Soul Seeker (28 page)

He did as he was told, not because he expected to spot something that she had missed – he knew that she was too good a detective to have missed the obvious, and he was too inexperienced a detective to find the obscured – but because he had something buzzing around the back of his mind; it was a feeling he had had before, and it occasionally meant that he had his fingertips on a thread that led to a string, that led to a cord, that led to an answer. As he read, she explained tiredly, ‘Dominic Trelawney was something of a recluse, the more so following his diagnosis of malignancy. He kept himself to himself; his neighbours tended to avoid him, since he was at best uncommunicative, at worst bloody rude and abusive. Malcolm Willoughby was a no-hoper from the day his mother said, “yes”; or rather, his father said, “get your legs apart”, and he was barely known at his digs. He could have been dragged from his bedsit by purple monsters with ten eyes and no one would have bothered except to take snapshots with their smartphones to put on YouTube.' She threw a pencil across the room; it bounced off the edge of the waste-paper bin and hit the wall before skedaddling behind the filing cabinet, perhaps fed up with being flung around. ‘And as for the Whitakers, they were on all the social benefit they could lay their hands on; I'm expecting someone to tell me that they were receiving war disability benefit at any moment. The daughter spent more time truanting than she did attending classes, and the mother has never spent more than a month in paid employment. The area they lived in, they could have been kidnapped by a gang firing AK-47s and rocket-powered grenades in the air and no one would have thought it odd.'

He observed, ‘He's choosing his victims very wisely.'

‘He is.'

‘A clever murderer, then . . .'

‘Tell me about it.'

He took a deep breath in. ‘They're all of a certain social class, though.'

She shook her head. ‘They're of the social class who get murdered, John. Agatha Christie might have polished off the nobility, but in my world, it's the ones who don't have social networks who die, the ones who don't matter, except to very few, very unimportant people.'

‘If I were a serial killer, I'd choose people like this,' he commented. ‘It's the logical pool to fish in.'

‘Which doesn't help me . . .'

‘No,' he agreed.

There was silence for a short while before she said, ‘I did wonder if he was enticing them with money. He could be placing small ads somewhere, but trying to find out where without any hints would be a colossal task.'

He appeared not to hear and, when she looked at him, she saw that he wasn't paying her any attention at all. She called, ‘John?' He grunted softly, but not so softly that she did not hear it. ‘John?' she repeated when he made no pretence at reaction.

For a while Eisenmenger still appeared to be uncomprehending, for he just carried on leafing through the reports, then he asked without his head rising, ‘Did either of the Whitakers drink?'

She leaned towards him. ‘John?'

He looked up. ‘Did they?'

‘I don't know. I could find out, though.'

‘I think the mother did. I think she had an alcohol problem.'

‘How do you know?' He hesitated and she picked up on this, narrowed her eyes, became a touch more animated. ‘John?'

‘A curiosity,' he said. ‘Probably nothing more.'

‘Go on . . .'

‘Three of them had fatty livers.'

She knew him well enough to know that he did not like talking about hypotheses that might not pan out. ‘And?'

‘The fourth had cirrhosis.'

She also knew him well enough to remember how bloody infuriating he could be. ‘Which means fuck all to me, John.'

It was two o'clock and he was hungry. Without any prior planning, he asked suddenly, ‘How about some lunch?'

They went to a bar near the Rotunda in the Montpellier district of Cheltenham. She had a Caesar salad and he a croque-monsieur; with it, she drank Sauvignon Blanc, he lager. He found himself experiencing curious feelings as they sat at a street table under the awning; they had known each other for many years and during those years there had been an underlying mutual attraction that neither of them had openly acknowledged yet both had been fully aware of. Only the strength of his relationship with Helena had stopped him on some occasions from taking things further; he wondered as they sat there what was going on in his subconscious, given Charlie's announcement of the night before. Beverley, though, was too preoccupied with the case to be dwelling on past – perhaps present – feelings. ‘So what are you talking about?' she had demanded as soon as they had ordered.

