“Young, early teens, no obvious cause of death,” she barked, glancing up at Rob. No hellos this time.
Rob walked around her and stared into the shallow pit. A weathered face with ghostly hair stared back at him. She could have been fourteen or forty, it was impossible to tell. Liz was still gently removing dirt from her face.
He averted his gaze. “Can you say how long she’s been there?”
Liz sighed. “It would be a guess at best, but I’d say maybe two years. Not as long as the other one. This body is in better condition, her clothing more intact.”
Rob nodded. So, up until two years ago, this guy was still active. If it was a guy. He couldn’t see a woman doing this. Women serial killers were rare. His mate, Tony had told him that.
“She was posed the same way as before. Hands over chest.” She nodded to a plastic bag on the side of the grave. “Those were in her hair.”
Rob picked up the packet and studied the two blue hair clips identical to the ones Arina was wearing. His breath quickened.
“Same killer.”
She nodded. “I’d say so.”
Rob exhaled slowly. The investigation may have started with Katie Wells, but Arina and this child were certainly linked. Clear as day. He studied the other markers.
“That where the other bodies are?” he asked Liz.
She inclined her head. “So I’m reliably informed. Those are the locations the dogs pointed out.”
“Did you see them?” Rob looked around for Sergeant Wilson and the K-9 unit, but they were nowhere to be seen.
“Yep, when I got here there were four dogs lying on those exact spots, good as gold, waiting for their masters. So well trained. My Abigail would have been off like a shot at the first hint of a hare or a field mouse.”
Trigger too.
“Where is DS Wilson now?” Rob asked.
Liz raised her brows. “They decided to widen the search area. Didn’t he tell you?”
Rob felt like he’d been punched in the gut.
“Not more bodies?” Mallory gasped.
She shrugged again. “Who knows. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Whoever this person is, this is the spot where he disposes of his bodies. This is his burial ground.”
A chill passed over him, and he thought he saw Mallory shiver.
Rob pointed to the other markers. “How are we going to get through all this? Are there more forensic teams available?”
“Just mine, I’m afraid.” At his incredulous look, she added, “Resources outside of London are stretched thin. We don’t often have so many corpses at one time. But, my two lab assistants are on their way. They can do a lot of the preliminary work, uncovering the bodies and taking soil and tissue samples. This’ll be a good learning exercise for them. Once we have all the victims back at the mortuary, I can perform the post-mortems and maybe we can get an idea who these lasses are.”
They’d be here all day and almost certainly most of the night, if not into tomorrow as well.
“Right, let’s set up shop.” He turned to Mallory. “Get catering out here, and let’s make sure there’s enough grub to last twenty-four hours.” As SIO he had the magical ability to summon coffee, sandwiches, portable toilets, anything the forensic team might require. “Does that sound about right?”
Liz nodded wearily. “That’d be great, thanks Rob.”
“Anything else, you let me know.”
He and Mallory walked to the edge of the clearing, out of earshot. “It’s going to be a long day,” Mallory remarked. “We going to stick around?”
“No, we’ll be of more use back at the station,” he replied. “There’s a lot of groundwork to cover. Besides, we’d just be in the way. Let’s let them get on with it and we can come back later, once they’ve unearthed the other bodies.”
Mallory glanced at the other police markers. “Four more, excluding this one. That’s one more than we accounted for.”
A beam of sunlight broke through the trees and illuminated the markers before they fell back into shadow. A blackbird cried disdainfully overhead. He was right. Apart from Arina, they had identified four other missing girls. There were five graves here. Potentially five additional victims of the same killer.
The hairs on his neck stood up. “Possibly more, if the dog squad finds anything else.”
Mallory fell silent. The enormity of what they’d discovered was hitting home.
“We’d better go further back than five years.” Rob said. “We stopped there because that’s when Payne was released from prison. But he’s no longer a suspect.”
“Shit, the murders could go back years.” Mallory stared at Rob. “Maybe even twenty years.”
Serial killers don’t stick to jurisdictions.
“Could be the tip of the iceberg.” He thought of Jo’s sister, Rachel. How many others? “The killer could have left a trail of buried victims across the country; we just haven’t found them yet.”
“Manchester?” Mallory whispered as if saying it any louder would make it more plausible.
Rob swallowed over the lump in his throat. “At this point, anything’s possible.”
36
“How many?” bellowed the Chief Superintendent as Rob stood facing him in his office.
“At least five, sir. Maybe more. We don’t know for sure yet. We’re still waiting to hear back from the K-9 unit, and Dr Liz Kramer, who’s onsite with her team.”
Before he’d come into this meeting, Liz had called to say they’d started work on one of the other graves and it appeared to be the same scenario. A young girl, early teens, posed, clips in her hair.
“Fucking hell.” Lawrence sank down into one of the armchairs usually reserved for the Police Commissioner’s visit. He stared at Rob with haunted eyes. “So we have a bona fide serial killer on our hands?”
“It looks that way, sir.” Rob cringed inwardly, waiting for the explosion that never came.
Instead, Lawrence leaned back and closed his
