Cold Killing

He prayed this case would be no different.

It was almost 1 p.m. and Sean had spent the morning on the phone. He’d told the same story a dozen times. To his superintendent, the Intelligence Unit, the Gay and Lesbian liaison officer, the local uniformed duty officer, the Community Safety Inspector. He was sick of telling. Sally and Donnelly had returned for their meeting and sat in his office. Sally had brought coffee and sandwiches, which Sean ate without tasting. It was the first thing he had eaten since the phone call from Donnelly early that morning, so he was happy just to get something into his stomach.

Between bites they talked, all of them aware they hadn’t a moment to waste on a proper lunch. The first days of a murder inquiry were always the same – so much to get through and so little time. Forensic evidence degraded, witnesses’ memories faded, CCTV tapes would be recorded over. Time was Sean’s enemy now.

‘Anything from the door-to-door, Sally?’ he asked. ‘Give me good news only.’

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘I’ve still got guys down there knocking on doors, but so far all we’re being told is that Graydon kept himself to himself. No noisy parties. No fights. No problems. No nothing. Everybody says he was a nice kid. As for last night, nobody saw or heard a thing. Another quiet night in South London.’

‘That can’t be right,’ Sean argued. ‘A man gets beaten to death within a few feet of what, four other flats, and no one heard it?’

‘That’s what we’re being told.’

Sean sighed and turned towards Donnelly. ‘Dave?’

‘Aye. We’ve managed to make copies of his diary, address book and what have you. I’ve got a couple of the lads going through that now. Expect to be informed about next of kin pretty soon. No boyfriend yet, though. No one name coming up over and over. I’ll be sending the troops out to trace friends and associates as and when we have their details. Oh, and the Coroner’s Officer has been on the blower. The body’s been moved from the scene and taken to Guy’s Hospital. Post-mortem’s at four p.m. today.’

Sean’s mind flashed with the images of previous post-mortems he’d attended as he pushed what was left of his sandwiches to one side.

‘Who’s doing it?’

‘You’ve got your wish there, boss. It’s Dr Canning. Anything more from the forensics team at the scene?’

‘Not yet. Roddis doesn’t reckon they’ll be finished until about this time tomorrow, then as usual everything gets sent to the lab and we wait.’

A young detective from Sean’s team appeared at the door holding a small piece of paper pinched between his fingers. ‘I think I’ve found an address for the parents.’ The three detectives continued to look at him.

‘I’ll take that, thanks,’ Sally told him. The young detective handed her the note and backed away from the door.

Sean knew his responsibilities. ‘I’ll come too. Shit, this is gonna be fun. Dave, I’ll see you back here at about three thirty. You can take me to the post-mortem.’

‘I’ll be here,’ Donnelly assured him.

Sean tugged his jacket on and headed for the door, Sally in pursuit. ‘And remember,’ he told Donnelly, ‘if anyone asks, this is a straightforward domestic murder. No need to get anyone excited.’

‘Having doubts?’ Donnelly managed to ask before Sean was gone.

‘No,’ Sean answered, not entirely truthfully. For a second he was back in the flat, back at the scene of the slaughter, watching the killer moving around Graydon’s prostrate form, but he saw no panic or fury in his actions, no jealousy or rage, only a coldness – a sense of satisfaction.

Donnelly’s voice snapped him back. ‘You all right, guv’nor?’

‘Sorry, yes I’m fine. Just find me the boyfriend – whoever he is. Find him and you’ve found our prime suspect.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I know you will,’ Sean told him as he watched him stride back into the main office.

3

Late Thursday afternoon

Sean and Donnelly walked along the corridors of Guy’s Hospital, heading for the mortuary. They were accompanied by Detective Constable Sam Muir who would be acting as exhibits officer – taking responsibility for any objects the pathologist found on or in the body during the post-mortem. Sean wondered if he would bump into his wife, Kate, one of the all too few doctors attending to the never-ending flow of patients through the Accident and Emergency department – the sick and injured from the surrounding areas of Southwark, Bermondsey and beyond. Some of London’s poorest and most forgotten, living in council flats where violence and crime were seldom far away, yet all of their degradation and suffering going unnoticed and unseen by the swarms of tourists wandering around Tower Bridge and Tooley Street. If only they knew how close they were to some of London’s most dangerous territory.

