Brook remembered him now. Bobby Wallis had form and Brook was willing to bet he hadn’t cried since early childhood. He was a local hard man, a man’s man, a petty criminal, who graduated from years in the system and drifted in and out of menial work. Sometimes he got drunk and beat up those who were sure not to fight back. Not his family though. They were part of him. He’d protect his kids. He’d protect his wife. Love was another matter.
Brook remembered his own dead father, a miner in Barnsley. Although as different from Bobby Wallis as chalk from cheese, Brook recognised the symptoms. A life built on small successes, hungrily sought and endlessly trumpeted to drown the background hum of failure.
With his father it had been his work as a union official and coaching the church boys’ football club. With Wallis it would have been a good result at the bookies or the chance smile of a barmaid ‘asking for it’.
Brook turned his gaze to the ample figure beside Bobby. Mrs Wallis was on the sofa comically dressed in a towelling tracksuit that stretched itself, with more than a hint of complaint, around her abundant flesh. At least in death she’d discovered irony, thought Brook, trying to suppress a grim smile.
A pack of cigarettes and gold lighter sat neatly beside her. They would surely have been knocked over in the death struggle so they had to have been placed there post mortem. If there was a reason apart from the killer’s sense of order, Brook didn’t know it. His eye lingered on the pack. He was sorely tempted to take one and light up.
Mrs Wallis had also cried. Her face was contorted with pain and effort, though Brook doubted whether she’d have been able to plead for her life. Like her husband, she wore the large, sopping bib of a bloodstain beneath telltale sinew, protruding like a bag of giblets from her throat. Another life to make no mark. Gone forever. Brook nodded. The same format. And the gore wasn’t too bad. He could cope. Except. There was always ‘except’. That was the same as Harlesden and Brixton too.
The girl lay face down on the fake animal skin rug. Brook was glad he couldn’t see her face–an oversight on the part of the killer perhaps.
Her feet were bare up to her ankles where her pyjamas took over. The bottoms were relatively free of blood and were dotted with cartoon characters. Her top lay in tatters around her torso. It had been slashed open, exposing her back and shoulders. Something had been carved onto the smooth alabaster skin below her shoulder blades and Brook strained his neck to make it out. SAVED again. The lettering was cut in straight lines including the S. The blade had been thin and very sharp, as Brook could see no evidence of effort or hacking around the deep cuts; another cutthroat razor perhaps, or even a scalpel.
The area around the girl’s torn neck shone dark with blood though not as much as might be expected for such a major wound. Nor was there much blood coming from the cuts on her back.
He decided these wounds were administered post mortem to prevent excessive bleeding. That fit the pattern. The killer wouldn’t want his message obscured. Dr Habib would have to confirm it but Brook was sure enough and took some measure of comfort from the fact.
Now he scanned the floor. He could see no obvious sign of the weapon. The Reaper had taken it with him this time. The Reaper. Brook was annoyed with himself. How quickly he’d parcelled up the crime and assigned it to his old quarry. He had to keep an open mind.
He began to scan the room itself. For a family home there was very little mess. Some Christmas cards on a string had been taken down to make way for the Van Gogh poster but even then they’d been neatly stacked behind the little Christmas tree in the corner. If you didn’t count the bloodstains, there was order. The killer had arranged everything, tidied everything so only the important things remained to catch the eye. Before or after death, Brook couldn’t tell. A bit of both, probably.
A few crumbs of food on the carpet were the only other signs of disorder. Probably caused by the victims as they knocked over their meal in the struggle to understand what was happening to them. The pizza boxes were now in the kitchen, out of the way. They’d done their job and were now just clutter as far as the killer was concerned. Everything was deliberate, put in place for Brook to see.
He shook himself to gaze again at the girl, trying not to imagine her ordeal. A few hours before, she would have been pink with life, the rug a deathly white. Now the roles were reversed. She couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. What had she done to deserve this? She hadn’t chosen her parents. Brook could write off their useless existence with little guilt. But the girl should have had her whole life in front of her.
Next Brook glanced at the carry cot beside the TV, glad he couldn’t see inside. It must have been the thought of the little mite that had eaten away at Noble’s sangfroid. This was a new outrage for The Reaper: murdering a baby. He remembered what Charlie Rowlands used to say in London, ‘The smaller the victim, the bigger the crime’.
Was that what started the tears for Bobby and Mrs Wallis? Or was it their young daughter’s throat being torn open in front of them? He wished he could be sure it was one of the two but he knew not to take it for granted. Impending death could induce terrifying selfishness.
And the son, Jason, a petty thief and general chip off the old block, Brook recalled. He was alive and the girl and the baby were dead. Why? That didn’t tally with the past. In Harlesden and Brixton no-one was spared.
For a split-second Brook was consumed by the hope that this was different, just a one-off, mindless slaughter, not the work of The Reaper but the drug-addled frenzy of a teenage boy or a disgruntled neighbour pushed over the edge. He looked back at the Van Gogh poster and the bloody daub on the wall and the thought died in its infancy.
Brook wanted to step outside. His need for a cigarette was becoming almost clinical. He swept his eye round the room one last time. On the shelf of the fireplace above the gas fire stood a bottle of red wine with two half full glasses either side. ‘Nice symmetry,’ nodded Brook. He couldn’t make out the label from where he was but suspected the killer had brought it. It looked too expensive for the weekly Wallis shop at Lidl.
To the left of one of the wine glasses what looked like a lipstick had been stood on its end. Brook glanced at Mrs Wallis to see if she was wearing any. It was difficult to tell. It had probably fallen out of her pocket and had been tidied up by the killer.
Brook turned and then looked back. Whatever impression the killer wanted to convey, the chances were he would want it seen as someone came through the door. Many serial killers enjoyed creating a tableaux. In this case, family life as it should be: gathered together to discuss the events of the day, then wiped out by a single act.
As Brook turned again to plot a path back to the cold night air a noise from behind halted him and his head snapped back towards the murder scene. He froze, not daring to move, listening for further noises. He stared at Bobby Wallis for a long time, watching for any sign of movement, examining the wound on his neck again to be sure he was dead.
He turned to leave but the noise returned. This time it was unmistakeable. A rustling of material. Someone or something was moving in the room. Brook stood like a statue for what seemed an age, his breathing shallow, his ear cocked, only his eyes allowed to move. The next sound was one Brook had not heard for many years. Not since Terri had been a baby. It was an infant gurgling, preparing itself to wake and scream for a feeding with that disproportionate power that robbed so many new parents of their sleep.
Brook stepped round the room as quickly and as delicately as he could manage before peering into the carry cot next to the TV. A baby wriggled, its eyes closed, trying to kick off its blanket. Tiny eyes flickered but instead of joy Brook’s mouth fell open in horror. On the child’s forehead–in small lettering–the word ‘SAVED’ again. Brook narrowed his eyes and pulled the restrictive blanket away from the baby and felt around its torso for any further signs of injury. The baby wriggled even harder and began to kick out and cry. Brook plucked the infant from its swaddling, hardly daring to look at the disfigurement inflicted although there was something odd about it.
He walked towards the door holding the child but stopped suddenly. Then he bent down to sniff the baby. A second later