Acid Lullaby (29 page)

Counting
down
to
what?

He needed to talk with Dexter and go through Jack’s personal effects and the remains of his records. Underwood had a growing conviction that God was hiding in the details.

Doreen O’Riordan nervously fingered the fat that overhung her belt. She had learned from PC Sauerwine that Mary Colson had been committed to hospital. However, her anxiety did not spring from genuine concern. DI Underwood’s request that she provide him with all Mary Colson’s recent shopping receipts had filled her with a cold panic. Particularly, she thought bitterly, because she had readily agreed to do so. With the advantage of hindsight, Doreen realized that she should have fronted the policeman then: she should have just shrugged and said that she threw away all Mary’s receipts. Instead, she had panicked and buckled under the pressure of his suspicion.

She had stayed up late trying to assess the extent of the problem. Now, in the hard light of morning, her situation seemed no better. She had been assigned to Mary Colson six months previously and had been shopping for her twice every week during that period. Doreen didn’t keep accurate accounts of the money she had short-changed from Mary’s housekeeping. She knew that she hadn’t taken any money in the first three weeks of her association with Mary Colson. She had wanted to assess how alert the old bitch was before she started lifting the odd ten-pound note from her change. So during those three weeks Doreen had been scrupulously honest. As she had become confident in Mary’s deteriorating mental state her policy had changed. So, she told herself, she had been stealing from Mary for roughly five months; say, twenty weeks.

Doreen did some quick mental arithmetic: two shops per week for twenty weeks amounted to forty shops. Assuming that she took about ten pounds from Mary’s change each time she went shopping for her, the total she had stolen had to be in the region of four hundred pounds: approximately half the
cost of her holiday. Doreen had also taken smaller amounts from some of her other patients but Mary had been her major source of extra revenue.

Her problem was that Mary had fooled her.

‘That
old
bitch
tricked
me,’
Doreen
thought
bitterly.

She knew that she had to assume the worst: that Mary Colson had kept records of exactly how much she had given to Doreen and how much she had received in change. Doreen ate a bun and stared out of the bedroom window at the yawning desolation of the Morley Estate. Was she right to think the worst, though? Mary had never seen any of the receipts – Doreen had always been careful either to throw them away or keep them – so how could Mary have known she was being short-changed?

There was only one possible explanation. Doreen usually left the shopping bags on Mary’s sideboard so the old bitch could unpack them herself. Maybe Mary had added up the price tags on the shopping as she packed it into the cupboards. That way she would end up with a total and be able to subtract it from the amount she had given Doreen then compare the figure with the change she had received. Doreen hesitated. ‘Surely the old bitch wouldn’t be that bloody-minded?’

She would. The more Doreen thought about it, the more she came to suspect that Mary Colson had set her up. She thought of her holiday, suddenly jeopardized. She thought of her balcony ‘overlooking the crystal clear waters of the Ionian Sea’; she thought of ‘soaking up the rays by the conveniently sized swimming pool’ and of relaxing in the evening ‘to the music of the Lazaros band’. Now that conniving, cantankerous old bitch was trying to spoil her dream. Doreen couldn’t help crying.

She knew that she had to concentrate. She was determined. She would not sacrifice her dream and besides, it was Colson’s word against hers. Doreen walked through to her little kitchenette and made herself another strong, sugary coffee. Assuming the worst case – that Mary had kept her own records of the money she had handed over – Doreen
considered that she had three obvious options. Option one was to give the money back to Mary and apologize. She had absolutely no intention of doing that. Option two was to provide DI Underwood with a mass of till receipts, some genuine and others from her own shopping. She could try to confuse him by highlighting certain items on some of her own till rolls and claiming that they had actually been bought for Mary. It was an attractive plan: she couldn’t believe a busy CID officer would waste his time checking through dozens of old till receipts. Then there was option three. She could go back to Mary’s bungalow while she was away and place some of the money she had taken in various points around the bungalow. Then, if DI Underwood did check the receipts against Mary’s own records and discovered a shortfall, Doreen could claim that Mary was actually hiding money around the house and deliberately trying to drop her in trouble.

