4

Tartaglia folded his arms and met DCI Carolyn Steele’s eye. ‘Cause of death was a single contact shot to the head.’

‘What sort of weapon?’ Her accent was a flat, generic southern, with no noticeable regional quirks.

‘They think some sort of nine-millimetre semi-automatic pistol, although without the bullet it’s impossible to be more precise. The head x-rays were clear. No fragments left inside, so ballistics have absolutely nothing to go on.’

It was well past midnight and Tartaglia had only just returned from Joe Logan’s post mortem. They were in Steele’s cramped, threadbare office back at headquarters in Barnes. The DCI sat hunched deep in her chair, stockinged feet up on the edge of her desk, swivelling slowly from side to side and sucking thoughtfully on the end of a pen. For a woman who hadn’t been home since early morning the previous day she looked remarkably untouched, still in the same pristine, fitted white blouse and dark grey pinstriped trousers. She had a broad, handsome face, her skin pale even in summer, as though she rarely saw daylight, and chin-length, layered black hair that emphasised her pallor.

‘What about outside in the graveyard?’ she asked.

‘They’re still working it, but so far there’s no sign of any blood anywhere. It’s looking like he was killed elsewhere. One of his wrists was fractured and his hands and feet show quite deep restraint marks and bruising, as though he’d struggled hard against whatever was used to tie him up. He’d also been punched in the face before he died and his nose is broken. But there are no defence wounds, which is odd. No obvious needle marks either. He was fit and healthy, by all accounts, and certainly no weakling. It’s not clear how he was overpowered.’

‘Maybe the tox results will come up with something.’

‘Perhaps the gun was enough to make him cooperate. And there’s something else. The poor bugger was castrated.’

‘Castrated?’

‘Yes. Arabella found his dick stuffed down his mouth.’

Steele blinked and exhaled loudly. ‘Jesus wept. They’ve got too much bloody imagination these days. So, we’re looking at something really unusual, then. Last time I had a body mutilated like that were those gay murders three years ago in Soho.’

‘This is different,’ he said, remembering the case she was referring to. ‘This wasn’t a frenzied attack. If anything, it seems pretty cold-blooded. Mercifully Logan was dead when it happened.’

‘I thought you said his trousers had blood on them?’

‘Arabella said there’d still be quite a bit of leakage even after death.’

‘So he’s shot, then castrated.’ She rubbed her eyes and shook her head, then slid open one of the filing drawers and pulled out a full bottle of Laphroaig and a couple of plastic cups. Without a word, she poured out two decent measures. ‘Here.’ She thrust one of the cups towards Tartaglia as though he had asked for it. ‘Sorry there’s no ice.’

He took it without question, trying to hide his surprise. She was not a heavy drinker, as far as he knew, and in the six months or so they had worked together she had never offered him anything stronger than a cup of tea or coffee; nor had he ever seen her have a drink with anyone else in the office.

Occasionally she would join them in the pub after work and buy a round, but her preferred tipple was diet coke or slimline tonic with ice and lime. The idea of her keeping a bottle of good single malt stashed away in her desk drawer was intriguing.

‘Sláinte.’ He tipped his cup to her and leaned back against the wall, enjoying the smoky taste of the whisky. The air conditioning in the building was on the blink again and she had opened the Seventies picture window as far as it would go. The gentle, dusty breeze felt good on his face, bringing with it the smell of dry grass and earth from the Common nearby. The usually busy road below was silent and he heard the bark of a fox somewhere nearby.

Steele took a gulp of whisky, coughed as though unused to it, and set the cup down on the desk, eyes watering. ‘That’s better,’ she said, hoarsely, clearing her throat. She rocked back in her chair and looked up at him. ‘So where are we at? What do you make of things so far?’

Tartaglia massaged his chin, suddenly aware of the thick growth of stubble and wishing he had had time for a quick shave. He hoped she hadn’t noticed.

‘The CCTV footage from the cemetery has gone off for analysis, but from what I saw we’re looking for a pretty athletic man and, given the logistics, it’s possible more than one person’s involved. The forensic team have been all over the roof but nothing interesting has turned up. The bloke on the tape was wearing gloves, so I didn’t expect any prints, but they say it also looks as if the roof has been swept.’

She nodded. ‘So we’re dealing with someone organised, who plans ahead. But what’s it all about?’

He shrugged. ‘When I heard Logan had been castrated, my first thought was that the motive was sexual, particularly given the connection with the Brompton Cemetery and all the shenanigans that go on there. Like you, I thought of the Soho murders, but so far there’s no reason to think Logan was gay.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Nothing yet to indicate it. At the moment the only possible gay connection is the choice of dumpsite. The killer clearly knows the area but a lot of people use the cemetery who aren’t gay. Problem is, we don’t know where or how Logan met the killer. The last sighting we have of him is around five in the afternoon, pushing his bike along the towpath on his way out to meet someone.’

