52

‘OUR LATEST VICTIM WAS FOUND BY HER HUSBAND TWO hours ago,’ Tulloch was saying as I opened the door to the incident room. ‘He’d come home from work early to get changed for an evening function. Which I suppose we should be grateful for, because otherwise one of her kids would have found her.’

DS Anderson had been right. He was still out there. We’d arrived back at the station to learn that a fourth body had been reported. Anderson had gone straight to the scene. I’d stayed behind waiting for news.

Now, it was just after seven o’clock and most of the team were back from the house in Hammersmith where the murder had taken place. I spotted a vacant seat and headed for it.

‘The police doctor who attended the crime scene believes she was killed some time early this morning,’ Tulloch said. ‘There were no signs of a forced entry or of a struggle. Apart from the master bedroom, the like of which I hope I never see again in my life, the house was untouched.’

Tulloch pressed a button on a nearby computer and we were looking at a photograph of the crime scene. A woman with short, dark hair was lying on a large bed. Her feet were on the pillow, her head at the foot of the bed. As far as the rest of her was concerned, I couldn’t have said anything for certain.

The door opened and Joesbury came in. He’d taken off the sling since I’d last seen him.

‘We think the killer made her lie, face up, on the bed,’ said Tulloch. ‘Possibly, like our friend Cooper, he uses a gun, real or replica. He approached from behind, took hold of her by the hair and pulled her head back. He cut her throat from left to right, indicating he’s probably right-handed. We’ll have to wait for the post-mortem to be sure, but it looks as though he made several cuts.’

The room in the photograph looked like someone had taken a spray can to it.

‘Most of the blood appears to have come from her severed throat,’ continued Tulloch. ‘Which suggests he waited for her to die before beginning the mutilation. No obvious sign of rape or torture this time.’

‘Different killer,’ Stenning suggested, sounding more hopeful than certain.

‘Possibly,’ agreed Tulloch. ‘She had an easier death than Amanda Weston. On the other hand, the extent of the post-mortem mutilation is the worst we’ve seen so far. Large areas of skin were removed from the abdomen and legs, most of her internal organs were cut out and left lying around the bed. Her ribcage was smashed with something like a hammer and then forced open. Her heart was taken out and both breasts were severed. One was found at the scene. The other made its way to the children’s room at Victoria Library.’

Low murmurs around the room.

‘Sorry, Dana, I didn’t catch her name,’ said Joesbury, who was rubbing his left arm as though it was still bothering him.

I hadn’t heard it either. I’d spent the afternoon in a different room to most of the team.

‘Benn,’ said Tulloch, glancing down at her notes. ‘Charlotte Benn. Married to Nick, a criminal barrister.’

Tulloch’s voice started to fade. ‘Two sons,’ I thought I heard her say next. ‘Felix, aged twenty-six, and Harry, aged twenty-two. Madeleine, her daughter, is seventeen and still at … Lacey, what the …? Christ, someone catch her.’

There was a sudden rush of movement around me. Someone – Stenning, I think – was holding me upright. I heard the sound of a chair being dragged and felt myself being lowered into it. The black cloud in my head started to thin out.

I was on the other side of the room from where I’d been sitting, close to the door, without any recollection of getting up and crossing the office. Mizon was in front of me, holding out a plastic cup of water. Automatically, I took it. Tulloch had crouched down beside Mizon. I kept my eyes firmly on the floor.

‘I’ll get someone to take you home,’ Tulloch said. ‘You are back on sick leave until I say otherwise.’

‘No,’ I said, louder than I’d intended. I took a deep breath and lowered my voice. ‘I’m fine. Just give me a minute, please. I’ll find a quiet room.’

Tulloch opened her mouth to argue, then looked at her watch. She didn’t have time to nursemaid me. ‘Go and sit next door,’ she said. ‘Pete, go with her.’

I found I could stand up. I fixed my eyes on the door and made it that far. Stenning was at my side.

‘Now, it shouldn’t surprise anyone too much to hear that Charlotte Benn’s children went to St Joseph’s School in Chiswick.’ Most heads had turned to face Tulloch again. Not Joesbury though. He was still watching me.

‘There is a connection between these families,’ Tulloch went on. ‘Something that goes beyond children at the same school. We have to find out what that is. I’ve asked Gayle to take the lead on that.’

The door closed behind us and Stenning and I walked the few metres along the corridor to the next office.

‘What can I get you?’ he asked me, once I was sitting at my own desk.

I shook my head and gestured to the door. ‘Nothing, I’m fine. You need to get back in there.’

Stenning didn’t argue. ‘Sure?’ he said, but he was already turning to leave.

‘Pete.’ I stopped him just before the door closed. ‘The second victim, Amanda Weston – she used to live in London, didn’t she?’

Stenning gave a quick, impatient nod. ‘When she was married to her first husband,’ he replied. ‘Sure you’re OK?’

I forced a smile. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Go on, you can fill me in later.’

I gave Stenning a few seconds to get back to the incident room before running my hands over my face, telling myself firmly I had to focus, and then switching on my desktop computer.

HOLMES – or Home Office Large Major Enquiry System – records and tracks the progress of all serious inquiries carried out by the UK police. Whilst I was still in uniform, my knack of finding and processing information had been spotted and I’d been sent on a four-week inputter course. I knew the system very well, but after coming back on light duties, I’d been inputting the endless detail that tying up a major investigation demanded. There was a lot on here I just hadn’t got round to reading.

The first file I opened up was that of the Jones family. Geraldine Jones, the first victim, had been married to David, a fund manager in Leadenhall Street. He was believed to earn in the region of half a million a year, including bonuses, and they’d lived in a very nice house on the river in Chiswick. They had two sons, Jacob, who was twenty-six and a junior doctor, and Joshua, who was at university.

Jones. Such a common name.

With unusual efficiency, someone had started a file for the latest victim and her family. Charlotte Benn had been forty-nine and hadn’t worked since her eldest child was born. She and Nick had two sons, Felix, aged twenty-six, and Harry, aged twenty-two. Their daughter, Madeleine, was seventeen and still at St Joseph’s.

Knowing I couldn’t avoid it, I opened up the file on the Westons. As Stenning had just told me, Amanda Weston, whom Joesbury and I had found in the Victoria Park boat shed, had been married before. Daryl was her second husband and she’d moved out to Hampshire when they married. Previously, she and her children had lived in London, not too far from the Jones family. Her children, Daniel, now aged twenty-five, and her daughter, Abigail, aged sixteen, had gone to St Joseph’s School in Chiswick. Their name, in those days, had been Briggs.

Geraldine Jones. Amanda Briggs. Charlotte Benn.

Next door, in the incident room, the focus of the investigation would have switched to the connection between the three families. Tulloch would be ordering a trace on the money situation in each family on the off-chance the husbands had got involved in some dodgy investment and tried to pull out, resulting in the wives being killed as a warning or punishment. That would be a complete waste of effort.

Any time now, almost certainly within the next twenty-four hours, the families themselves would realize what was going on. They would tell Tulloch and her team exactly why the three women had been killed. They would tell her who was next on the list, who victims four and five were intended to be. It would become blindingly obvious who had killed Geraldine Jones, Amanda Weston and Charlotte Benn. My colleagues would know that Joesbury had been right all along.

They would know that the killer was me.