Solomon's Key Read online

  Her office was three times the size of mine. Like the chairs, the desk was real mahogany. Mine were standard issue laminated chipboard. The carpet was deep-pile beige. Mine had well-trodden felt beneath it.

  Pat, her secretary, came in and put a coffee in front of me. I nodded my thanks.

  Avril leaned back in her chair. ‘How’s Lexi?’

  ‘She’s good.’ Our relationship now reflected the weather outside, but I was sure we would both thaw given time.

  The niceties over with, she got straight to the point. ‘Tell me about this young girl.’

  I told her the little we knew. ‘We’ll know more tomorrow once we’ve done some leg work and prised the reports from forensics and pathology. KP and I are off to see Terri next. I’m hoping she’ll have finished the post-mortem.’

  She swished her grey-blonde fringe away from her eyes with her fingers. Although her facial skin had lost some of its elasticity, Avril still retained facets of her youthful beauty. There was now a matronly look about her. When she walked into a room, people felt the urge to sit up and stop slouching.

  ‘What makes you think we’ve got a serial killer?’ she asked quietly. My forehead creased. I looked up from my coffee. She smiled. It would be a foggy day in hell before anything got past Avril Smart.

  ‘The usual murderers don’t leave us cryptic messages, or remove parts of their victims,’ I said. ‘It’s also unusual to find a killer who sexually abuses their prey and then mutilates them, but he’s clearly shown an inability to empathise with his victim if he was deaf to her suffering, which is a classic trait of the psychopathic personality.’

  ‘Yes, it must have been hell on earth, poor girl. We tend to focus all our energies on catching the killer, and forget that there is a victim at the heart of a murder investigation.’ Her mind seemed to wander for a moment as she flattened a non-existent crease in her skirt. ‘Go on, James, I was merely babbling out loud.’

  I leaned forward, tried to hook my index finger through the minuscule hole in the handle of the cup, gave up and grasped it between thumb and forefinger. I savoured the smell as I lifted it to my mouth. ‘It could be that he mutilated her for sexual pleasure, but then that doesn’t explain the sexual abuse. It also doesn’t explain why he took the body parts with him.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘So we have two incompatible behaviours, the sexual abuse and the removal of body parts?’

  She had a mind like a razor. ‘Yes. As far as I’m aware, the two have never featured together in a single murder, not even in America.’

  ‘That’s all we need,’ she said rolling her eyes. ‘Someone who’s devised a new way of killing.’

  ‘I know,’ I said sighing.

  I felt uncomfortable as she studied me with a frosty smile on her face. It would take some time for our strained relationship to thaw. She was obviously waiting for me to continue. I did.

  ‘He’s organised and highly intelligent, the crime was methodically planned. He chose his victim with care. The body was left for us to find, which again is unusual because the organised killer would normally dispose of the body, but it tells me that he wants publicity. He’s taking pride in his actions. It’s as if this murder is merely one part of a grand project. He’s inviting us to play his game.’

  ‘It’s hardly a game, James.’ Avril said, clearly offended by the term.

  ‘To him, it’s a game. He doesn’t want to get caught and sees himself as superior to us in intellect. He’s left us a clue, but he thinks we can’t catch him.’

  ‘This is going to be one of those cases that ruins careers, isn’t it, James?’

  I gave her a wry grin. ‘I certainly hope not, Chief.’

  ‘Yes, I do as well. I didn’t break arms to get you here so that your career could be ruined. You have a great future ahead of you, if you can keep that temper under control.’

  I wondered whose arms she had to break. Avril was the reason for my promotion to DCI. As head of Homicide Command, she had been given carte blanche to select someone to lead the fledgling Murder Investigation Team. In September last year, I received a phone call. I was thinking of applying for the post, but never got round to it. She sent me on a three-month secondment to the FBI at Quantico, Virginia, to learn everything the Americans knew about killing and killers. It was intensive and harrowing. Once I took up the appointment, she seemed to take a great deal of interest in my career development, identifying courses I should attend, taking me to luncheons, receptions, and dinner parties. Introducing me to the right people – I was her golden boy.

