Eyes rigidly glued to the front, Grier gave a subtle shake of his head. The last thing he needed, as a probationer plod, was get another bollocking from a Detective Chief Superintendent.
“We’ve got a gonorrhoea!” Murray said, sniggering like a naughty five-year-old. Luckily, no one seemed to hear him.
“Her pimp was the last person to see her alive,” Barton was saying. “According to him, at approximately 21:10 hours on Tuesday 2nd November she was being rogered by a trick in an alley at the back of a restaurant in Brick Lane. He knows this because he was listening to the Champions League match on the radio in his car, which was parked nearby. Traces of seamen were found in Alice’s vagina, or what was left of it, and we think this is most likely from the client her pimp mentioned in his statement. We’ve sent a sample off for DNA profiling, and if we get a result, we will obviously issue an action to statement him.”
“Wonder if the stupid sod has started itching yet?” Copeland said, shaking his head in disbelief. “She had syphilis and Chlamydia. What sort of idiot would have unprotected sex with a prostitute?”
“Alice normally handed her takings over to her pimp for safekeeping after each trick,” Barton said. “When she hadn’t reappeared by half-past-nine he thought he’d better go and check on her, but she had vanished from the face of the earth.”
“Did he call the cops?” Copeland asked.
“Don’t be daft! He just assumed the lazy cow – his words, not mine – had skived off to the pub for a drink.”
“Sounds like a nice, caring sort of bloke,” Charlie White remarked.
“He was a real charmer,” Barton told him. “When we told him she was dead, his first worry was that he would be out of pocket till he replaced her.”
“You think the mutilation of Tracey’s body was bad, but what he did to Alice was ten times worse,” Jack said, taking up the narrative where Barton had left off. “We found her in a derelict house in Hanbury Street.” His voice became embittered as he described what happened next. “You all know the story: two selfish reporters get a call from the killer, and instead of calling the police, they popped over to the crime scene and did their best to destroy it, all in the name of journalism. What did the post-mortem reveal, George?”
“The victim was beaten about the head and face with an iron bar, four heavy blows in all. She had a depressed skull fracture and compression of the brain. In an identical manner to Tracey Phillips, the serrated hunting knife was repeatedly rammed into her vagina while she was still alive in what I can only describe as some form of perverted intercourse. Her womb and uterus were literally shredded like mincemeat. Her throat was cut with such force that the head was almost severed clean off. The blood spatter indicates that she was lying down for all of this.”
Jack raised a hand, indicating that George should stop. “The pathologist and crime scene reports are in the MIR, along with all the record photography. You should take the time to familiarise yourself with them over the next couple of days if you haven’t done so already.” He could tell from the mixed facial expressions in his audience that some of the detectives, mainly the advanced exhibits officers, would be very keen to read the reports and view the photographs, while others would rather chew their own arm off.
“Carry on, George.”
“The killer opened her torso using surgical cuts and removed every internal organ from her body. The way he did this implies at least rudimentary medical knowledge. One eye was missing; we initially wondered if the killer had removed it, but upon closer examination, it quickly became apparent that one of the resident rodents was responsible. For some unfathomable reason, the killer folded her hands into her stomach cavity.” He used his own hands to demonstrate the position they had been placed in. “He then carefully arranged her innards in the front room for us to find. Although most of her intestines were hung up like Christmas decorations, he left a small section over one shoulder. God alone knows why.”
“Because he’s fucking evil personified,” Charlie White said, putting into words what every other person in the room was thinking.
Watching Nick Bartholomew’s face completely drain of colour while George described the macabre scene, Dillon felt a twinge of sympathy. He guessed that the poor lad was having a flashback to the traumatic experience, and he recalled the sheer horror that had registered on Nick’s face when he’d realised that the victim’s blood was dripping down on him from one of the freshly harvested organs the killer had suspended from the ceiling.
“There was another message in blood, written on a wall in the living room,” Jack said. “There are photographs in the MIR for those of you that didn’t attend the scene. As with Tracey, we have reason to believe Alice was wearing underwear, but this has never been recovered. So, I think Charlie is spot on when he says our man is a trophy taker. I also think Charlie hit the nail on the head when he talked about our boy being a cannibal. George, would you tell our colleagues what we found when we examined the victim’s heart, please.”
Charlie White was looking mightily pleased with himself over his two astute deductions, Jack noted, suppressing a grin.
“The heart had a great big chunk missing from it,” George informed them. “Two bites worth, to be precise. Because the place was infested with giant rats –” He suppressed a shudder as he recalled the constant scuttling noises they had made during the long hours he’d spent inside that hell house, first processing the scene with Sam Calvin and then supervising the removal of evidence. “– we naturally assumed that the victim’s eye had just been an