‘A liver gets fatty – pathologists call it steatosis – for a variety of well-defined reasons. Diabetics tend to have it because insulin is the hormone that regulates the conversion of sugar into fat and vice versa, and a lot of sugar is stored in the liver; you can also get the same phenomenon just because you're obese and, perversely, if you're starved.' The waitress brought cutlery; she had a smile on her face but it was as meaningful and dislocating as that on a clown; her eyes were constantly looking outside at the passing traffic and Beverley wondered if she were near the end of her shift and waiting for a lift. Eisenmenger continued, ‘But the commonest reason, at least in the developed world, is drugs; and one drug in particular.' He raised his glass and took a drink. ‘Alcohol.'

‘They all had a drink problem?'

‘They all drank enough alcohol to affect their liver; I leave it to you to decide whether that's “a problem”.'

She considered this. ‘
If
it's a common theme, it may not be
the
common theme. A lot of people drink too much. It could be entirely coincidental.'

He held up his hands as if in surrender. ‘I know that, Beverley. I'm only pointing out an interesting observation.'

She was thinking things through. ‘Even if it is the link we've been looking for, what does it mean? Is the killer a pub landlord? Perhaps he owns an off licence?'

He smiled tiredly. ‘Maybe.'

She was concentrating hard now, weighing up the implications of what she had been told, performing a cost-benefit analysis; should she listen to him, and devote resources to what might be a complete waste of time, one that might delay her discovering the real linking theme? Or should she dismiss this as coincidence, look elsewhere, and possibly miss scooping the prize? Either way, if she got it wrong, she was going to look both stupid and incompetent, and she would be deeper in the mire than ever. Eisenmenger had a habit of being right when it came to finding odd, previously overlooked clues, but he was not infallible, and his suggestion that drink was the thread that she should follow was vague enough and nebulous enough to mean that it would not prove advantageous without considerable resource. The more resource that she committed to it, the greater her risk. It was a high-stakes gamble to listen to him, but was it a higher stakes gamble not to?

‘Jesus, John. You and your “interesting observations”.'

He bowed his head in mock apology. Their food arrived; his had mustard on and was therefore, in his opinion, spoiled; when he asked her how she found the salad, she shrugged and made a face to tell him that it was merely OK. They were barely halfway through the meal – with little more said between them – when her mobile rang. As she listened to what the caller had to say, her face became first grave and then, if anything, vacant; noticing this, he put his knife and fork down and waited. She said a brief, ‘OK. I'll be back in ten minutes,' then ended the call.

‘Another body?' he guessed, but she shook her head.

‘Two young boys have disappeared.'

A bad occurrence for sure, and extremely worrying, but he could not see why she should have taken the news so badly. She had produced a twenty-pound note and put it now on the table beneath the salt and pepper. He asked, ‘And?'

She was already up and walking to the door and he had to hurry after her to hear her reply. ‘They live in Colberrow.'

FIFTY-ONE

O
n the way to the village of Colberrow, Lancefield told them what she knew. ‘Josh Barclay and Darren Taylor.' She showed them pictures that had she had taken off the intranet; one was of a thin, handsome boy with Afro-Caribbean features and a shy smile; the other of a slightly more thickset, Caucasian lad with sandy hair and a freckled complexion. ‘Their families are neighbours in the village. Josh and his sister live with their grandparents – their parents are both dead; Darren with his mother and two younger sibs – the father is not at home. They went off for the day on their bicycles yesterday morning, taking a packed lunch. Each family thought that the boys were spending the night with the other, so they weren't missed until this morning.'

‘Who's the CIO?'

‘Chief Inspector Smillie.'

Despite her personal antipathy towards the man, Beverley was relieved at this news, for she appreciated that whilst he was a complete dickhead on a personal level, as Chief Investigating Officer he would prove professional and competent. She said, ‘Where's Fisher?'

