The Reaper

And the same thoughts were intruding then, as now. Did his own fear give off the same scent on those rare occasions his nightmares overpowered his reason?

Brook wondered–no he knew–this was the smell discharged as people watched their own deaths unfold. Yes, he knew, as he knew the other smell, the hint of perfume–talcum powder. To keep sweaty palms dry inside latex gloves. He wished he had some now.

Brook stood to one side of the door and tried to take it all in. Bobby Wallis sat in his armchair, facing the TV. His body was contorted with effort, his fists clenched and spotted with blood. His head was tilted at an angle, as though puzzled by something. Brook peered at the half-closed eyes and turned to follow the victim’s sightless gaze, squinting above and beyond the TV to the word ‘SAVED’ daubed in blood on the alcove wall. Rivulets wept from all the letters except the D. This letter was fainter than the others though the writer hadn’t been short of ink. A message from the killer. SAVED. Who was saved and from what? Brook was no nearer knowing. The Reaper was back. He knew that much.

The memories came flooding in and Brook was tempted to move around the room as if physical activity could quell the images in his mind. But one of those images was of stepping in a pool of blood all those years ago in Brixton so he managed to anchor himself.

He noted the poster on the chimney breast and nodded in recognition. Van Gogh’s ‘Irises’. It didn’t belong in this house. Rich, vivid colours stood out against the grubby walls. The blue and golden flowers, the single white flower. But now the picture was different, scarred by the slash of red, like a giant approving tick on a piece of artwork. He was held for a moment. Harlesden in 1990, Brixton a year later. And now Derby. Why such a long gap? It made no sense.

Brook forced his mind back to the present and returned his eyes to Bobby Wallis. There was a new orifice under his chin and his dark blue sweater was saturated black with blood. Arterial sprays were everywhere. Walls, clothing, furniture, the small silver Christmas tree in the corner, the dark carpet probably, though it was difficult to tell.

There would be blood all round the bodies and footprints in the blood–the neighbour’s and PC Aktar’s–who would have had to tramp around the room checking for signs of life. They wouldn’t be hard to distinguish for today’s Scene of Crime Officers with their digital imaging technology. The killer’s footprints would eventually be isolated–for what it was worth. They’d still need a suspect before they could find a match.

Brook moved his head, trying to catch a look at the front of the man’s face. Then he saw it, reflected in the dim light, a faint glimmer scarring his cheeks. It was there as before. The man’s cheeks were encrusted with it–salt from tears. Something had made this man cry and sure as hell, it wasn’t Big Brother.

Brook remembered him now. Bobby Wallis had form and Brook was willing to bet he hadn’t cried since early childhood. He was a local hard man, a man’s man, a petty criminal, who graduated from years in the system and drifted in and out of menial work. Sometimes he got drunk and beat up those who were sure not to fight back. Not his family though. They were part of him. He’d protect his kids. He’d protect his wife. Love was another matter.

Brook remembered his own dead father, a miner in Barnsley. Although as different from Bobby Wallis as chalk from cheese, Brook recognised the symptoms. A life built on small successes, hungrily sought and endlessly trumpeted to drown the background hum of failure.

With his father it had been his work as a union official and coaching the church boys’ football club. With Wallis it would have been a good result at the bookies or the chance smile of a barmaid ‘asking for it’.

Brook turned his gaze to the ample figure beside Bobby. Mrs Wallis was on the sofa comically dressed in a towelling tracksuit that stretched itself, with more than a hint of complaint, around her abundant flesh. At least in death she’d discovered irony, thought Brook, trying to suppress a grim smile.

A pack of cigarettes and gold lighter sat neatly beside her. They would surely have been knocked over in the death struggle so they had to have been placed there post mortem. If there was a reason apart from the killer’s sense of order, Brook didn’t know it. His eye lingered on the pack. He was sorely tempted to take one and light up.

Mrs Wallis had also cried. Her face was contorted with pain and effort, though Brook doubted whether she’d have been able to plead for her life. Like her husband, she wore the large, sopping bib of a bloodstain beneath telltale sinew, protruding like a bag of giblets from her throat. Another life to make no mark. Gone forever. Brook nodded. The same format. And the gore wasn’t too bad. He could cope. Except. There was always ‘except’. That was the same as Harlesden and Brixton too.

