texts?’
‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ said the officer. ‘And if any pictures were taken.’
Brook and Noble nodded their thanks and moved further down the garden towards a shiny new barbecue, still sporting a couple of scorched burgers.
‘This is a Weber, sir. Top of the range barby.’ Brook recognised the distinctive brand from his evening with Mike Drexler. ‘Looks new. Wonder where they nicked it,’ smiled Noble, looking over at Brook, who seemed distracted suddenly. ‘Something wrong?’ Brook looked into his sergeant’s eyes. To Noble he seemed to be wrestling with a different mystery a million miles removed from this blood-soaked scene. ‘Are you okay, sir?’
‘Maybe they didn’t nick it. Maybe they won it in a competition, John.’
Noble’s expression sobered as soon as the observation hit home. ‘You think? The same MO. Cheeky sod.’
‘Why change a winning formula? We’ll need those burgers and sausages bagged for analysis, John. They could have been … doctored.’
‘Twilight Sleep again?’
‘It worked last time.’
‘What happened here?’ asked Noble as they walked over to where the fence panel had been removed.
‘Best guess? Emergency exit. The killer has finished his work and is about to leave. Maybe he hears my car or maybe even sees me coming up the path…’
‘Pardon?’
Brook sighed, feeling suddenly very tired after his night’s labours. He looked up at the washed-out dusty sky, dawn still some way off. ‘It’s been a long night, John.’
‘You think you disturbed The Reaper?’
Brook hesitated, trying to find the right words. Ahead of him the path forked into two. One way required honesty and promised awkward questions, suspicion, maybe even removal from the investigation. The other was the path of deceit and would require a balancing act of exhausting proportions. He’d already taken a pace along it with his lie to PCs Duffy and Parker about his presence on the scene. ‘I don’t know for sure.’
‘How long have you been here?’
He looked back at Noble. ‘A lifetime, John.’
The house adjoining the Ingham backyard was still in complete darkness. Brook ran his torch around the neat little back garden. ‘What are we looking for, sir?’
‘Assuming our killer vaulted over the fence and landed in here covered in blood…’
‘Panicking after you turned up.’
‘…there might be bloody footprints on the path, maybe some fibres, maybe he left DNA on the front gate.’ Brook was trying his best to ignore Noble’s piercing glance.
‘You realise what the Chief Super’s going to say when he finds out? Never mind Brian Burton and the rest of the media. What were you doing here in the middle of the night?’
‘It’s complicated, John, and I’m tired.’
‘That’s not going to cut any ice with…’
‘Odd.’
Noble stopped to look at Brook. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Look at the row of houses facing the crime scene.’
Noble scanned from side to side. Of the dozen houses backing onto the crime scene only the one opposite was in darkness. Every other household alerted to the calamity in their midst had numerous lights beaming, some of which outlined a human frame peering out to catch a glimpse of the horror. Only the house, past which the killer may have made his escape, was dark.
‘Empty house maybe? Or whoever lives there could be away. Lucky.’
Brook arched an eyebrow at Noble. ‘The Reaper? Luck? I don’t think so. Get Duffy and Parker to knock on doors and find out who lives there and where they are. We need to get in there. And station someone out front for the foreseeable.’
Fifteen minutes later the two detectives climbed the now bare stairs to the Inghams’ first-floor master bedroom and prepared to enter. They approached the door as a bright flash illuminated the dingy room to reveal a child’s bare feet suspended in the air. Once Brook would have reeled from such a sight. Now he was detached enough to just wrap it into his calculations.
Twenty years had passed since Brook had gazed at the corpse of a boy hung from a ceiling in the flat of Sammy Elphick, a petty criminal who lived with his wife and son in a slum in North London. A family had died that day too. How many more would it take before The Reaper was satisfied?
Brook stepped just inside the door to survey the scene but Noble, following right behind, let out an involuntary ‘Jesus!’ The various SOCOs looked up from their different activities then grinned at each other. They always relished the shock and awe of the unprepared.
‘You’re not going to blow chunks are you, detectives?’ said one. Noble speared a contemptuous look his way.
‘I reckon the Chief Super will be losing his bran flakes when he gets here,’ said another and the low chuckle was taken up by the rest, but just as quickly died away.
‘Just like the first one. Harlesden, wasn’t it?’ asked Noble quietly.
Brook nodded. Another camera flash made him realise how tired his eyes were. He tried to focus despite the fatigue. He looked up at the young boy swaying minutely at the end of a rope which reached up through a trapdoor-cum-skylight in the ceiling into the roof space. The same MO as Harlesden all those years ago when Sorenson had removed the Elphick boy’s fingers, settlement for a V-sign the boy had flashed at him in the streets of Shepherd’s Bush. Had that been this youngster’s offence this time around? It seemed an extraordinary coincidence.
He couldn’t look at the boy’s face so busied himself with other details. The Derby County FC pyjama top had a small breast pocket with a slight blood-stained bulge; Brook knew the two removed fingers would be in there.
He checked the stumps on the boy’s disfigured hand. The cuts were clean, surgical. Noble bent to examine the boy’s feet. The soles were dirty and scuffed, except where several trickles of urine, expelled at point of death, had cleared small channels through the grime. A teat of liquid still clung to the right big toe.
Brook looked at the boy’s ankles, visible under his pyjama bottoms. They were a bluish pink with the accumulating blood of post-mortem lividity.
Noble followed Brook’s gaze. ‘I thought lividity created a deeper purple than that,’ he remarked.
‘It does,’ agreed Brook. ‘After eight hours. It’s nearly seven now. He’s only been dead about six hours at the most.’ He leaned in towards the boy to examine more closely. As he did, the body swayed gently round and Brook was forced to see his face. ‘Full circle.’
‘Sir?’
‘We’ve come full circle, John. This is a copy of the first Reaper murder in Harlesden.’
‘A copy?’
‘The hanging, the removal of the boy’s fingers. See the spots of blood under the body.’
‘I assume the fingers are in the pyjama pocket. And he would have been dead or dying before he was strung up, right? That’s the same as Harlesden.’
‘You’ve done your homework.’
Noble looked a little guilty. ‘Brian Burton, I’m afraid.’
They moved past the boy to the centre of the room and were assaulted by other odours beside urine, smells Brook knew well. Emptied bowels and the sickly sweetness of ageing blood had temporary dominion over the stench of stale beer and tobacco, which hung in the air and leached from the peeling, yellowed wallpaper. But now the room also had a chemical edge as the forensic officers applied their sprays and gels.
Like the other Reaper crime scenes, the room was sparsely furnished. It was important that only death and its key details would take the eye. A large double bed and wardrobe had been pushed close to the far wall, and beyond that was an ancient oak wardrobe, the doors of which were no longer flush. The doors had no handles, only