She settled on option three. It would be a calculated loss to guarantee her holiday. She opened the biscuit tin containing her holiday money. How much money would be enough to create the necessary impression without compromising her holiday? She settled on eighty pounds. She would put thirty under Mary’s mattress and fifty in an envelope in one of her cupboards. It meant that she would have to reduce the amount she had set aside for spending money on holiday but she was prepared to take that risk. She was staying full-board at the hotel so she wouldn’t have to worry about buying food. Besides, she told herself, perhaps a nice gentleman would buy her drinks at the Acropolis bar in the evening.

Doreen was absolutely determined that her dream would not be spoiled. She gathered together a mass of receipts and highlighted various items. Once satisfied that the result would be utterly confusing, she placed them in a manila envelope and wrote ‘DI Underwood’ on the front. She would drop them at the police station next time she was in town. Doreen decided not to write an explanatory note: Underwood hadn’t asked for one. All he wanted was the receipts, so that was what she would give him.

Pleased with her morning’s work, Doreen allowed herself the luxury of a second Chelsea bun to accompany her cup of coffee.

Underwood arrived in CID to find Dexter, Leach and Marty Farrell in an office waiting for him. They all looked exhausted. Leach seemed especially tired, his face gaunt and his eyes sunken and black. Dexter waved Underwood in to join them.

‘I was wondering where you were,’ she said crisply.

‘At the hospital,’ Underwood shot back, ‘with Mary Colson.’

‘Roger and his team have been working through the night with the pathology staff at Addenbrookes. He’s going to run through the initial findings on the four bodies we found yesterday. Marty’s been checking up on possible tyre and car matches with the tracks found on the Heath.’ Dexter paused for a moment. ‘Jensen’s fingerprints match one of the bodies.’

‘Shit.’ Underwood thought of Harrison. Dexter read his mind.

‘I’ve told Harrison to take time off. He wants to work through it. He’ll be back in this afternoon. Do you want to get us started, Roger, before we all fall asleep.’

‘Indeed.’ Leach had preliminary post mortem reports on the four victims in front of him. ‘Now, I should say that the information I’m about to give you has been compiled in a rush. More detailed tests on the four cadavers will continue through the week. Bearing in mind that we are still missing Rowena Harvey and I realize that there is a time pressure, I’ve concentrated our initial investigations on building a preliminary physical profile of each victim and attempted to ascertain a time of death for each victim.’

‘The quick and dirty analysis?’ Underwood asked.

‘Exactly. I guess it’s helpful to assess the corpses chronologically.’ Leach frowned through his exhaustion. ‘By that I mean, I’ve considered each case in the order in which we believed they were killed. Make sense?’

‘Go ahead,’ Dexter said.

‘Victim A. Male, Caucasian. Head had been severed completely from the body. Five ten-pence coins found with the corpse. I would estimate his age at being between forty-five and sixty years, his body weight around one hundred and seventy pounds and his height at roughly five feet seven inches. Remaining body hair was dark brown. In many ways, he’s the most interesting of all the cadavers. We estimate he was killed between three and four months ago.’

Dexter whistled softly. ‘How can you tell? You can’t make an assessment based on body temperature for a body that’s been dead for so long, and presumably he was in a bad way.’

Leach looked Dexter in the eye. ‘You sure you want to know?’

‘Of course,’ came the assertive reply.

‘The body was in an advanced state of decomposition. We call it butyric fermentation. The body is drying out. Fluids ferment. Most of the flesh and hair is falling away and mouldy. Butyric acid produces a powerful cheesy odour. Do you all know what forensic entomology is?’

‘Bugs,’ said Underwood grimly.

Leach nodded, ‘One of the ways we can estimate time of death is by studying insect activity on the corpse. Once decay begins after death various different types of insects are attracted to the remains: blowflies, fleshflies and so on. They lay eggs, eggs hatch into larvae, which feed off the rotting flesh. We can work out from the type of insect, and the stage in its development on the corpse, when the person in question died.’

Underwood remembered why he wanted to be cremated.

‘For example, we found larvae of an insect called Piophilia Casei in the abdominal cavity of victim A. It’s more commonly known as the Cheese Skipper.’

‘Charming,’ Dexter observed.

