72

‘A HOAX THEN,’ SAID HALLISTER.

‘Not necessarily,’ said Kaytes. ‘That red stuff around the stump wasn’t paint. That was blood.’

Tulloch, the pathologist, Hallister and I were sitting at one of the zoo’s smaller outdoor cafés, a fish and chip bar near the bug house. The day was getting colder but no one seemed to want to go indoors. Anderson had been left in charge of the crime scene. Mizon was interviewing visitors and Stenning was still looking at CCTV footage. I had no idea what had happened to Joesbury.

‘Human blood?’ asked Tulloch.

‘Impossible to tell till I have a good look at it, run a couple of tests,’ he replied. ‘I’ll probably know later today.’

‘It wasn’t a hoax.’ We looked up to see Stenning and Joesbury had arrived. ‘I’ve seen the CCTV footage,’ Stenning went on. ‘She got into the zoo last night wearing her trademark clothes. You know – baggy black jacket with coloured symbols, black beanie. One of the cameras picked her up by the Komodo dragons at three twenty-four a.m. She was carrying a small holdall.’

‘How did she get in?’ said Tulloch, looking round.

‘Over the fence,’ said Joesbury. ‘Budge up, Flint.’ He pulled a chair up and squeezed in between me and Tulloch. Leaning forward, he put a map of the zoo on the table. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Other side of the camels. There’s an iron fence between the zoo and the park. It’s barely five feet high. I think I even found the exact spot.’

‘How?’ said Tulloch.

‘There are four indentations in the grass,’ said Joesbury, ‘forming the four corners of a rectangle about two feet by fifteen inches. Someone’s gone over to photograph them. They were just there.’ He pointed to a spot on the map and we all leaned in closer.

The perimeter of the zoo formed a right-angled triangle, with two roughly equal sides that ran along the Prince Albert Road and the main avenue through Regent’s Park. The hypotenuse ran diagonally south to north-west through the park. About halfway along it, between the enclosures for camels, pygmy hippos and bearded pigs and the new Komodo dragon exhibit, was the tip of Joesbury’s index finger.

‘I could see similar marks on the other side of the fence,’ he said. ‘This spot isn’t directly overlooked by any cameras. I think she had a light aluminium stepladder that she used to give herself a bit of height on the park side of the fence. She jumped over and reached through the railings to lift the ladder up and across. Then she left it on the zoo side ready for a quick getaway.’

‘It’s that easy to break in?’ said Tulloch.

‘Well, sooner or later, anyone wandering around at night will be picked up on camera, trip an alarm or bump into one of the security staff,’ said Stenning. ‘But if the guv’nor’s right, she had hardly any distance to go before she got to the gorillas. I’ll bet she was in and out in ten minutes.’

‘Why, though?’ asked Tulloch. ‘What is she playing at?’

‘That’s exactly what she’s doing,’ I said. ‘She’s playing.’

Joesbury leaned back in his chair and gave me the full benefit of his ‘nasty’ smile. ‘And she’s really starting to enjoy herself,’ he said.

By the end of the day we knew that the wax head had been liberally smeared in human blood, which is why the gorillas had reacted to it. Whether it was Karen’s blood we’d find out in time, but none of us had any doubts. Tulloch had assigned two detective constables to try and track down where the head had come from. They’d started with Madame Tussauds, who couldn’t report any missing exhibits, either from the main collection or the warehouses. Staff there had been happy to hand over a list of other possible suppliers. Searches through eBay and other internet sites were proving surprisingly fruitful. Likenesses of severed human heads really weren’t that hard to find.

‘The world’s gone fucking nuts,’ was Anderson’s reaction to that, when he got back from the zoo. Stepping into the incident room, he had a moment of unprecedented popularity. In response to numerous questions, he said that the gorillas were fine, none the worse for their upset of the morning, that the keepers were watching the pregnant female closely but weren’t unduly concerned, and, just so he knew where he stood, was anybody in the room still interested in the ongoing murder investigation?

When he’d got over his huff, he told us that the zoo had been opened again, with only the Gorilla Kingdom still out of bounds. None of the morning’s visitors that Mizon had talked to had seen anything out of the ordinary, but we hadn’t expected them to.

The figure in the black skateboarding clothes had come and gone by moonlight. I sat and watched the few seconds of film showing her cross the main avenue over and over again.

‘She’s five eight, possibly five nine,’ said Stenning, who had come up behind me without my hearing him. ‘And those clothes look loose to me. I’d say she was quite thin.’

‘Karen Curtis’s mother described the nurse as a little thing,’ I said. ‘Five nine isn’t little.’

‘Perhaps she just meant skinny,’ said Mizon. I hadn’t realized she was there either. ‘And she said black hair. In the photograph we have, Victoria had black hair. Impossible to see under that cap though.’

‘Some women change their hair colour more than I change my socks,’ said Joesbury. I must have been really engrossed not to see him coming. ‘And clothes make a huge difference to body shape. What do you think, Flint?’

‘About what?’ I said, without taking my eyes off the screen. ‘Your chances of pursuing a second career as a personal stylist?’

He leaned against the back of my chair. I could feel his knuckles against my shoulders. ‘Do you think she’s wearing heels?’ he said. ‘Wind it back a bit.’

Mizon leaned over and clicked the recording back to the beginning.

‘Look at that,’ said Joesbury. ‘Look at the way she’s walking.’

We watched the black figure keep her head down as she crossed the main avenue and disappeared into the gorilla enclosure.

‘Gayle, are you wearing heels?’ asked Joesbury. Mizon raised her right foot to give us the benefit of her two-inch court shoes. It was a modest heel by most women’s standards but about the maximum a serving police officer could get away with.

‘Can you walk over to the far wall?’ asked Joesbury. ‘If anyone wolf whistles, I’ll clobber ’em.’

Mizon made a face that was somewhere between a simper and a silent giggle and set off.

‘Flint, are you in your usual Doc Martens?’ said Joesbury. ‘Why don’t you do the same?’

Reminding myself that telling a senior officer to eff off wasn’t the way to keep a low profile, I got up and walked to the wall. I didn’t even own a pair of Doc Martens. When I reached Mizon I turned round. Joesbury was an asshole.

‘OK, both of you, come back. Slowly.’

We did what we were told. Only one of us was smiling.

‘I hope there’s a point to this,’ said Tulloch from the doorway.

‘I’d say what we can see on screen is a woman trying to make out she’s bigger than she is,’ said Joesbury. ‘She wears baggy clothing and heels.’ He pointed to the screen. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘She’s walking like Gayle. Heels throw a woman’s hips forward. And I’d say she’s being careful, like she’s worried about stumbling. Flint, on the other hand, is stomping around like a man.’

A couple of people in the room sniggered. I wasn’t one of them.

‘I’d say Mrs Richardson got it right,’ said Joesbury. ‘She is quite small. How tall are you, Flint?’

‘Five six,’ I said, through gritted teeth.

‘Really?’ He walked over and lifted my jacket from the back of my chair. ‘This is a size twelve,’ he said. ‘And it drowns you. So you’re an eight? Ten on a fat day?’

‘Thank you, Mark, we get the point,’ said Tulloch. ‘She’s a small to average-sized woman who tries to disguise it when she knows she’s likely to be filmed. Now, before I forget, are you free to go to Cardiff over the weekend? You can take Gayle to keep you in order.’

I excused myself and left the room. I needed to find something to break.