The girl lay face down on the fake animal skin rug. Brook was glad he couldn’t see her face–an oversight on the part of the killer perhaps.

Her feet were bare up to her ankles where her pyjamas took over. The bottoms were relatively free of blood and were dotted with cartoon characters. Her top lay in tatters around her torso. It had been slashed open, exposing her back and shoulders. Something had been carved onto the smooth alabaster skin below her shoulder blades and Brook strained his neck to make it out. SAVED again. The lettering was cut in straight lines including the S. The blade had been thin and very sharp, as Brook could see no evidence of effort or hacking around the deep cuts; another cutthroat razor perhaps, or even a scalpel.

The area around the girl’s torn neck shone dark with blood though not as much as might be expected for such a major wound. Nor was there much blood coming from the cuts on her back.

He decided these wounds were administered post mortem to prevent excessive bleeding. That fit the pattern. The killer wouldn’t want his message obscured. Dr Habib would have to confirm it but Brook was sure enough and took some measure of comfort from the fact.

Now he scanned the floor. He could see no obvious sign of the weapon. The Reaper had taken it with him this time. The Reaper. Brook was annoyed with himself. How quickly he’d parcelled up the crime and assigned it to his old quarry. He had to keep an open mind.

He began to scan the room itself. For a family home there was very little mess. Some Christmas cards on a string had been taken down to make way for the Van Gogh poster but even then they’d been neatly stacked behind the little Christmas tree in the corner. If you didn’t count the bloodstains, there was order. The killer had arranged everything, tidied everything so only the important things remained to catch the eye. Before or after death, Brook couldn’t tell. A bit of both, probably.

A few crumbs of food on the carpet were the only other signs of disorder. Probably caused by the victims as they knocked over their meal in the struggle to understand what was happening to them. The pizza boxes were now in the kitchen, out of the way. They’d done their job and were now just clutter as far as the killer was concerned. Everything was deliberate, put in place for Brook to see.

He shook himself to gaze again at the girl, trying not to imagine her ordeal. A few hours before, she would have been pink with life, the rug a deathly white. Now the roles were reversed. She couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. What had she done to deserve this? She hadn’t chosen her parents. Brook could write off their useless existence with little guilt. But the girl should have had her whole life in front of her.

Next Brook glanced at the carry cot beside the TV, glad he couldn’t see inside. It must have been the thought of the little mite that had eaten away at Noble’s sangfroid. This was a new outrage for The Reaper: murdering a baby. He remembered what Charlie Rowlands used to say in London, ‘The smaller the victim, the bigger the crime’.

Was that what started the tears for Bobby and Mrs Wallis? Or was it their young daughter’s throat being torn open in front of them? He wished he could be sure it was one of the two but he knew not to take it for granted. Impending death could induce terrifying selfishness.

And the son, Jason, a petty thief and general chip off the old block, Brook recalled. He was alive and the girl and the baby were dead. Why? That didn’t tally with the past. In Harlesden and Brixton no-one was spared.

For a split-second Brook was consumed by the hope that this was different, just a one-off, mindless slaughter, not the work of The Reaper but the drug-addled frenzy of a teenage boy or a disgruntled neighbour pushed over the edge. He looked back at the Van Gogh poster and the bloody daub on the wall and the thought died in its infancy.

Brook wanted to step outside. His need for a cigarette was becoming almost clinical. He swept his eye round the room one last time. On the shelf of the fireplace above the gas fire stood a bottle of red wine with two half full glasses either side. ‘Nice symmetry,’ nodded Brook. He couldn’t make out the label from where he was but suspected the killer had brought it. It looked too expensive for the weekly Wallis shop at Lidl.

To the left of one of the wine glasses what looked like a lipstick had been stood on its end. Brook glanced at Mrs Wallis to see if she was wearing any. It was difficult to tell. It had probably fallen out of her pocket and had been tidied up by the killer.

Brook turned and then looked back. Whatever impression the killer wanted to convey, the chances were he would want it seen as someone came through the door. Many serial killers enjoyed creating a tableaux. In this case, family life as it should be: gathered together to discuss the events of the day, then wiped out by a single act.