His mind returned to the victim’s parents. He and Sally had called at the small terraced house in Putney. A desirable neighbourhood on the whole, but boisterous on weekend evenings. Sally had done most of the talking.

Daniel had been their only child. The mother was devastated and didn’t care who saw her fall to the floor screaming. Her despair was a physical pain. When she could speak, all she could say was the name of her son.

The father was stunned. He didn’t know whether to help his wife or collapse himself. He ended up doing neither. Sean took him into the living room. Sally stayed with the mother.

They knew their son was gay. It had bothered the father at first, but he grew to accept it. What else could he do other than push the boy away? And he would never do that. He said his son worked as a nightclub manager. He wasn’t sure where, but Daniel had been doing well for himself and had no money problems, unlike other young people.

He hadn’t met any of his son’s friends. Daniel hadn’t kept in touch with his old school friends. He came home quite often, almost every Sunday for lunch. If he had a boyfriend then neither he nor his wife knew about it. Their son had said he wasn’t interested in anything like that. They hadn’t pressed him.

The father had asked what they were to do now. His wife would be finished. She lived for the boy, not him. He knew it and didn’t mind − but with the boy gone?

He wanted to know who would do this to his boy – who would do this to them? Why? Sean had no answers.

As the three detectives entered the mortuary they could see Dr Simon Canning preparing for the post-mortem. A body lay covered with a green sheet on what Sean knew would be a cold, metal operating table. Water continually ran under the body to an exit drain as the pathologist did his work, so that the whole thing resembled a large, shallow, stainless-steel bathtub.

Some detectives could detach themselves from the ugly reality of post-mortems, bury themselves in the science and art of the procedure. Unfortunately, Sean was not one of those detectives. For days to come images of his own post-mortem would blend with the memories of his shattered childhood. Meanwhile Dr Simon Canning was busy arranging his tools – bright, shiny, metal instruments for torturing the dead.

‘Afternoon, detectives.’

‘Doctor. Good to see you again,’ Sean replied.

‘I doubt that,’ said the pathologist. Canning was pleasant enough, but businesslike and succinct. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Inspector. I’ve started without you. I was just having a bit of a clean up before continuing. Right then, shall we get on with it?’

The doctor pulled back the sheet covering the body with one quick movement of his arm. Sean almost expected him to say, ‘Voila!’ like a waiter lifting the lid off a silver platter.

The hair on the back and side of the head was matted with blood − it looked sticky. Sean could clearly see the gashes in the side of the head and the small stab marks all over the naked body.

‘Seventy-seven,’ Canning told him.

Sean realized he was being spoken to. He glanced up at the doctor. ‘Sorry?’

‘Separate stab wounds. Seventy-seven in total. None in the back of the body. All in the front. Made by some form of stiletto knife, or an ice pick, but it’s the first blow to the head that killed him. Eventually.’

Dr Canning pointed to the head wound. Sean forced himself to lean closer to the body. ‘One can see the ear is missing. Not cut off, but more a case of the victim being hit so hard that whatever he was hit with crushed the skull and still had enough energy to tear the ear away as the swing of the object carried through.’

‘Nice,’ was all Sean said.

‘And the victim was on his knees when the first blow was struck,’ the doctor continued. ‘We can see the cut to the scalp is angled downwards, not upwards. The killer swung low, not high.’

‘Or he was hit from behind?’ Sean offered.

‘No,’ Canning told him. ‘He fell backwards, not forwards. Look at the stains from the flow of blood. They run to the back of the head, not towards the face.’

He looked at the detectives, making sure they were concentrating on what he was saying and not what they were seeing. He had their attention.

‘But that’s all straightforward. The interesting thing is the angle of the stab wounds. Bearing in mind of course that our friend here has wounds from his ankles to his throat, I can be almost positive the victim was already prostrate on the floor when he was stabbed. That in itself isn’t unusual.’ The doctor paused to catch his breath before continuing his lecture. ‘The interesting bit is this − most of the stab wounds are at the wrong angle of entry. You see?’

