'That wasn't motivated by sex,' he said. 'But go on.'
'Well, the clincher seems to be his use of GHB.
They found traces in Ellis's blood. Loads of it. Seems you're right: the killer kept him topped up with it for the whole time he held him. In the end his heart gave way.'
Before he could be murdered, Foster thought.
'This guy's a user himself, and has used it on other people. Mainly women. Also, his car was seen on Lad broke Grove on the night Darbyshire was dumped.'
'Sounds like they're sniffing the right lamp post,'
Foster said.
But he was puzzled; if this guy did spike all three victims with GHB, then a more damning sighting would have placed him in one of the pubs in which they had last been seen. Surely Williams and his team were parading him in front of drinkers, showing his photo to bar staff?
'But,' Drinkwater said.
'But what? Come on, Andy. I know something's bugging you.'
Drinkwater took a deep breath. 'OK, he fits the profile, he uses GHB and, yeah, we have an eyewitness who places him near the scene of one murder.
But everyone here is acting as if it's open and shut.
They're spraying this bastard with hot shit. They've dug up every bit of sleaze on him -- and that's a lot, believe me -- and are giving him it with both barrels.
He hasn't been allowed to sleep, his brief seems next to useless, and the bloke is petrified. Doesn't know what's hit him. You just know they're going to keep coming at him until he crumbles.'
'So, what's the problem? If he killed three people then they should do everything except take his fingernails off with pliers.'
'Thing is, sir, you've seen the crime scenes, you've seen how things have been left at them. You've said yourself how calm and calculated this killer is. Does a bag of sleaze with a GHB problem -- who gets flustered the first time a copper asks his fucking name - seem like the killer to you?'
He didn't. And Foster trusted Drinkwater's judgement.
'Anyone else got their doubts?' he asked.
'No one,' Drinkwater said emphatically. 'They're all but breaking open the champagne. They've got the go- ahead to raid his place today and they think, even if that doesn't turn up enough, he might crack.
One of them said they might have enough already, if they sprinkle it with Stardust and the GPS are willing to give it some topspin.'
Foster knew he had no basis to go to Harris; to do so would compromise Drinkwater. And the suspect was only being questioned. While that remained the case, it made no sense to cause a scene.
Except that the killer was due to strike in the next forty-eight hours.
14
Nigel had not seen anything like it. Rows upon rows of organs and other, well, 'specimens' was the best word he could muster, preserved in formaldehyde.
His eyes were drawn -- half through fascination, half through revulsion -- to a jar in which a perfectly formed, tiny human foot floated free in its sea of liquid. The severed left foot of a small child killed by smallpox, whose body was dissected by the surgeon to try to understand that awful disease. Nigel wondered darkly if the parents were aware their little one's corpse had been carved up so the world could better understand the viruses that threatened it.
Next he was enthralled by a set of jars in which the dead fetuses and offspring of what seemed to be every mammal and creature known to man were suspended in their formaldehyde baths. There was something clinical, yet hauntingly beautiful, too, about all these samples, lit and stacked on shelves in their thick glass containers, like some nightmarish pharmacy. He knew now where notorious British artists - charlatans and poseurs, to his jaundiced eye -- gained their inspiration. Carving up and preserving cows was not a new pursuit.
Nigel enjoyed new discoveries like this, secret places where London's past had been preserved.
Literally, in this case. Once again the years fell away, the atmosphere of the time rose up from the murk.
A world of disease, crude surgery, experimentation, discovery. A world on the cusp of change.
It heartened him that a place such as this existed.
A centuries-old collection of anatomical and surgical artefacts that told the story of modern surgery in the most graphic way possible. Only in London, he thought. Only in this benighted, storied city would there be a room where pickled wombs, babies' limbs and infant sloths were lined up for the inspection of the general public. Looking around, he guessed that most of those doing the inspecting were medical students, though a few art students were among them, sketching away, brows furrowed in concentration.
He had already dwelled for more minutes than he had intended at a section of the museum displaying early surgical instruments, aghast at their nightmarish design, his imagination conjuring macabre pictures of the agony they would cause an unanaesthetized patient aware of every incision and slice. Nigel had been expecting to see a few rusty scalpels and fake skeletons. Instead, he had stepped into a few quiet, plushly decorated rooms that resembled a cross between an horrific art installation and the set of a Cronenberg film.
He wondered who the people were whose organs had been pickled, their livers, hearts, kidneys immortalized.
Perhaps they had been donated to John Hunter, the pioneering eighteenth-century surgeon whose collection this was, by grave robbers. Nigel knew these men made a living from selling corpses to medical schools for dissection and study, the fresher the better.
He checked the pamphlet he'd picked up on the way in. Fairbairn's body was on the mezzanine.
There were yet more exhibits upstairs, where it was less crowded. Here the story of modern surgery was told in greater detail. Nigel cast his eye around the room until it alighted on a glass case featuring a skeleton.
As he got nearer, he could see the dirty, yellowed skeleton was that of a large man. Probably around the same height as Foster, perhaps a few inches taller.
The eye sockets were vast black caverns; the ribcage was wider than any other part of the body, save the shoulders, and the rictus grin was sinister.
Nigel scoured the display case for some form of identification. Falling to his haunches, he saw a small inscription beside the skeletal feet.
'Eke Fairbairn. Murderer,' he read. 'The dissection of executed criminals was abohshed by law in 1832.
However, in exceptional circumstances, the Home Secretary and the family of the executed convict gave permission for his body to be released to the College for further study. His skeleton has stood in the museum ever since.'
Nigel stood and peered more closely at the giant man's bones. He was no medical expert but he could make out what appeared to be breaks or cracks to parts of the body, to the right tibia and collarbone, while the enormous skull appeared misshapen. But was this any surprise, given that it had stood for more than a century and a quarter inside a glass case, presumably being taken out and moved several times?
Probably a case of wear and tear. He remembered references in the newspaper reports he had read the previous day to a limp. The defendant stood awkwardly, and there had been something wrong with his arm, which suggested a deforming Victorian malady such as rickets.
Nigel checked his watch and cursed under his breath. It was ten thirty and he had not yet called Foster.
By ten thirty Foster and Heather had covered a further two floors, more flats of the surly and unresponsive. One woman complained of her neighbour playing music at four a.m., waking up her small child. The neighbour explained he worked nights and was just unwinding when he got back in, claiming the woman next door was twitchy and neurotic. They nodded and smiled, not wanting to get drawn into petty conflicts. Each flat they visited was duly checked against the electoral roll; flats where they obtained no response would be visited later in case the inhabitants were at work. Any new tenants would have their backgrounds checked. Foster hoped their presence at