As Brook turned again to plot a path back to the cold night air a noise from behind halted him and his head snapped back towards the murder scene. He froze, not daring to move, listening for further noises. He stared at Bobby Wallis for a long time, watching for any sign of movement, examining the wound on his neck again to be sure he was dead.

He turned to leave but the noise returned. This time it was unmistakeable. A rustling of material. Someone or something was moving in the room. Brook stood like a statue for what seemed an age, his breathing shallow, his ear cocked, only his eyes allowed to move. The next sound was one Brook had not heard for many years. Not since Terri had been a baby. It was an infant gurgling, preparing itself to wake and scream for a feeding with that disproportionate power that robbed so many new parents of their sleep.

Brook stepped round the room as quickly and as delicately as he could manage before peering into the carry cot next to the TV. A baby wriggled, its eyes closed, trying to kick off its blanket. Tiny eyes flickered but instead of joy Brook’s mouth fell open in horror. On the child’s forehead–in small lettering–the word ‘SAVED’ again. Brook narrowed his eyes and pulled the restrictive blanket away from the baby and felt around its torso for any further signs of injury. The baby wriggled even harder and began to kick out and cry. Brook plucked the infant from its swaddling, hardly daring to look at the disfigurement inflicted although there was something odd about it.

He walked towards the door holding the child but stopped suddenly. Then he bent down to sniff the baby. A second later Brook had produced a handkerchief, dabbed it into his mouth then wiped away a corner of the letter D from the baby’s forehead. ‘Lipstick.’ Brook sighed with relief and hurried out of the room.

‘Sergeant!’ he screamed at the top of his voice. ‘Get over here!’

At this terrifying noise, the baby opened its mouth and began to scream as loudly as its tiny lungs would allow. Brook was unable to keep from laughing out loud and long at the baby’s distress. In a bad mood, he’d once said there was, ‘No finer sight than a child in tears,’ and finally his words had found a more worthy setting.

He’d forgotten how to hold an infant and he marched the baby out of the front door at arm’s length, as though he’d set the chip pan on fire. Noble flew to him and took the bundle, amazed.

‘I thought…’

‘Get the little sod off to hospital. If you can, get a shot of the forehead before it gets cleaned off. And when you’ve done that get this place completely sealed off. See to it yourself, John, and let’s get it right this time.’

Two hours later Brook stood at the gate of the Wallis house, pulling hard on a ‘borrowed’ Silk Cut and stamping his feet to keep warm. It wasn’t yet five o’clock but despite that and the biting cold a small huddle of interested bystanders stood shivering in the blackness on the other side of the potholed street, their faces glowing in the burnished light of flashing squad cars and ambulances. A Scientific Support van was parked next to Brook’s Sprite, its back doors open. Noble pulled up and got out of a squad car and approached Brook looking sheepish.

‘How’s the baby, John?’

‘It seems fine. No injuries.’

‘Did you get a shot of the writing…?’

Noble waved a disposable camera at Brook and nodded.

‘…and was it lipstick?’

‘It looks like it. The hospital’s sending us a sample.’ Brook nodded. ‘Sir, I’m sorry about…’

‘It’s not your fault, John. I’m sorry I snapped.’

‘I didn’t check…’

‘You had a crime scene to preserve. You had every right to accept what Aktar told you. It’s his mess.’

‘Even so.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’m just pleased we found out before the PS arrived. That would have been embarrassing.’

‘How could Aktar have made such a mistake?’

‘I suspect he was already feeling unwell.’

At that moment, a scene of crime officer in bright protective clothing carrying one end of a carpet emerged from the house. The other end of the carpet followed supported by another officer. They placed it carefully in the back of the van.

‘Do you want a look round before the bodies go, Inspector?’ he said.

‘Please.’

Brook leapt up to the front steps with Noble in reluctant pursuit.

Inside more officers in bright clothing were photographing the victims before bagging the hands, feet and heads to preserve any trace evidence adhering to them.

Brook stepped across the now bare floor to the girl still lying face down on the rug. He examined the cuts on her back but saw nothing new. Then he looked hard at her ankles and wrists and finally, the back of her head.

‘No marks,’ he said across to Noble who was doing the same examination of Mr and Mrs Wallis.