‘I’m not quite with you, Doctor.’

‘It’s like this.’ Canning looked around for a prop. He found a pair of scissors. ‘Firstly, I know the killer is probably right-handed. The angle of the stab wounds tells me that, as does the fact the victim was hit on the left side of his head. Now, imagine I’m the killer. The victim can play himself. In order to stab somebody from head to toe, the killer would have to be at the side of the body. Not on top, as you would first imagine. If he sat astride the body then it would have been difficult to reach around and stab the thighs, shins.’ The doctor twisted his body back towards the victim’s feet so as to give a practical demonstration. His point was well made.

‘Also, the entire body has puncture wounds. There isn’t a large enough unmolested area to suggest the killer was sitting astride the victim.’

‘So the killer was kneeling on the side of the victim when he stabbed him. That doesn’t help me,’ Sean told him.

Canning continued. ‘What I’m saying is that the killer didn’t crouch down next to the victim and stab away as we would expect in most frenzied crimes of passion. This killer moved around the body stabbing at different areas. There’s no doubt about it. It’s as if the killer didn’t want to be uncomfortable. He didn’t want to over-stretch, almost as if he was placing ritual stab wounds, or something of that nature. It’s a strange one.

‘If you ask me, I’d say this was probably not a frenzied attack. These stab wounds are deliberately placed. Controlled. The killer took his time.’

Sean felt a coldness grip his body and mind as he flashed back to the image he’d had of the killer’s careful, machine-like actions as he stabbed the victim to death. He ran a hand slowly through his short brown hair. He could deny many things, but he couldn’t deny his instincts. His gut told him things were going to become difficult. Complicated. The domestic theory was beginning to leak and in all likelihood they weren’t looking for a scared lover any more. There would be no tearful suspect surrendering to custody because he couldn’t deal with the guilt. They were now after something else. Sean was sure of it. He exhaled deeply, his mind swirling with questions.

‘We need to get back to the office. Are you finished here, Doctor?’

‘Almost. One last thing.’ He pointed to the victim’s wrists. ‘It’s very faint, but it’s there. On both wrists.’

Sean looked closely. He could see some discolouration of the victim’s skin. Thin bands of slightly darker tissue. Canning continued his analysis.

‘They’re old bruises. Probably caused by ligatures. He was tied with something. I’ll have a look under ultraviolet; that’ll show up any other old injuries. I’ll check the entire body. All my findings will be in the final report.’

‘Fine,’ Sean said, the sense of urgency clear in his voice.

‘Please, Inspector. Don’t let me hold you up. I’ll keep you informed.’

Donnelly spoke. ‘D’you want me to sack looking for a boyfriend, boss?’

Sean shook his head. ‘No. Let’s check it out as a matter of course. The boyfriend could still be the killer. Young Daniel here may have hooked up with some freak and not even known it. No forced entry to the flat, remember?’ Sean said it, but he didn’t believe it. Besides, if there was a boyfriend around, he had a right to know about Daniel. They needed to find him anyway.

‘We’d better get back and break the good news.’

‘You gonna tell the superintendent about this, boss?’ asked Donnelly.

‘I don’t have much choice.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s getting late. I wouldn’t want to spoil his night. Better to tell him tomorrow – after that it looks like the circus will be coming to town. Just don’t be one of the clowns.’

‘And the rest of the team?’

‘They’ve got more than enough to be getting on with for tonight. Sort out a briefing for tomorrow morning. I’ll put them in the picture then.’

Sean and Donnelly made for the exit. Sean needed the fresh air. They walked through the swing doors and were gone.

4

If only you were capable of understanding the beauty and clarity of what I am doing. You see, my very being is testament to Nature. To her mercilessness. Her complete lack of compassion. Her violence. You have cast aside Nature’s rules and chosen to live by other laws. Morality. Restraint. Tolerance. I have not.

So here we stand, packed into this mechanical coffin, trundling under the streets of London. They humorously call this one the misery line. Look at you. None of you has the faintest idea of what I am. You look at me and see a reflection of yourselves. That is my necessary disguise.

Come closer and I’ll show you who I really am.

