“So you’ll be wanting the pathologist’s reports?”
“That’s right. Dr. Mackenzie, I believe it was.”
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The coffee and KitKat arrived while they were digging through the boxes. Blackstone thanked the PC who brought it and got back to helping Banks. At last they unearthed the pathology reports, and Banks started reading through them while Blackstone left the office for a while.
It was as he had thought. Many of the bodies were badly decom-posed, as they had been buried in the dirt of the cellar or the back garden. But Dr. Mackenzie had been able to identify slash marks to the areas of the victims’ breasts and genitalia in all cases, probably made with the same machete Terence Payne used to attack and kill Janet Taylor’s partner. They were similar to the wounds Kirsten Farrow had suffered, though the weapon was different, and they were wounds, unfortunately, not uncommon to vicious sexual assaults. They showed a deep hatred of the women men felt had betrayed, humiliated and rejected them all their lives, or so the profilers said. Of course, not all men who had been betrayed, humiliated or rejected by women became rapists and murderers, or the female population would be a lot smaller and the jails would be even more full of men than they already were, Banks thought.
Twenty minutes or more must have passed as Banks read the grisly details, most of which he remembered firsthand, then Blackstone returned.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“It’s as I thought,” Banks said. “Now I just need to find out how much of this was reported in the press at the time.”
“Quite a lot, as I remember,” said Blackstone. “Alan, what is it? Have you found something?”
Banks had let the last file slip out of his hand to the f loor, not because the details were more gruesome than any of the others, but because of a sheet of paper he had seen clipped to the end of the pile.
It was simply a record of all those involved in the preparation of the reports and postmortems, including the men who had transported the bodies to the mortuary and the cleaners who had cleaned up afterward, initialed beside each name, partly kept to ensure a continu-ous chain of custody. “I can’t believe it,” said Banks. “It’s been staring me in the bloody face all along, and I never knew.”
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Blackstone moved closer. “What has? What is it?”
Banks picked the papers up off the f loor and pointed with his index finger to what he had read. On the list of those involved with the Chameleon victims’ postmortems were several lab assistants, trainees and assistant pathologists, and one of them was a Dr. Elizabeth Wallace.
“I should have known,” said Banks. “When Kev Templeton went on about patrolling The Maze for a would-be serial killer, Elizabeth Wallace was the only one who was as adamant as he was that we were dealing with a killer who would strike again. And she tried to convince us that the weapon was a razor, not a scalpel.”
“So? I don’t get it.”
“Don’t you see it? She was there, too. Elizabeth Wallace was keeping an eye on The Maze, and she had easy access to sharp scalpels.
Much better to have us believe the weapon was a razor that anyone could have got hold of. They were at cross-purposes, her and Kev.
They didn’t talk to each other. Neither knew the other was going to be there. Elizabeth Wallace thought Kev Templeton was going to rape and kill Chelsea Pilton. She couldn’t have recognized him from behind. It was too dark. And there can be only one reason why she was there.”
“Which is?”
“To kill the killer. She’s Kirsten Farrow. The one we’re looking for.
She was a trainee on the Chameleon victims’ postmortems. That means she knew at first hand about the wounds. They brought back her own memories. She knows Julia Ford, and Julia must have let slip about Lucy Payne being at Mapston Hall under a false name. It fits, Ken. It all fits.”
“She killed Templeton, too?”
“Almost certainly,” said Banks. “By mistake, of course, the same way she killed Jack Grimley eighteen years ago. But she did kill him.
Her MO is different now, but she trained as a doctor since then, so that makes sense. And do you know what?”
Blackstone shook his head.
“Annie’s going to see her today to push about her past and her friendship with Julia Ford. Alone.” Banks took out his mobile and 3 6 6
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pressed the button for Annie’s number. No signal. “Shit,” he said.
“She wouldn’t have turned it off, surely?”
“Why don’t you try the station?”
“I’ll ring Winsome on the way to Eastvale,” said Banks, heading for the door. He knew he could get there in three quarters of an hour, maybe less if he put his foot down. He hoped that would be fast enough.
“ L I Z , W H AT are you doing?” said Annie, getting up from her stool and edging toward the door.
“Don’t move. Keep still.” Dr. Wallace waved the scalpel in her hand. It glinted under the light. “Sit down
