The Retribution (33 page)
‘I thought you’d stopped,’ she said, handing the packet over.
‘I have. But some days … ’ Kevin shivered. Paula knew just what he meant. Some days, the most ardent non-smokers yearned for the nicotine support. He lit up with the practised air of a man who has forgotten none of the pleasures of smoking. He inhaled greedily. His shoulders dropped an inch on the exhale. ‘After yesterday … you think you’ve seen it all. And then you see that.’
‘That’ was the contents of a cardboard box left round the back of a freezer food shop near the tower blocks at Skenby. It had been discovered just before dawn by the member of staff detailed to open up the loading bay for an early delivery. The box was
about a metre long, half a metre deep and the same wide. It was sitting in the middle of the loading bay and had once held bags of oven chips. That it held something very different now was evident from the dark stains on the cardboard and the leaking pools of reddish brown liquid. The staff member, who wasn’t paid enough to think, opened it up and promptly fainted, hitting his head on the concrete and knocking himself out. The delivery driver had arrived to find him still out cold, next to a box containing a dismembered body. He’d thrown up, putting the finishing touches to the contamination of the crime scene.
The first cops on the scene had called MIT directly, mostly because the top limb in the box was an arm with the word ‘MINE’ tattooed just above the wrist. Paula and Kevin had arrived just as the doctor was formally pronouncing the bits in the box dead. ‘What have we got?’ Kevin asked.
‘You’ll have to wait for the pathologist to give you a definitive answer,’ the doctor recited. Even he looked a little pale and pinched in the grey dawn light. ‘But in the absence of any other indications, I’d say you’re looking at one body that’s been chopped up into its component parts. There’s a torso, a head, two arms, two thighs and two lower legs.’
‘Jesus,’ Kevin said, looking away.
‘Has it been properly dismembered or just hacked apart?’ Paula couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away from the gruesome sight.
‘For all the use that is to us these days,’ Kevin said bitterly. ‘All you have to do is watch that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to learn amateur butchery.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘This isn’t even that good. At a guess – and this is just a guess, mind, and don’t tell Grisha Shatalov I said so – I’d say he used something like a circular saw. The way it’s gone through the bone, you can see the cutting marks.’ He pointed with his pen at the top of a femur. ‘That’s mechanical.’
‘Jesus,’ Kevin said again. ‘Any idea how long she’s been dead?’
The doctor shrugged. ‘Not long. The blood’s not oozing, hypostasis is just under way. Given the temperature … I’d say probably not much more than a couple of hours. But don’t quote me, it’s not my job.’
‘Any ideas on cause of death?’ The doctor was moving away now and Paula followed him.
‘You really will have to wait for Grisha for that,’ he said, making for his car.
And so she’d ended up smoking with Kevin while the crime-scene operatives did their thing with cameras and sticky tape and chemicals and the local cops went door-to-door in a bid to find a witness. It wasn’t likely round here. The single-storey arcade of shops stood alone, an island in a sea of cheap housing and people struggling to keep their heads above water. Nobody would have seen anything. Not even the ones who had.
‘He’s ringing the changes, this one,’ Kevin said.
‘I was hoping Tony would come up with something helpful. But obviously he’s got more pressing things on his mind.’
‘Have you spoken to the DCI again?’ Kevin asked.
‘Nope. I hope I don’t have to either. It’s always hard to keep stuff from her. I’ll just have to talk about the cat being safe round at ours, curled under a radiator.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Yes. One of the team at the scene found him in his carrier in Chris’s car. Elinor came and got him.’
‘I tell you, I wouldn’t like to be Vance if she gets to him ahead of the pack.’
‘She won’t do anything to compromise the legal process,’ Paula said, convinced she understood Carol far better than Kevin. ‘She’s all about justice. You know that.’
‘Yeah, but this is her brother,’ Kevin protested. ‘You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t want to make him suffer.’
He finished the cigarette and ground it out under his heel. Then he turned up the collar of his jacket. ‘I suppose,’ he said. ‘So, have you got any bright ideas about how we’re going to ID this one if her prints don’t come up on the database? I don’t suppose we can ask one of the uniforms to take the head round with them … ’ He winked at Paula. Gallows humour was what kept them sane out on the streets. You could never explain it to an outsider.
‘If I thought it would speed things up, I’d do it myself.’ Paula tossed her cigarette end in the gutter and took out her phone. ‘So, what do you want for breakfast? I’ll get Sam to pick up some filled rolls on his way over. Bacon? Sausage? Egg?’
Kevin grinned. ‘Bacon for me. And plenty of tomato sauce. I love it when it oozes out the sides … ’
‘Sick fuck,’ Paula said, turning away just in time to see Penny Burgess bearing down on them. ‘And here comes another one.’
They exchanged looks and bolted for the crime-scene margins, where the uniformed officers would effectively manage the borders. They made it just in time, leaving Penny plaintively calling their names. Paula looked back at the furious journalist and nudged Kevin in the ribs. ‘No morning’s a complete bust if you get to piss off the press, is it?’
Her comment somehow broke the logjam of pain they’d
been stuck in since the night before. They were so busy giggling like children they completely missed Penny’s shouted question about Tony Hill’s house being burned to the ground.
Ambrose was briefing his boss when Carol Jordan walked into his squad room stony-faced and blank-eyed. DI Stuart Patterson barely moved his head in greeting. Carol looked like she’d be hard pressed to care less. She ignored the other officers who all paused and turned to look at the new arrival. ‘Alvin,’ she said, pulling out a chair by his desk. ‘Vance: what’s happening?’