‘Now,’ Leach continued, ‘the presence of Cheese Skipper larvae in the corpse is interesting. It means that the victim died a minimum of two months ago. Usually the presence of Cheese Skipper larvae occurs three to six months after death. I would suggest that the state of decomposition and the early stage of the larval development imply death at the front end of that time scale: say three months ago. I would also suggest that the body has been kept outside.’

Underwood shuddered. Leach’s comments had reminded him that death, like life, was a process not a single event.

Dexter tried to sum up the information. ‘So the victim was a middle-aged man, heavy build, dark brown hair, who most likely died at the end of January or beginning of February.’

‘Correct. Victim B then.’ Leach turned over a page on his clipboard. He had been working on the bodies all night and was feeling the strain. ‘Female, Caucasian. Again the head was severed completely from the body. Four ten-pence coins found with this corpse. I would estimate age between twenty and thirty-five years, body weight around one hundred and ten pounds and height at roughly five feet five inches. The distinguishing thing about this body was that a number of bones were broken: including both arms, a number of ribs and the pelvis. We also found fragments of glass embedded in the flesh of both arms. It looks like she died in an accident: went through a window at high speed.’

‘Time of death?’ Underwood asked, staring at his own notes.

‘Again, we backed up the physical analysis with an entomological assessment. Organs and soft tissues were beginning to liquefy, skin was breaking away and the abdomen was bloated with gases. However, on the cadaver we discovered a high proportion of blowfly pupae. Blowflies lay eggs on flesh within a day of two of death. However, these pupae were in their final stage of development. Bearing in mind the typical life cycle of a blowfly, I’d suggest the victim was killed eighteen to twenty four days ago. In a few days we can give more accurate findings.’

‘Why the big time lag between victims?’ Underwood asked.
‘He kills the first one three months ago – so end of January or beginning of February – and then waits two months until the next one.’

Leach shrugged. ‘That’s for you lot to figure out.’

Dexter turned to Underwood. ‘Maybe he was out of the country. Maybe he was in prison. Maybe we’ve arrested this prick for something else. We let him out after two months and he carries on killing.’

‘Maybe,’ Underwood agreed,
or
maybe
he
was
receiving
treatment.

‘Victim C we have now confirmed from fingerprints was DC Sarah Jensen. The body was cold but rigor mortis had passed. Green stains to the abdomen showed the start of putrefaction suggesting time of death was thirty-six hours or so prior to the discovery of the body.’

‘Makes sense,’ Dexter nodded. ‘Cause of death?’

‘As yet unknown but there were two needle puncture wounds at the base of her neck.’

‘What about the last victim, then?’ Underwood asked suddenly. ‘If you’re doing this chronologically he must have been topped pretty recently.’

‘Victim D. Male, Caucasian.’ Leach replied, ‘Head severed and absent like the others. A single ten-pence coin was found with the corpse. Aged between twenty and thirty five years, body weight around one hundred and sixty pounds, height roughly six feet. Remaining body hair was mousy blonde. This was the only body in a state of rigor mortis: it was cold and stiff. He died sometime between eight and thirty six hours prior to his body being discovered. Again, there were needle puncture marks on the neck.’

Underwood stood and tried to reconstruct the full chronology on the office white board. ‘So first we have Victim A, a middle-aged man killed around the beginning of February. Then, for reasons unknown we have a gap of two months until Victim B, the unidentified woman, is attacked eighteen to twenty-four days ago.’

He drew a timeline on the board with a blue marker pen.

‘Next, Ian Stark is attacked on 29th April and Jack
Harvey is murdered the following evening. Jensen and Rowena Harvey are abducted on 1st May. The bodies were discovered yesterday afternoon.’

‘Busy week,’ Farrell observed.

‘Very,’ Underwood agreed, ‘the thing that interests me is the gap of two months between Victim A and Victim B. I’ll bet you that this guy was a patient of Jack’s and he was being treated in that period.’

Dexter could see the logic in Underwood’s argument. ‘So what do we do? Pretty much all of Jack’s files and his computer were destroyed. We’ve looked at the official referral cases he was working on from County and drawn a blank.’

‘I need to go though Jack’s personal effects. There may be something we’ve missed. Can you arrange for me to have access to his house, Dex? I may need to go back there.’