escape either man and they exchanged a bleak smile. Sammy Elphick in the House of God? Only if there was lead on the roof.
Ancient, ill-fitting linoleum clung to the floor, the pattern long since obscured by substances which tugged at the soles of Brook’s Hush Puppies, announcing his every step with a squeak. The dim light was provided by a wall fitting, wittily shaped as a candle with a small bare bulb as its flame.
Brook took all this in, as might a man about to be executed, seeing everything, drinking in the banal details around him to assert his connection to life-the spider dropping from its web, the nipple of damp forming on the ceiling, the pounding of his heart.
Brook didn’t enjoy this part of the job. Or rather he didn’t enjoy the thrill it gave him. The adrenaline of dread.What was behind that door? He’d been told it was bad but that made it worse.
Would it be a study in scarlet? Would Colonel Mustard be prostrate on the floor of his library, smoking jacket wrapped around his tidy corpse, spotless lead pipe lying beside him? Unlikely.
At school Brook had dreamt of being a superstar detective grappling with unfathomable clues, crossing swords with fiendish criminals, saving the day. As a child he hadn’t considered wading through pools of blood and vomit.
Rowlands pushed open the door and Brook began assessing the scene. The worst was over. The not- knowing. In fact, he was surprised by Rowlands’ misgivings. There seemed to be order and purpose about the room with only the smell of faeces to gnaw at Brook’s equilibrium, offset by a hint of perfume. Talcum powder, Brook guessed. There was another smell, intermingling. Hospitals.
As he took everything in he was aware of the distant mumbling of lowered voices, could see the flash of the police photographer adding another chapter to his Book of the Dead.
The boy hung from the ceiling by the light cord, his head to one side, purple tongue peeping through parted teeth. Brook’s first thought was of Ariel in the Tempest, hovering above Prospero, awaiting instruction. He stared, expecting a horror that didn’t arrive. It was okay. He could function. He paced around the body trying to gather facts and impressions, not moving his eyes from the boy.
Yes. The boy was Prospero’s angel, floating, invisible, watching over his earthly charge. He had on thin nylon pyjamas and couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. He was very slight but even so the ceiling rose was hangingoff at the unexpected burden it had been asked to support and looked like it might give way at any second.
Brook looked past the boy briefly, at the fireplace alcove and the daubing of ‘SALVATION’ in blood red finger-writing. Trickles had formed at the base of some of the letters and Brook nodded appreciatively at this dramatic touch. Perhaps he was going to tangle with Professor Moriarty after all.
‘Our boy fancies himself as a bit of a Stephen King,’ chuckled Rowlands.
Brook smiled in agreement and moved closer to the boy. His eyes were closed and sunken and his tousled hair fell in a heap across his face, a couple of strands touching the light bulb still in situ. They were singed.
‘Was that light on when we got here?’
Rowlands looked nonplussed for a second then turned to enquire of the photographer who shrugged. ‘Not when I got ’ere, it weren’t,’ he answered.
‘Maybe the bulb has blown. Check that, will you, when you’ve finished?’ Brook said to the man combing for fibres on the carpet. ‘It should have been on,’ he said to Rowlands.
‘How do you know?’
‘Just an impression. A good show needs lighting.’
Brook moved around the corpse as though it were a maypole, being careful to avoid stepping in any blood. The only sign of violence on the boy was the congealed blood around the stump of his missing middle and forefinger. From the small lump above a slight blackening stain in his breast pocket, Brook deduced that the sliced off fingers had been placed neatly in there. Neat was the word. There’d been no major struggle here. This was highly organised.
Brook examined further, wondering why he wasn’t appalled. Perhaps it was the neatness. Yes, that was it. He could focus. He could take it all in. Why was that? Was he just a good copper or had he become so hardened?
Rowlands was right. It was a bad one. Killing children was the last great taboo. Even regular criminals abhorred child killers. They weren’t safe anywhere, least of all in prison where child killers were vital to the self- esteem of other inmates. Run-of-the-mill lags could feel good about themselves once they no longer clung to the bottom rung of the ladder. They were better than child killers and had a duty to inflict righteous retribution on any in their midst who’d abused, raped or murdered children. Society demanded it.
But despite society’s abhorrence, Brook was unmoved, could look at this child without tears or nausea. Was it because he wasn’t yet a father? Was it the absence of blood and gore? He didn’t know. Rowlands, who had known fatherhood, also seemed calm but then he’d been ‘seeming’ calm for thirty years.
‘What do you see, laddie?’ Rowlands eyed him closely looking for any sign of distress. Brook became aware of the scrutiny, grimaced to affect displeasure, and was sickened by the hypocrisy. He stared intently at the face of the boy.
‘From the look on his face, I’d say he was dead before he was strung up there. I don’t think that wire could support a struggle. It had to be a dead weight. There’s no terror in his expression, he looks at peace.’
Rowlands nodded, declining to reveal if this was a revelation or a confirmation. ‘Go on.’
‘His fingers were removed post mortem because there’snot enough blood from the wounds. The blood was already starting to congeal when the killer cut them off. The spots below his hand could indicate that they were sliced off where he hung. Impossible if he was struggling. Neat job too. I can’t see any hacking. Scalpel maybe.’
Brook wrestled with himself for a moment and the photographer paused, impressed, as did the officer now looking for fibres on the sofa.
‘It’s almost as if…’ Brook looked around for the first time at the mute figures of the man and woman, agog on the sofa, tape over their mouths, their sightless eyes frozen in shock forever.
‘What is it?’ asked Rowlands.
Brook looked carefully at the position of the couple on the sofa. Both had been elaborately tied together and the rope around their ankles disappeared under the sofa and re-emerged over the back to be wound round their chests and hands. Their throats had been cut and blood caked their clothes, the rope and the sides of the sofa. Sprays from the first arterial cuts had even landed on the other side of the room.
They posed for another picture but yet again failed to say ‘Cheese.’ As the flash died, Brook caught the silver slug trail of their tears.
He went behind the sofa to take in the final terrible view afforded them.
‘What’s that doing there?’ Everybody stopped and followed Brook’s finger to a poster on the wall. He walked over to it and examined it. ‘This shouldn’t be here. It doesn’t fit.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s all wrong. Take a look around, guv. I don’t wish to sound like a snob but this poster is tasteful. ‘Fleur de Lis, oil on canvas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,’ said Brook, reading from it. ‘This art doesn’t belong here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean Sammy Elphick is not going to have such a thing in his pokey little existence. He’s not remotely interested in any art he can’t fence.’ Brook turned to the couple on the sofa. ‘He just wouldn’t be.’ The enormity of Brook’s assumptions began to slow him down. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the family’s pain. He’d dismissed these people’s lives as worthless.
‘You think the killer brought it?’
‘Probably,’ Brook replied softly.
‘Why?’
‘I guess to tell us something. To communicate his superiority over Sammy and his family and tell us he’s not our usual, run-of-the-mill murderer. Look around, guv. This has all been staged. Sammy and Mrs Elphick…?’ Brook raised an eyebrow at Rowlands who confirmed their union with a nod, ‘…have been…they’ve been immobilised here, facing their son to watch him die. I think the killer is taunting them.’
‘Okay.’