Startled, Ambrose looked at Patterson for guidance. The DI carefully avoided his sergeant’s eyes, taking out a packet of chewing gum and unwrapping a stick. ‘This is my operation, DCI Jordan.’
‘Really?’ Carol’s voice walked the line between politeness and insult. ‘So, DI Patterson, what’s happening?’
‘Sergeant? Perhaps you could bring DCI Jordan up to speed, as a courtesy to a member of another force?’
Ambrose gave him a look he normally reserved for naughty children. ‘We were all appalled by what happened to your brother and his girlfriend,’ Ambrose said. ‘I couldn’t be more sorry.’
‘That goes for me too,’ Patterson said, momentarily shamed out of his surliness by the reminder of what Carol had lost. ‘I thought you were on compassionate leave, supporting your parents.’
‘The best support I can give my family is to work the case. I know DCI Franklin is keeping all his options open, but I’m convinced Vance is behind this. Which is why I’m here.’
Ambrose could only imagine the effort it was taking for Carol to hold herself together. Some people might have condemned her for not being with her family at a time like this, but he understood the irresistible drive to be doing something.
He also realised that it had its price. ‘We’ve still no positive leads on where he might be,’ Ambrose said.
Patterson snorted. ‘We know where he bloody was last night,’ he said.
Carol’s eyes brightened. ‘You do? Where was he?’
‘Smack bang in the middle of Worcester. Right under our noses.’ Patterson looked disgusted, as if a bad smell were literally under his nose.
Carol leaned forward. ‘How do you know?’
‘We don’t know for certain,’ Ambrose said, a cautionary note in his dark rumble.
Patterson rolled his eyes. ‘How many other people have got that big a grudge against Tony Hill?’
Her eyes widened in shock. ‘Tony? Has something happened to Tony?’
‘He’s OK,’ Ambrose said, wishing his boss would show Carol some of the sensitivity he prided himself on. ‘Well, physically OK. He’s pretty upset, though. Last night, somebody burned his house to the ground.’
Carol started as if she’d been slapped. ‘His house? His beautiful house? Burned down?’
Patterson nodded. ‘Arson. No question about it. Petrol as accelerant. The fire started at the back of the house where it’s not overlooked. By the time anyone noticed it, the fire had properly taken hold. The fire brigade had no chance of saving it.’
‘That house was full of beautiful things that would go up like a Roman candle,’ Carol said. She ran her hands through her hair. ‘Didn’t you have anyone watching it? Christ, this has got Vance written all over it.’
‘That’s what we thought,’ Ambrose said. ‘I’ve got a team going through the traffic cameras now, to see if we can spot what he’s driving. But if he’s got any sense, he’ll have dumped that car and moved on to another by now.’
‘And he’ll have changed his appearance,’ Carol said. ‘We’ve got no idea what he looks like.’
The door was shouldered open at that point by a uniformed PC cradling a computer tower in his arms. Another followed him with a similar burden. ‘Where d’you want these, guv?’ he called to Patterson.
Patterson looked bemused. ‘What are they?’
The uniform hid his impatience badly. ‘Computers. Towers for desktop machines, complete with hard drives.’
Patterson was in no mood to take cheek from a uniform. ‘I can see what they are. But what are they doing here?’
‘They’re from Northumbria. Urgent overnight delivery. So where do you want them?’
‘They’re Terry Gates’s computers,’ Ambrose said. ‘I asked for them. Tony thinks Gates isn’t smart enough to have cleaned them up properly.’ He pointed to a table against the wall. ‘Stick them down there, would you?’
Patterson’s air of discontent deepened. ‘Nobody told me about this. I suppose you’ll be wanting to spend a fortune on Gary Harcup now?’
Ambrose looked mutinous. ‘I will when I can get hold of him. He’s the expert. And we need an expert for this.’
‘The Super will blow a gasket when you blow the budget on fat Gary,’ Patterson said. ‘It’s not like he’s that fast either. Vance will be on the other side of the world before Gary gets anything off those hard drives.’
Carol cleared her throat. ‘Who is Gary Harcup?’
‘He’s our forensic computer specialist. He costs a fucking fortune, he looks like a bear and he’s about as easy to deal with as a bear,’ Patterson said.
‘I can do better than that,’ Carol said.
‘You’re a computer expert? Forgive me, DCI Jordan, but you don’t look much like a geek to me.’ Patterson could be so bloody annoying, Ambrose thought wearily.
‘That’s all very well, but she’s a BMP officer, not a West Mercian.’
‘She’s a cop. And an expert witness. That’s all that matters,’ Carol said, taking out her phone. ‘I can second her to you.’ Her questioning look was directed at Ambrose. ‘She’s the best.’
‘I’m not going to say no,’ Ambrose said. Patterson turned away in apparent annoyance.
Carol summoned up Stacey’s mobile number. ‘I’ll get her on the road right now.’
‘Doesn’t she have other stuff on? I thought you guys were looking at a serial?’ Ambrose asked.
‘It’s a question of priorities,’ Carol said. ‘And right now, my team knows exactly where their priorities lie.’
The presentation of the body sounded even more bizarre than the last. Dismemberment wasn’t as common as people thought. Professional killers did it to hinder identification. But according to Paula, all the pieces were present and intact, so that wasn’t what was going on here. If Tony had been presented with this case in isolation, he could have usefully speculated about the significance of the dismemberment. It might be about exerting the ultimate literal control over a victim. ‘She can’t walk away if she’s got no legs,’ he said. Or it might be about punishment. ‘She’s so evil she needs to be taken apart and put together again from scratch.’