‘Same here. No obvious contusions or restraint marks as far as I can tell.’

Brook nodded. ‘They were drugged.’ He went to look more closely at the wine bottle on the fireplace.

‘You think the wine’s drugged?’ asked Noble.

‘I don’t think so. The girl wouldn’t have had wine. The killer brought it for some reason. Maybe for himself–to celebrate a job well done.’

Noble managed a chuckle. ‘Yeah, good health. Perhaps he’s left saliva in the glasses.’

‘We’ll see.’ Brook walked back to the door and looked again at the scene as a whole. The TV was pushed back into the alcove, the CD player against the far wall. Brook had checked. It was an old one. Not like Brixton. No entry there. It was the pizzas. They were the way in. He approached the CD player.

‘This has been dusted, I take it,’ asked Brook of no-one in particular.

‘Yeah,’ answered a SOCO kneeling down by the fireplace.

Brook turned the power on with his knuckle and ejected the tray. A CD of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony lay there. There was no case nearby.

Brook smiled. Mahler: something to listen to, something beautiful. He pressed play. The tray returned to the body of the machine. Brook waited for the music. Nothing. The display told Brook that fifteen seconds of the first track had elapsed. He located the volume control and moved it round to the right. At once the low strains of Mahler’s melancholic lament could be heard. He held the circular button and turned it further round. Shuddering horns filled the room.

Brook turned it to full blast and everybody stopped what they were doing and turned to the source of the annoyance. The sound was distorted. Brook returned the volume control to its original position with an apologetic smile then turned off the power.

As he looked round the room for the last time, Brook knew the killer was a man, the man. It couldn’t be a woman. Course it couldn’t. It wasn’t just statistical. Women give life–at least biologically–men take it. No need for offender profiling to tell him that.

Chapter Three

As the pale light of a December dawn broke over the city skyline, Brook’s weary eyelids began to close. Odd the way he always felt more tired when he was denied his eight hours of solid insomnia. He could lay awake reading and thinking–all night sometimes–and still feel viable in the morning, but if he wasn’t horizontal it drained him.

For the second time that morning the phone shattered his fragile peace. It was Chief Superintendent McMaster, before eight in the morning no less. She wasn’t usually sighted before noon, what with all the courses, seminars and consultations she had to attend. She had an endless timetable of heavy-duty liaison to get through, but here she was, in her office, at the end of the criminal rush hour, wanting to speak to him.

Brook hadn’t spoken to the Chief about a case in months, so little was she involved in criminal matters. The last time they’d spoken at all, McMaster had dialled the wrong extension. Brook knew that wasn’t the case this time. Local TV and radio had already been sniffing round and she had to have basic facts to release.

‘DI Brook?’ She had a mellifluous voice, a crucial selling point at her promotion interview.

‘Ma’am.’

‘Can I see you right away, in my office, please? I need to pick your brains about last night.’

‘Right away, ma’am.’

‘Thank God, you were on call last night, Damen. We can hit the ground running. I’ll have a coffee waiting.’

Brook replaced the receiver with a smile. Even at half past seven in the morning she felt able to play him like a violin.

Brook picked up his preliminary report and looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was a mess. He knew he had a good excuse but he also knew that the Chief Super would be immaculate, even at this early hour.

Brook stood outside her office, hand raised to knock, when Noble turned the corner carrying a plastic beaker of coffee. He had a large envelope under his arm. He hadn’t slept either but at least he wasn’t wearing a tatty polo neck.

‘Are those the SOCO photos, John?’

He nodded. ‘I put a rush on them.’

‘Good. I’m going to brief the boss. You’d better join me.’

Noble examined his watch and raised an eyebrow. ‘She’s actually here?’

Brook hesitated. He was sensitive to snipes at the Chief Super. They were alike–outsiders against the rest–and a dig at her was a dig at him. He decided to say nothing, then knocked and entered.

‘Morning ma’am. DS Noble’s with me to fill in some of the blanks.’

If McMaster noticed Brook’s dishevelled condition, she didn’t let it show. ‘Fine,’ she beamed, emptying a cafetiere into two solid French coffee cups, complete with matching saucers. The woman’s touch–a little strategy to make her male colleagues feel subliminally masterful and at ease. Brook knew the routine. At some point she’d feel compelled to water her spider plants. ‘I hope he’s brought his own. Black with sugar isn’t it, Inspector?’

