A well-built young man, seventeen, eighteen at most, hung from a steel rafter in the low ceiling.
‘Ashwell’s son Billy,’ said Dupree. McQuarry gazed up at him. His face was pale and his lips slightly parted and discoloured. Nearby a chair had been knocked over on its side and discarded plastic packaging lay on the floor. Otherwise there was order.
McQuarry clicked on a small Dictaphone. ‘White male, Caucasian, mid-to-late teens. Lips and tongue cyanosed. Probable cause — asphyxia.’
Drexler stood near the plastic packaging. ‘This is for a tow rope, Ed.’ He looked behind the counter. Several more ropes in their untouched packaging sat on the shelf. ‘Taken from the store here. The hanging was improvised. Suicide?’ he asked Dupree.
‘Homicide,’ said Dupree. Both agents were slightly taken aback by his confidence. Hangings were rarely clear cut, the majority being suicides as it was not the easiest way to kill and would usually require multiple assailants, particularly to subdue a strong young man.
‘Who found him?’
‘Old Ben Gardner called in for gas round six this morning. Says he saw the boy hanging when he got to the door. He’d had to pump his own gas, which was unusual — the boy usually ran out to serve you before your engine was off. Ben said he was clearly dead. Well, he was in ’Nam so I guess he’d know. He rang it in straightaway — didn’t touch anything, didn’t even walk through the door.’
McQuarry nodded and clicked off the Dictaphone. Until the body was cut down they wouldn’t be able to say more. She looked over at Dupree who nodded in response and led them out of the back door of the station onto a dirt track which took them to a small, functional wooden cabin.
Both agents were beginning to sweat now as the midday sun began to parch the bare track and they were relieved to dip under the cooler canopy of the trees.
It took them a few minutes to adjust their eyes to the murk of the cabin. They could see the shadowy form of Caleb Ashwell, tensed and twisted from his death throes. They could see the sinewy debris of his throat and the dark pool of drying blood on his grubby vest. They could see the handcuffs behind his back and an opened wine bottle on the table. It took a while to make out the words daubed in blood on the wall, though, as the darkening stain was nearly lost in the gloom.
‘“CLEARING UP THE GROUND”,’ read McQuarry. ‘Interesting.’
‘That’s what we figured until…’ began Dupree.
‘What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood.’ Dupree and McQuarry turned to Drexler who smiled apologetically. ‘Sorry. Philosophy major. It’s Wittgenstein.’
‘Cute,’ said McQuarry. ‘Doesn’t change what looks like a classic murder-suicide to me. Boy kills father. Boy feels guilty and kills himself.’ She turned to Dupree. ‘But this message makes you think it was a double murder?’
‘No, Mba’am. Something else.’
Brook rubbed his eyes and took another scant mouthful of his baked potato. He washed it down with a slurp of cold tea and returned his gaze to the computer screen. He reread the FBI report and then clicked on a link to take him to the Los Angeles PD Homicide Report on the death of the Marquez family.
He read carefully: although the father and eldest son’s petty criminal background fitted the profile, several factors marked this down as something other than a Reaper killing. The timeline was fine. The Marquez family had died in 1995, at the same time the original Reaper Victor Sorenson had lived in LA, but the use of both a shotgun and several different knives on the two parents and four children pointed away from The Reaper. In addition, the two girls, one fifteen the other twelve, had both been raped at the scene, a violation to which The Reaper had never stooped. Sorenson killed his prey quickly. He didn’t want them to suffer; he just wanted them to experience beauty before they died — a piece of art, a beautiful aria, a glass of expensive wine. Then they could cease to exist, happy in the knowledge that they were leaving behind lives that weren’t worth the living, knowing the world was a better place without them.
Brook looked at his watch. It was past eleven. Three hours spent scouring the unsolved murder files of various US law enforcement agencies had left Brook feeling in need of another shower. America sickened him and he resolved never to go. What was it Sorenson had said just hours before he died? Something about a nation that called itself the Home of the Brave presiding over such appalling murder statistics? No wonder Sorenson felt The Reaper’s ‘work’ would be lost in America and had returned to England to strike in Derby. Brook had been searching for months to find cases that fitted The Reaper’s MO and wading through so much stuff had left him numb.
He logged out of the FBI site and clicked onto his Hotmail account for something to do. He cleared the usual junk and was left with nothing. Not surprising. Apart from some of the US agencies he’d emailed asking for information about families murdered in their homes, nobody even knew he had an email address.
Brook stood, stretching his legs, and went outside to his back garden, sucking in the sweet night air. He shook his head. Why was he still looking? Sorenson was dead. The Reaper was gone. What was he hoping to achieve? To unmask Sorenson to the world? Why? So he wouldn’t have to carry the knowledge alone? There had to be something else driving him. Guilt? The dreams?
A black cat dropped down from a neighbour’s wall and headed straight for Brook’s legs, purring in anticipation of the pleasure to come. ‘Hello, Basil, you little monkey. I haven’t seen you for a while.’ The cat fell onto Brook’s foot and writhed around his ankle until Brook leaned down to scratch its head and neck. After a couple of minutes, Brook extricated himself from its clutches and went back into the house. He re-emerged with a saucer of tinned tuna for the cat and a measure of malt whisky for himself and sat down on the bench, dividing his gaze between the feeding cat and the cotton-wool stars.
He was tired now, torn between the comfort and novelty of his own bed and the urge to go for a stroll, to feast on the chill air. In the end he did neither and satisfied himself with a barefooted amble around the lawn, enjoying the freshly nourished Basil’s acrobatic skills as he chased the nocturnal insects that had dared to enter his territory.
Finally Brook drained his glass, and returned to the cottage. Unusually, there was an email alert on his computer. He clicked on his inbox and was greeted by a message with the tagline ‘REAPER’ and the subject ‘CONGRATULATIONS’.
Brook hesitated for a moment, then clicked on the message.
Brook stared at the screen unblinking for several minutes, then drained his glass and went to fetch a refill. He stared at his monitor some more. This was a hoax. Sorenson was dead. And who knew his email address apart from a few FBI agencies? He reread the message before logging out of Hotmail and typing ‘Tony Harvey-Ellis’ into a search engine. He was rewarded with several hits, all local Brighton papers, reporting his drowning. He read all of them without expression, then his eyes fell onto the phone. He cast around for his address book, looked up a number that any normal father would’ve known by heart, and dialled.
Terri picked up on the first ring. ‘Hello?’
Brook hesitated. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out.
‘Hello? Who is this? This isn’t very funny.’ Her tears were on the way when she slammed the phone down a few seconds later.
Brook replaced his receiver more gently, ashamed. His own daughter. He couldn’t even speak to his own daughter. But what could he say?