  ‘Sorry, James, I keep interrupting. Please, carry on.’

  ‘He may come from a dysfunctional background, and as a child he may have been sexually, physically or psychologically abused, but this is not always the case. He is socially adequate, with friends and girlfriends, possibly a wife and children. He conceals himself behind a mask of sanity by outwardly mimicking a normally functioning person. The mask hides the psychopath underneath. His motives are open to question at the moment. They could be either need, or power and control.’

  Although it was never stated, I was sure that one of the reasons Avril had selected me was that my PhD in forensic psychology and accreditation with the Behavioural Sciences sub-committee of The Association of Chief Police Officers, meant that she didn’t have to raid her budget for a profiler. I did it. In the end, it always came down to money.

  ‘Why need?’

  ‘We don’t know why he took the body parts.’

  She grimaced. ‘Why would anybody need what he took?’

  ‘The mutilations remind me of a muti killing.’

  ‘Yes…’ I could see her dredging long-forgotten memories. ‘I recall… the Adam case… torso of a young boy pulled from the Thames in 2005. His head, arms and legs had been surgically removed and the body drained of blood. You were part of DCI Johnson’s team weren’t you?’

  ‘I was a DI at the time. We travelled to South Africa to learn more about these types of killings. The South African government set up a special Occult Unit in Pretoria in 1981 to investigate muti murders. We also obtained the help of an expert on African religions from Kings College, who confirmed that the sanguination was indicative of a ritual killing. Johnson also hired an African Sangoma – their name for a medicine man or witchdoctor – called Credo Mutwa. He insisted it was not a muti murder, but a human sacrifice to appease a deity. In the end, it didn’t really matter. We never found out who the boy was or where he lived, and we never had any suspects.’

  Avril put her slim hands together on the desk. ‘So we could be looking for a South African?’

  I uncrossed my legs, leaned forward and took a gulp of coffee. ‘There are too many unanswered questions at the moment. A muti killing is just one possible explanation, but I’m not convinced. I also have a feeling that there might be a religious or satanic link.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, the message?’

  Sometimes I wondered why I was here. She could solve the case on her own. ‘It looks like an ancient language,’ I said, ‘maybe Hebrew or something.’

  ‘Surrey CID also thinks that they’ve got a serial killer on their patch as well,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘You’ve heard about the four prostitutes they’ve found?’

  ‘Yes, I heard about the last one on the news this morning. We’ll be catching up with the Americans at this rate,’ I quipped.

  ‘I think we’ve got a long way to go to catch up to them.’ A smile lit up her face. ‘It appears to be a national pastime over there.’ She looked good when she smiled, I thought. She should do it more often. Sometimes, her eyes betrayed her desperate loneliness. She rarely spoke about herself, and apart from the politically correct social gatherings we were forced to attend because of our positions in the force, I hardly knew her. What I did know was that she lived on her own in a large house in Westminster – she liked to joke about being neighbours with the Queen.

  The intercom buzzed. She leaned forward and pres
sed a button. ‘Yes, Pat?’ she said to her secretary.

  ‘Your ten o’clock is here, Chief.’

  I stood, gulped my coffee down, grabbed my coat, and headed for the door.

  ‘James.’

  I stopped.

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Keep your anger in a secret place, I don’t want to ever see it again. The next time, I won’t be so forgiving.’

  I nodded lowering my eyes.

  ‘For the moment, we don’t mention a serial killer outside this office. You know the wolves will have a feeding frenzy with it, and it’ll be more difficult to work under such pressure. Keep me informed.’

  Chapter Three

  ‘Her breasts and uterus were removed using a sharp blade,’ Terri said, stopping what she was doing to speak to us. It was ten-past-ten, and we were late. The front of the green plastic apron she wore was smeared with a viscous substance, and the scalpel in her right hand dripped blood back onto the cadaver.