‘I told him to find out all he could about Betty Williams.' She spoke with a hint of questioning temerity in her voice, as if she feared that Beverley might not approve; in the event, her superior merely nodded.

They arrived in the village, saw that Smillie had set up a temporary headquarters in the assembly hall of the local school. In the lane outside it were five marked police cars and a further three unmarked cars; she recognized Braxton's among the latter. In the entrance hall of the school there hung the unmistakeable shade of school dinners past – stale, overcooked cabbage and something definable only by its acrid unpleasantness. The ceilings were low and the walls festooned with paintings, collages, photographs and displays that varied wildly in ability; Beverley felt a vague reminiscence stealing upon her as she walked past them, a reminiscence that was not entirely happy. In the assembly hall – one, she saw, that doubled as dining room and gymnasium – trestle tables had been set up along one wall and on this were computer stations manned by police personnel. Along the opposite wall were two desks facing one another; at one was Inspector Frobisher – Smillie's usual assistant – while the other was unoccupied. Smillie was standing up, talking earnestly to Braxton whilst gesticulating at three large portable whiteboards – presumably borrowed from the school – on which was pinned a large-scale map of the area, lists of names, photographs of the two boys and various notes; there were also numerous jottings and notes written on in marker pen. A continuous trickle of people, some in uniform and some not, were entering, then reporting, then going out again.

Beverley walked over to Braxton and Smillie, both of whom expressed surprise that she should be there. Braxton vocalized his. ‘I appreciate that you are keen to help, Beverley, but I think Frank here can handle things.' Smillie said nothing; his expression was one of wary defensiveness as he nodded enthusiastically at Braxton's words. Braxton continued, ‘I need your full energies applied to this mad bastard who's killing people in the name of science.'

‘There's a chance the two cases may be linked, sir.'

At which news, both Smillie and Braxton visibly started. Smillie said, ‘Connected? How?'

‘The name of this place, Colberrow, keeps cropping up.'

Braxton was looking at her appraisingly. He said after a moment, ‘Perhaps we'd better discuss this in private and sitting down.'

The head teacher's office was Spartan and small, but adequate. Braxton as senior officer, sat behind the desk while Smillie and Beverley took the place of parents, perhaps worried about their child's SAT results, perhaps there to be told of some heinous misdemeanour which would mean exclusion for their offspring.

Beverley quickly went through her hypothesis after which Braxton looked still more thoughtful and Smillie said at once, ‘It's a coincidence, nothing more.'

‘You know as well as I do that it's bad policing to write off anything as “coincidence” without checking first,' she countered.

‘I thought your madman was taking people who wouldn't be missed; he could hardly have done anything more likely to attract publicity than taking two young boys from their families in the middle of rural Gloucestershire.'

‘I admit that goes against what we thought might be part of his MO.'

Smillie turned to Braxton. ‘And we only have one pathologist's opinion that the old lady was murdered; even if she was, it doesn't fit the MO of the other killings.'

Beverley could see that Braxton was becoming convinced by Smillie's reasoning; actually, she was becoming convinced herself and it was as much to reassure herself as Smillie that she said, ‘The killer
has
no MO. He doesn't operate in his own socio-economic group, he doesn't kill his own racial type or gender. He just kills to kill and to examine the process while he does it.'

Smillie jumped in triumphantly. ‘But he didn't “examine the process” when he supposedly killed the old woman, did he?'

Braxton looked at Beverley questioningly. ‘Good point.'

Smillie hadn't finished. ‘And as for the message written in blood, it's a complete red herring. Len Barker lived in Bromsberrow Heath which is barely five miles from here. It isn't that surprising that the registration number came from a vehicle registered to an owner from Colberrow. It probably means nothing at all.'

‘He wrote it whilst he was dying, for God's sake! That surely suggests he thought it significant.'