‘Amateur or professional?’
‘This is not the work of a surgeon. Nor of a butcher, I’d say. Your killer used a very sharp blade, a scalpel or something similar with a small cutting edge. But in spite of that he still didn’t get it off in one clean slice. He didn’t hack at it, but it took him three or four separate movements of the blade. So I’d say this is not something he’s had a lot of practice at.’
‘First timer?’
Grisha shrugged. ‘I couldn’t say. But he was thorough, he didn’t just slash at it. Have the penis and testes turned up? Were they at the scene?’
Carol shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Trophies. Isn’t that what your Dr Tony would say?’
Carol gave a tired smile. ‘He’s not my Dr Tony, and I would never be crazy enough to second guess him. I wish he was here to weigh in with his tuppence worth, but that’s not going to happen this time out.’ Her voice was edgy.
Grisha stretched his neck so his head moved backwards, like a man avoiding a blow. ‘Whoa, Carol. What’s he done to upset you?’
‘Not him. Our new Chief Constable, who thinks if I want profiling expertise I should stay in-house.’
Grisha’s mouth made an O shape. ‘And we don’t like that idea?’
Whatever Carol was planning to say was overtaken by a knock at the door. The familiar ginger curls of DS Kevin Matthews appeared round the edge of the door. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said, wincing a smile at Grisha.
‘You looking for me?’ Carol said, getting to her feet.
‘Yeah. There’s another teenage lad on the missing list. Central patched it straight through to us.’
Carol felt a heaviness in her stomach. There were times when this job felt too much to bear. ‘How long?’
‘His parents thought he was having a sleepover. Only, he wasn’t.’
Long enough, thought Carol. More than long enough.
CHAPTER 16
Julia Viner sat on the edge of a generous armchair, poised for movement, her fingers constantly working in her lap. Wiry dark hair threaded with grey was pulled back from her face to reveal fine-boned features and olive skin lightly scored with fine wrinkles. Her eyes were sharp and dark, like those of a small bird accustomed to the gloom of hedgerows and suspicious of the light. She wore a full skirt and a fine woollen jumper in dark burgundy. Kathy Antwon sat on the arm of the chair, one hand on Julia’s shoulder, the other thrust into the pocket of her jeans. Carol could see the bunch of her fist through the material. She had the angry scowl of someone who is afraid but daren’t let herself acknowledge the fear. Her light brown skin was flushed darker along the high cheek-bones, her lips pressed tight together.
‘What do you need to know? How can we help you find Seth?’ Julia asked, her voice tense.
‘We need you to be absolutely honest with us,’ Carol said. ‘Sometimes parents don’t want to tell us the whole story when children go missing. They don’t want to get their child into trouble, or they don’t want to admit that they have rows, like every other family in the world does. But honestly, the best thing you can do for Seth is not to hold anything back.’
‘We’ve got nothing to hide,’ Kathy said, her voice rough and heavy with pent-up emotion. ‘We’ll tell you anything you want to know.’
Carol glanced at Kevin, who had readied his notebook and pen. ‘Thank you. The first thing we need is a recent photo of Seth.’
Kathy jumped to her feet. ‘I’ve got some I took at the weekend. They’re on my laptop, hang on, I’ll get it.’ She hurried from the room. Julia looked after her, her expression slipping momentarily into bereavement. She’d pulled herself together by the time she turned back to face Carol. ‘What do you need to know?’ she repeated.
‘When was the last time you saw Seth?’
‘When I left for work yesterday morning. It was the same as any other morning. We had breakfast together. Seth was talking about some history homework project he wanted me to help him with. My degree is in history, you see. He thinks I know everything about anything that happened before the middle of last week.’ She spoke on a faint, breathy attempt at a laugh. ‘Then I left for work.’
‘Where is it you work?’ Carol said.
‘I run the education department at the city council,’ she said.
That went some way to explaining how they afforded the sprawling ranch-style bungalow on its corner plot in the section of Harriestown known as the Ville. Back in the 1930s, it had been the home of De Ville Engineering Works, a vast sprawl that had built engines for planes, commercial vehicles and racing cars. In the 1980s, the last of the de Villes had seen where the future lay and exported the whole business to South Korea, selling the site to a local builder whose daughter had just married an architect whose heart belonged to Frank Lloyd Wright and the American Southwest. The result had been a landscaped development of forty houses that became an instant hit with style magazines round the world. Nobody could quite believe it, but those who had bought their houses off-plan soon found they had acquired some of the most sought-after real estate in the north of England.
‘And I’m a graphic designer,’ Kathy said as she returned carrying an open laptop. ‘That’s how we ended up here. I designed all the original brochures for the Ville, so I knew to buy in ahead of the crowd.’ She turned the screen to face Carol, revealing a full-screen head-and-shoulders shot of a smiling dark-haired boy with his mother’s olive skin and dark eyes. His hair was long, roughly parted on one side and falling halfway across one eye. A scatter of spots across his chin, a chipped front tooth and a slightly crooked nose finished the thumbnail sketch Carol was already drawing in her mind. ‘That was taken on Sunday.’
‘Is it possible for you to email it to my team? That’s probably the quickest way to get it out there.’ Carol was