  We stood in the bowels of Hammersmith Hospital. An inlaid stone at the front of the building informed visitors that the Poor Law Guardians had commissioned the hospital in 1902. The lime-green walls contrasted starkly with the original Victorian brick-coloured tiles still fixed on the floor. Overhead, fluorescent strip lights hung on chains from the sepulchral ceiling, giving the morgue a gloomy appearance.

  The uncovered body of Gillian Wilkinson lay on the stainless steel mortuary table. Blood drained into the channels at either side of the table. It slithered its way down through a cast-iron grate, to disappear under the floor to somewhere unspeakable. Terri had not completely finished the post-mortem yet, and Gillian’s chest cavity was still prised open like the entrance to hell.

  ‘Are you saying that it was done by someone with medical training?’ I asked, scrutinising her face.

  ‘No,’ she gave a wry smile. ‘He knew where the uterus was, but the removal was a hatchet job. The excision of the breasts was the same. It was the work of an amateur. He had very little knowledge, except what could be obtained from a non-technical textbook or the Internet.’

  ‘Was she sexually abused?’

  ‘Yes. He raped and sodomised her before he removed what he wanted. Then he let her bleed to death.’

  ‘DNA?’

  ‘I found no semen in the vagina or the anal passage, so the killer either did not ejaculate inside her, or he used a condom. I also found no pubic hairs that didn’t belong to the victim, which suggests that he’s clean shaven, so I’m not very hopeful. I’ve put a rush on the analysis, but I won’t know the results until tomorrow morning at the earliest.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘He’s right-handed.’

  Disbelief evident in my voice, I said, ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  ‘The slant of the cuts,’ she said. ‘If he were left-handed, they would slant to the left. They don’t, they slant to the right.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, as if it had been obvious all along.

  ‘Also, the killer put the woman’s organs into a sealed container of some sort. There was no blood beyond the confines of the bed.’

  Yes, I’d noticed the lack of blood. ‘He obviously came fully prepared. We need to be asking if anyone saw a man entering or leaving the flat carrying a container or a bag of some sort.’

  ‘I would say so. It’s unlikely he would use a plastic bag, more likely one or more of those containers with Snap-On lids. You can buy them in various sizes in any supermarket for next-to-nothing.’

  I turned to KP. ‘Give Brian a ring, let him know.’

  She rummaged in her bag as she moved to the other side of the lab to make the call.

  Terri continued. ‘Her pyjamas were used to gag her. The rope burns were from a twisted quarter-inch green nylon rope. It’s hardly surprising that she worked them to the bone on both her wrists and ankles. You’ll have the full report on your desk tomorrow morning after the DNA results come in.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  She had already dismissed us. Terri was a stereotypical fiery redhead. Thankfully, I had not had cause to upset her, but I had heard rumours about those misguided souls that had. Sometimes I caught her staring at me. I said nothing, but wondered what that was about.

  KP and I left her peering into Gillian’s chest and talking into a microphone.

  ***

  We used KP’s car to travel to Darwins Solicitors – Gillian Wilkinson’s place of work. London was gradually coming to a standstill as the snow continued to fall. Apparently, there weren’t enough snowploughs or gritting machines, and according to the Association of Local Authorities there was a world-wide shortage of grit – a good camouflage for incompetence, I thought.

  Arriving at eleven-twenty, KP parked her car on Shepherd’s Bush Road in a snowdrift. I’d noticed her parking left a lot to be desired. We climbed out and stood looking at an impressive three-storey Victorian turreted building that must have been worth well over a million pounds.

  We were expected. The receptionist, a tall thin plain woman in her early twenties with curly black hair, showed us up three flights of wooden stairs and ushered us into Patrick Darwin’s office. I assumed that as it was his business, he had appropriated the room directly beneath the turret. It was a large round oak-panelled room with a cavernous ceiling, and three large sash windows looking out over Hammersmith, one of which was slightly open and traffic noise filtered in. It had been tastefully filled with heavy mahogany furnishings trimmed in green leather. The air was thick with cigar fumes. Stupidly, I thought of the health and safety issues involved.

  I introduced myself. ‘Detective Chief Inspector James Harte.’