Damn, these trains can be unbearable in summer. All of us forced to breathe in each other’s filth. Six thirty in the evening − everybody trying to get home to anaesthetise their brains with alcohol, cocaine, television, whatever. Anything to black out the awfulness of their miserable, pointless lives. But before they can indulge those little pleasures they have to suffer this final torture.

I usually distract myself by picking a passenger at random and imagining what it would be like to cut their eyes out and then slit their throat. The stench of all these potential subjects is very stimulating to my imagination. Maybe I could introduce myself to someone before going home to my dutiful wife and well-behaved children? One day, when I work out how to get away with it, I’ll slit their throats too.

What about that passenger there? A nice-looking young lady. Well dressed, attractive haircut, good figure. No engagement or wedding ring. Interesting. Telltale signs like that give me all the information I need. The lack of rings could mean she lives alone or with some girlfriends. I could follow her back to her flat. Yes, I’m almost certain she lives in a flat. I’d pretend to be a neighbour who has just moved in. We would walk through the communal entrance together. I would be sure to jangle some keys so she wouldn’t suspect foul play. Then she might invite me in for a coffee: it’s happened before. A quick check to see if anyone else was in or expected soon and, if not, well then I could have some fun with the pretty girl with the nice haircut.

Not tonight though. I must get home on time and be the good husband. Disguises as successful as mine need a lot of maintaining. But I can’t wait much longer. Before the little queer it had been a couple of weeks since I visited anyone and that was nothing but a quickie. A mere sketch. Some lawyer-type with a briefcase. I made that one look like a robbery. Stabbed him twice through the heart and remembered to take the cash from his wallet.

He looked surprised. I asked him the time and as his lips parted to speak I stabbed him. I pulled the knife out of his chest, then stabbed him again. This time I left the blade in and held on to it as he slumped to the ground. He had the same look in his eyes as the others. More quizzical than afraid. He was trying to speak. As if he wanted to ask me, ‘Why?’ Always people want to know why. For money? For hate? For love? For sexual pleasure? No, not for any of these petty motivations.

So I whispered the true reason why in his ear. It was the last thing he would have heard. ‘Because I have to.’

5

Friday morning

It was hot in the way only a giant metropolis can get. The heat mixed with the fumes of four million cars, taxis and buses. It made the road warp.

It was Friday morning and Sean was late. He had a briefing to give at ten and had wanted to be at work at least an hour and a half before that to prepare his thoughts. Thanks to the traffic along the Old Kent Road and his three-year-old daughter Mandy, who’d decided to throw a tantrum because of Sean’s broken promise to take her to Legoland, he would barely have time to read through his incoming emails. He’d tried to read them on his iPhone as the traffic staggered forward, but after almost driving into the back of the car in front of him for the third time he’d thought better of it.

His team had been assigned initial tasks the previous day − now he hoped those tasks had progressed the investigation. The briefing he would soon be chairing was an opportunity for the team to tell him what they had discovered so far. DS Roddis and his forensic crew had finished at the scene and he would be present to detail their findings. Findings that could be critical to the investigation.

He rang Sally to let her know he was running late.

‘I’ll be there within half an hour if this traffic starts moving. Briefing is still at ten unless I call again.’

‘Do you want everyone in the briefing room?’ Sally asked.

‘Er … no,’ Sean answered after a second’s thought. ‘We’ll do it in our incident room, there’s more space.’

‘No problem.’ Sally had more to say and knew she would have to speak quickly or Sean would already have hung up. ‘Guv’nor …’

He heard her just in time. ‘What?’

‘I thought you should know some wit’s come up with a name for our killer.’

Sean knew he wasn’t going to like this. ‘Go on.’

‘Some of the guys have christened him “The Fairy Liquidator”.’

There was silence from Sean. He sat stony-faced, thinking about what the family would say if they knew the police investigating their son’s death were calling the killer ‘The Fairy Liquidator’.

After five seconds he spoke. ‘Let them know in advance that from this second onwards anyone using that name will be off the team, back in uniform and directing traffic in Soho just as soon as they can get measured up for a new helmet. Take this as a first and final warning, Sally.’

‘I understand. I’ll make sure it’s not used again.’

