not your daughter’s, not your wo-man’s.’ Brook spat out the word in the loud Jamaican patois he’d heard so many times from bejewelled Yardies. There was silence for a moment. Nobody moved. Only Mozart.