‘Yes ma’am. The bitter and sweet,’ he said after a brief pause. She glanced slyly back at him and Brook felt he saw the ghost of a smile crease her 45 year-old features.

Evelyn McMaster was short, with wavy blond cropped hair and a tidy figure. And yes, her general appearance, make-up and all, was immaculate. She was what the politer elements in the division referred to as a handsome woman. To the less polite elements, this meant that while her looks wouldn’t make you vomit neither were they likely to induce an erection.

Brook liked McMaster. He enjoyed seeing somebody beside himself stir the simmering pot of resentment bubbling away in the division. But it was more than that. He admired the strength of the woman: not just the character she needed to drive her way to the top despite the Force’s inbuilt sexism–but also the will and the energy required to keep her mask in place, to play her role to the hilt, all day, every day.

Everybody wanting to speak to you, soliciting your thoughts, goading you into newsworthy errors, forcing you to discipline every word and tunnel your vision to their agenda. Dealing with people who don’t respect you, who don’t want you there yet still retaining the self-possession to treat all comers in an even-handed way, was something Brook had to applaud. The effort would have consumed him. Brook’s mind needed vast lumps of downtime, even during the day, to uncouple his thoughts from their moorings and set them adrift from the images of his past that tried, too often, to clamber aboard.

McMaster sat down and invited Brook and Noble to do the same.

‘Well, gentlemen. A busy night. DI Greatorix picked up a murder as well.’ Brook managed to exhume an interested expression. ‘Annie Sewell. Poor old dear killed in her so-called sheltered house, though I doubt it’ll knock yours off the front page.’ She nodded sadly at the horror of it all. ‘Is that for me?’ she said, indicating the sheaf of papers in Brook’s hand. He handed it to her and watched her read it quickly and without emotion.

‘Three deaths?’ she enquired. ‘I heard four.’

‘No ma’am,’ Brook returned evenly. ‘You know how these rumours start–the first impression of the neighbour.’

Brook and Noble exchanged a glance when McMaster resumed reading.

‘Windpipes severed. Time of death between eleven and midnight. I assume that’s preliminary,’ she asked with a glance at Brook. He nodded. ‘Very unpleasant,’ McMaster concluded. ‘At least from these bare facts,’ she added with perhaps a suggestion of criticism. ‘Thoughts gentlemen?’

‘The only suspect we have is the Wallis boy, Ma’am. Jason.’ Brook offered. ‘He was drunk and may have been on drugs. It’s just possible he may have gone berserk. He’s still unconscious in hospital. We’ll be seeing him later to question him and hopefully get the results of any tests.’ Brook sipped at his coffee.

‘But you don’t see him as our killer?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘Why so sure?’

‘The scene isn’t disorganised enough for that kind of chemically fuelled slaughter,’ said Brook.

‘And his clothes and hands show no visible blood stains, ma’am,’ added Noble.

‘I see.’

‘Also there’s no weapon. If Jason’s our killer we have to accept that in his drunken and/or drugged stupor he killed his family, turned on loud music to attract attention, stumbled out to hide the murder weapon and stumbled back in to munch on a leftover pizza before keeling over.’

‘Stranger things have happened on drugs.’

‘True but there are a couple of other factors that diminish the likelihood.’

‘And what are those, Damen?’ she asked.

Whenever she called him Damen, Brook knew she was trying to convey approval. He accepted it without ego. It was a compliment to his powers because it was her way of coaxing the most, and best, information from him. As she saw it, the more she knew, the better her ability to outflank any criticism from below or, more importantly, above. An in-control bad leader looks like a good leader under almost all scrutiny. Not that she was a bad leader.

‘Well, Forensics will have to confirm this, but it’s clear from the blood patterns that the family were killed where they were found. Even if we assume that Jason was in full control of his faculties, we then have to accept that he walked into the room and cut his sister’s throat where she lay, without father or mother moving a muscle to intervene. Then he did the same to his parents, in which order I don’t yet know, though I suspect it was ladies first. Again, little sign of physical struggle.’