‘Good.’ He hung up and continued his tortuous journey through the unbreathable air. Before the murder of Daniel Graydon he’d planned to take the day off and make it a long weekend with his family, doing normal things that a normal family would do – the sort of things he never did as a child. More promises made to his wife and children broken. His stomach tightened with the sense of sadness that suddenly engulfed him – an almost panicked longing to be with his family. He shook the feelings away as best he could, chasing them from body and mind as if they were a weakness he couldn’t afford to carry with him to his work. Besides, there was nothing he could do about it. It was the nature of the beast. It was his job.

Sean and his team were back in the open-plan office that was their incident room and second home. Desks were scattered about, mainly in groups of four, and most were adorned with old oversized computer screens and, if the owner was lucky, a corded telephone. Murders in London were still being solved in spite of the equipment available rather than because of it. Sean stared through the Perspex into the room on the other side, watching the detectives: most preferring to sit on the edges of their desks talking in groups, while others moved with purpose, gathering last-minute stationery or squeezing in one final phone call ahead of Sean’s arrival.

The incident room was already changing as the investigation developed. Where there had been blank whiteboards and bare walls the night before, now there were photographs of the scene, the victim, the initial post-mortem results, pinned up in no particular order. The name of the victim had been confirmed: Daniel Graydon. It adorned a piece of white card and was stuck above the photographs of his mutilated body and violated home. Sean noted they’d been put up in one corner of a wall only. The rest of the wall had been left empty. Clearly someone on his team believed there could be more photographs. More victims.

The whiteboard listed tasks, ‘actions’ to be undertaken and which detective was allocated to each. All were numbered and when complete a line would be drawn through it, so if the investigation was failing the board would tell the tale. It never lied. No progression meant fewer and fewer tasks to be placed on the board, causing Sean’s seniors to grow ever more anxious, more desperate and more likely to interfere; but such concerns were for later. The first couple of days would be busy enough just collecting and preserving evidence. The early days were crucial. Evidence missed now could be lost for ever.

Sean walked the few steps from his office into the main body of the incident room and waited for the detectives to become still and quiet − the noise level fading as surely as if he’d turned the volume down on an amplifier. He spoke: ‘Right, people, before we get into this let’s be clear that if anyone uses the term “Fairy Liquidator” on this inquiry they’re gone. Understood?’ Silent nods of agreement all around the room. ‘Good. Now that nonsense is out the way, we can get down to business.

‘Firstly, you all need to know that in light of the autopsy I no longer believe this is a domestic murder. Dr Canning tells me that the victim would have been incapacitated with the first blow to the head, meaning there was no violent struggle.’

‘What about the broken furniture and the blood spray patterns suggesting a fight?’ Sally asked.

‘Staged,’ Sean told her. ‘Cleverly staged, but staged all the same. He’s trying to throw us off the scent. The stab wounds have the appearance of some sort of ritual killing, not a frenzied attack.

‘Most of you know DS Andy Roddis here, the forensic team leader. Andy’s kindly given up his time to bring us all up to date on any findings from the scene.’

‘That’s very fucking nice of you, Andy,’ Donnelly interjected, to the amusement of his audience.

‘All right, all right,’ Sean hushed the room. ‘I strongly suggest you pay attention to what he’s about to tell you.’ He turned to DS Roddis, gesturing with an open hand for him to begin. ‘Andy.’

DS Roddis walked to the photographs of the scene pinned to the wall behind him. ‘Thank you, sir.’ He paced back and forth as he took up the story. ‘Most of the exhibits from the scene have been taken up to the forensic lab, so we won’t know the full picture until they’ve been examined. That’ll take another few days. Scientists don’t work weekends, so we won’t know much until Tuesday at the earliest.’ There was a small ripple of laughter in the room.

‘In addition to staging the scene, we believe the suspect is forensically aware. There were no obvious signs of semen, saliva or anything else that could have come from the suspect.’

The team listened intently without interrupting. Roddis knew everything about the scene there was to know and they knew nothing. This was the time to listen and learn, not to question and disagree. That would come later, once they knew what Roddis knew, but until then time to honour the ancient detective code: keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open.