  ‘Chief Inspector,’ Patrick Darwin beamed. ‘How can I be of service?’ He was a short balding man with a round face and ruddy complexion. I could smell whiskey on his breath as he leaned over the desk and shook my hand. He wore a loud grey pin-striped suit with a light blue shirt and red patterned tie. The firm’s website informed me that Mr Patrick Darwin LLB was in his late fifties, the senior partner in the firm that he had created twenty-seven years previously. I covertly wiped my hand on my trouser leg to remove the globules of sweat deposited there.

  ‘This is Detective Sergeant Preston.’ KP shook the proffered hand. Then, rummaging in her bag for a paper tissue, she looked at me accusingly as she wiped her hand, as if it were my fault for not warning her.

  I smiled.

  ‘Please sit,’ Patrick Darwin said, indicating two easy chairs by the side of his desk. ‘Can I offer you tea or coffee, or maybe something a little stronger?’

  We both sat. After the handshake, I thought I’d pass on the drink. KP declined also. ‘We’re here to talk about Gillian Wilkinson, who I believe was one of your employees?’

  ‘Yes,’ he guffawed, sitting down again behind his desk. ‘She’s a lovely girl, bright, quick and very helpful. We’re lucky to have her. What possible interest can the police have in Gillian?’

  ‘It hasn’t been released to the press yet,’ I said softly, ‘but I’m sorry to say, she was murdered in her flat yesterday.’

  Darwin became ashen. ‘Murdered… oh, how terrible!’ He stood up and moved to a cabinet behind him. ‘Are you sure you won’t have a drink?’ His hand shook as he half-filled a tumbler with Glenfiddich. He took a large gulp.

  ‘No, not for us,’ I repeated.

  ‘What a waste of a young life,’ he said, sitting back down again. ‘Murdered, you say? Do you know who did it?’

  ‘No, not yet, we are still following up leads.’

  ‘The rest of the staff will be devastated. Everyone liked Gillian. She was a ray of sunshine in our otherwise drab existence.’

  ‘How many staff work here?’ I asked.

  ‘There are four partners, beside myself. Each has a secretary. We have two receptionists, you’ve met Pauline?’ He took another swig of whiskey. ‘Or should I say, we had two receptionists. He paused, took a handkerchief from an inside pocket, and loudly blew his nose. ‘I’m sorry. Gillia
n was the other receptionist. We also have two typists.’

  ‘I’d like a complete list of their names. We will have to interview all of them over the next few days.’

  ‘Of course, anything I can do to help, you only have to ask.’

  ‘What happened yesterday when Gillian didn’t show up for work?’

  ‘I asked Pauline to ring her. She received no answer. We simply carried on. Well, you do, don’t you?’

  ‘Did Gillian often take time off work without phoning to give a reason for her absence?’

  ‘No. She had never been off before, a very reliable girl.’

  ‘Didn’t you think it was odd when she failed to phone in?’

  Darwin reddened slightly. ‘Well, yes of course, but what could we do? I assumed all would be revealed when she returned to work.’

  I turned to KP. ‘Go and speak to Pauline. Did Gillian confide in her? Did she leave anything in her desk that might be useful?’

  KP left. Turning back to Darwin, I said, ‘Can you provide me with a staff list, Mr. Darwin?’

  He leaned across the large desk and pressed a button on the intercom. ‘Debbie, please print off a staff list and bring it in will you, there’s a dear.’

  Debbie came in shortly afterwards through a side door in the office. She was a thin, middle-aged woman. Her greying hair had been pulled back and moulded into a bun at the rear of her head. She passed the document to Darwin, who glanced at it, and then passed it to me.

  I scanned the three stapled pages briefly. It was a list of the staff, and under each name was listed an address, telephone number and e-mail. I noticed that Gillian did not have an e-mail address. I didn’t recall seeing a computer in Gillian’s flat. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Can you think of anyone who would have wanted to harm Gillian?’

  ‘No.’ His eyes opened wide. He took another swallow of whisky. ‘As I have said, everyone here thought she was an angel.’