‘So why the castration, do we think?’

He grimaced. ‘Could be all sorts of reasons. Even if he isn’t gay, it could still be sexual – a mark of contempt, or punishment. Maybe someone was trying to make an example of him as a warning to others. He was certainly left where he’d be found, and the choice of the crypt is striking though I haven’t a clue what it means.’

‘You’re thinking it’s drugs or gang related, some form of organised crime?’

‘It would tie in with the method of killing. From the little we know, Logan was a writer and a teacher, though he’d been an actor. We don’t yet know what else he was involved in, but if he was dealing it wasn’t from the boat. The neighbours would have picked up on it, plus we found no physical evidence.’

‘Hopefully his papers or bank records will reveal something.’

He nodded. ‘Maybe it’s a simple crime of passion, maybe he was messing around with someone else’s wife or girlfriend, someone who has a gun.’ He paused, then decided to go further. ‘But it was all carefully planned. Logan was taken somewhere, beaten up and executed. Whoever did it stood right in front of him as they delivered the coup de grace. They looked him in the eye. Whatever the motive, it’s got to be personal.’

He watched Steele’s face for a reaction, but there was none. According to the office rumour mill, Steele’s direct superior, Superintendent Clive Cornish, had put forward the wild theory that Logan had been picked off the street at random by some gun-toting whacko. Cornish had come up through the ranks in uniform and had no hands-on experience of murder investigations in his career; he was best known for his expensive suits and smooth political skills. Tartaglia had no idea if Cornish had actually expressed this view, although from what he knew of him, it rang true. Nor had he any clue what Steele’s opinion of Cornish was; as with everything else, she played her hand close to her chest and he had never felt sufficiently at ease with her to express his views freely. But he wanted to hit the theory on the head right away. If not, they would lose precious time and resources on what he was positive was a non-starter.

She rubbed her bottom lip thoughtfully with her finger and he caught the flicker of a smile. He wondered if she, too, was thinking of Cornish. ‘No,’ she said, with a quick nod of the head. ‘Whatever happened, it certainly wasn’t opportunistic.’

‘But there’s one thing that doesn’t add up,’ he added, relieved that she seemed to agree with him. ‘The killer chooses to dump the body in a disused crypt in Central London, right in the middle of about forty acres of public land. Apart from anything, it’s taking one hell of a risk. A pro wouldn’t go to so much trouble.’

Steele nodded slowly. ‘Unless it was part of the contract, for some reason. What about Logan’s phone?’

‘Still hasn’t turned up, but one of his neighbours gave us the number and we’ve traced it back to the provider. It’s switched off, so it could be anywhere, but we should have all the details and a cell site analysis of his calls by tomorrow morning, plus the lab will report back on his computer.’

She turned towards the window, eyes half closed as though she was picturing something far away. He wondered if she was having personal problems, or if it was just the stress of the job, but he knew better than to ask. She never brought her private life into work. Even her office gave nothing away, with no photos or personal items of any sort on show. Apart from the fact that she was single and lived alone in a basement flat in West Hampstead, a detail that had come to light accidentally in a previous investigation, he realised how little he knew about her. She was only a couple of years older than he was and she wasn’t unattractive, far from it in fact, but she had an aura about her that said ‘keep off’. It was a self-protective mechanism he had come across a lot with police women in what was still very much a male-dominated world, but with Steele there was more to it, he felt, and he was curious.

He followed her gaze through the window. Immediately opposite, a terrace of low-built Victorian houses backed onto the road that led from Barnes village green to the Common and mainline station. The odd light was still on here and there, revealing sleepy little snapshots of domestic life. In one house, he saw the flicker of a television; in another, he watched a dark-haired woman in a pink dressing gown make her way slowly up the stairs with a mug of something in one hand and a black cat draped over her shoulder. The sight brought on a sudden wave of tiredness and he stifled a yawn. The day’s adrenaline high had evaporated and he wished that he could be back in his flat, about to crawl into bed. But the immediate prospect of that was a remote one.

After a moment, Steele gave another hearty sigh and turned back to him, fingers steepled under her chin, fixing him with her strange green eyes. Her mouth softened unexpectedly into a smile. ‘I agree with everything you’ve said, Mark. It looks like a cut and shunt. Maybe someone’s messing us around.’

Her unexpected warmth surprised him. She wasn’t usually so easy to convince. If it had been anyone else, he would have been tempted to say that she was flirting with him, or at least trying to win him over, but Steele wasn’t that sort of woman, and she’d taken no more than a mouthful of whisky. Something else must be behind it and he felt instantly wary.

‘It’s personal,’ she continued distantly, still gazing at him, seemingly unaware of her body language. ‘The answer’s buried somewhere in Joe Logan’s life, if only we can find it.’

There was a rap on the open door and he turned to see Minderedes.

‘Sorry to interrupt. But someone’s using Logan’s phone.’