brain in the blood.
‘Thanks for that,’ he said.
Summers positioned herself between the sprays of Ricky’s blood and the canal, facing away from Kite, with her right side closest to the water.
‘This is where the boy stood when he was struck, facing this way,’ she said, thinking out loud. She looked at the lines of claret on the ground, ‘It looks like four, maybe five squirts of blood before he fell, or was pushed, this way,’ gesturing toward the canal, ‘into the water.’
She turned around and Kite stepped to the side so as to not block her view, of what they had rightly assessed to be the girls blood and pieces of brain.
Summers moved to approximately where the girl’s feet would have lay at her time of death, looked back at Ricky’s blood and then again to Alexia’s.
‘He killed the boy first,’ said Kite, answering the question he thought Summers was pondering.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘which means she watched him die, and waited to die herself.’
‘Maybe she panicked, couldn’t decide whether to fight or flee,’ said Kite.
He was right, Summers thought to herself.
She had checked the hands of Alexia. There were no bruises on the knuckles or palms nor any skin or fibres under the fingernails. She didn’t fight. She didn’t flee. She was paralysed by fear. She paid the price as well.
Kite stated the obvious, that Alexia had had her head bashed against the concrete until she was dead. But he wasn’t sure on the weapon used on Ricky.
‘It wasn’t a blade of any sort, maybe a hammer? But you’d expect the hole to be more…’ he paused, ‘round?’
He flashed the close-up image on the screen of the digital camera.
‘It almost looks like a point, but what could make a hole like that?’ he asked.
Summers took another look at the photo; the corner of the brick had left a clear indent in Ricky’s head. They both surveyed the ground, seeing stones, litter, cigarette butts, more stones, and the occasional broken brick.
Summers turned to the wall that went from the ground up to the bottom of the bridge. It was old, and a few of the bricks had literally fallen from the wall on to the pathway over time. She carefully picked up a broken brick in her latex-gloved hands.
‘If I were to smash this brick extremely hard, into the side of your head, what kind of wound do you imagine it would inflict?’ Summers asked Kite.
She examined the brick and found no traces of skin, hair or blood so tossed it into the canal.
‘And that’s where it’ll be,’ said Kite.
Both detectives knew the murder weapon would hold no DNA evidence if it had been discarded into the water, no prints would be found on the rough surface of the brick, so there was no point in sending in a team to search it.
Their best hope at this point was to speak to as many people in the area and try to find a witness. Summers would still have the area combed for the murder weapon, more a PR stunt than anything. The search would likely be a waste of time for the six officers called out to do it.
Summers and Kite spoke briefly with the small crowd who had seen the police cars, it turned out they were just being nosey and had nothing of value to add to the investigation, other than one old lady, another dog-walker, who had seen the young couple together around two hours ago, walking in this direction. Over the next day or so, the detectives would also have to speak to family and friends, to see if anything was amiss or anybody knew something of interest.
But Summers had a gut feeling. The attack looked random to her. If it was planned, why wasn’t a real weapon used? Ricky had nearly twenty pounds in his pocket, if it was a robbery, that didn’t work out either. Ricky’s mother had been called and asked to go to identify the body at the morgue later that afternoon, and on the phone she said he should have been at home, doing chores. Alexia certainly should have been at school, so Summers concluded that hardly anyone, if anybody, knew that the couple were where they were. This would rule out premeditated murder. Both were fully dressed so a sexual motive wasn’t clear either.
So was it just a random act of violence?
The killer could have left the scene either way along the canal, north or south, or gone up the steps to the bridge that crossed over the water and escaped east or west.
Summers thought the likely escape route was along the canal, as one would expect less human contact that way, meaning less chance of witnesses, but she walked up the steps to the road and had a look around anyway.
There were CCTV cameras recording the activity on and around the road above the canal. This would cost more man hours, going through any recordings, but never-the-less that had to be done as well. Anyone filmed near the bridge that morning could be the killer, or maybe seen the killer, before or after the murders took place.
She descended back down to the crime scene as her mobile phone began to vibrate in her pocket.
‘Yes, chief,’ she answered.
Summers gave Watts a quick run-down of the situation. Two dead bodies, viciously murdered, no witnesses so far and probably no DNA evidence.
‘That bloody Phantom,’ he said. ‘He must have left some sort of clue. He’s bound to fuck up sooner or later.’
Looking thoughtfully at the stains of blood on the concrete floor, Kite overheard Summers say to Watts, ‘We’re not even sure The Phantom is responsible, sir.’
‘What?’ Watts said in a lowered voice. Wherever he was, he didn’t want people to listen to what he was about to say. ‘Listen, Summers, at this moment in time, our number one suspect is The Phantom, understood? The last thing I need is the press reporting another murderer is on the loose, it will only cause panic.’
And there it was, as Summers had thought.
Certain murder cases, those going cold with no real evidence and no chance of being solved, were being attributed to The Phantom. It was the Chief’s way of purging paperwork, maybe. This would, or could, explain the five cases Summers had separated from the seventeen she was given earlier that day. It didn’t mean that The Phantom was not responsible, but it would be harder to prove, even circumstantially, that they are all linked. The best bet in clearing up this situation, is to gather concrete evidence against the killer, and hope he confesses, taking responsibility for all his murders. The cases leftover could then be passed to the Cold Case Department for further investigation, or dropped off the radar completely.
15
Natalie hit the call button on the phone in her hand. She wanted to tell Ben to come home so they could sort things out. She wanted him to know that, although she had obviously done a very bad thing, that their relationship was worth fighting for.
She wanted him to know that he would never find her in bed with another man again, but she also wanted him to admit, that by not keeping her satisfied sexually, he was partly to blame for what had happened earlier that day.
The phone rang three rings before being forwarded to answer machine.
BEEP
‘Well don’t answer the fucking phone then, Ben. See if I give a shit.’
She always had trouble keeping her cool, especially when she was at risk of losing something she wanted, or getting something she didn’t want.
She didn’t want to leave Ben’s house, she had spent over two years getting the decor just as she wanted it. It really was a comfortable place to live and in a good location. Neither did she want Ben to find out she was a whore, she wasn’t ashamed as such, but knew keeping things discreet was better for business.
She stomped from the lounge and into the bedroom, grabbed a suitcase from beside the wardrobe and slung it open on the bed. She looked at the empty case and her designer clothes, hung up in order of colour. Could
