Death Row

getting there, he had no doubt of that.

Diane Campbell was standing outside the church with a couple of uniforms beside her, talking to a man with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and drinking tea from a plastic beaker. Delaney assumed that he was the priest who had made the discovery, and reckoned the tea would be very sweet indeed.

‘Diane.’ He nodded at her briefly as they approached.

‘Jack. Hello, Kate. Thanks for coming.’

‘Not a problem.’

‘Do we know who she is yet?’ asked Delaney.

‘We have a shrewd idea but the vicar hasn’t been able to go back in and make a formal identification.’

‘Priest.’

‘What?’

‘He’s a priest, not a vicar.’

Father Carson Brown looked over at Delaney and Doctor Walker as if noticing them for the first time. He smiled, his face colourless, his lips thin. ‘Another true believer.’

‘I’m a true something,’ said Delaney, a little bit more of the soft brogue sliding into his voice. ‘I’m not sure what kind of believer I am any more.’

The priest looked back at him with haunted eyes. ‘Nor me.’

Delaney nodded, understanding, and turned to Diane. ‘Shall we go in?’

Diane held her arm out towards the door and Kate and Delaney followed her into the church. Delaney held back the urge to dip his hand in the holy water. He wasn’t totally sure, but he thought the water might not be classed as holy any more. Would the church need to be sanctified again? As they walked up the aisle to the altar Delaney thought it was entirely possible that that could be the case.

A woman’s head had been placed on the altar. Severed at the neck. Her eyes were open in a face that had no colour in it, apart from the eyes. Her eyes were a startling blue. Deep Arctic blue. Her head was as bald as an egg.

Kate stepped forward, putting on a pair of forensic gloves, and placed her hand on the woman’s cheek. It was cold. Extremely cold.

She turned back to Jack and Diane. ‘She’s been frozen.’

‘Where the hell is the rest of her?’ asked Diane and pointed at the woman’s forehead. ‘And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?’

Delaney looked closer. The letters H O R had been carved on the woman’s forehead. ‘I don’t know, Diane. When I was an altar boy we just had the chalice on the altar and maybe that little bell I had to ring at a certain time in the Mass. Decapitation was a bit too avant-garde for us back in Ballydehob.’

Diane was too used to gallows humour to comment. ‘Christ, I need a cigarette,’ she said instead.

‘Diane!’ Despite himself Delaney was a little taken aback.

‘What?’ she said.

Delaney gestured at the surroundings. ‘You know – we’re in a church.’

Diane flapped a dismissive hand and pointed at the severed head. ‘Exactly. Maybe this is connected to some kind of devil worship.’

Kate knelt down by the altar, examining the cut marks at the base of the decapitated woman’s head. ‘Maybe the murderer was spelling out the name Horus.’

‘Who?’

Kate turned round to look up at the chief inspector. ‘Horus was an Egyptian deity. Had something to do with the dead, I think. He was depicted as having a human body but a falcon’s head.’

Jack looked back at the altar. ‘The fact that her head is shaved …’

‘Yes?’ said Kate, gesturing for him to continue.

‘You think she might be a nun?’

Kate considered it. ‘It’s possible. The priest didn’t seem to know a great deal about the woman except he thinks she must be the volunteer cleaner. Apparently she only worked at night, when no one else was around.’

‘Maybe she’s an ex-nun,’ said Delaney. ‘Maybe if this is some kind of ritual killing, a Satanist sacrifice or the like, it gives more power or energy to the spell if the sacrificed person is religious.’

‘Might make a sick kind of sense, I suppose,’ agreed Kate. ‘Wouldn’t they have painted a pentagram or something, though?’

‘Satanists in Harrow on the Hill, decapitating bald nuns and desecrating churches!’ Diane sighed heavily. ‘Sweet Jesus, as if we haven’t got enough on our plates already!’

‘So the thing about this Horus fellow having a human body but a bird’s head – is it significant, do you think?’ Delaney asked Kate.

‘It could be. If that’s what the letters mean. But we have no way of knowing that yet.’

Diane yanked a packet of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket and snapped one into her mouth. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘So the rest of her body is somewhere having a hawk’s head grafted onto it by some devil-worshipping Egyptologist.’