Carol said, ‘No comment,’ for the eleventh time. Penny Burgess’s mouth tightened and her eyes flicked round the scene, desperate for someone who would be less of a stone wall than Carol. Popeye Cross might be a male chauvinist pig, but in between the patronizing comments he always salted a few memorable quotes. Drawing a blank, she focused on Carol again.
‘What happened to sisterhood, Carol?’ she complained. ‘Come on, give us a break. Surely there must be something you can tell me apart from “No comment”.’
‘I’m sorry, Ms Burgess. The last thing your readers need to hear is ill-informed off-the-cuff speculation. As soon as I’ve got anything concrete to say, I promise you’ll be the first to know.’ Carol softened her words with a smile.
She turned to walk away, but Penny grabbed the sleeve of her mac. ‘Off the record?’ she pleaded. ‘Just for my guidance? So I don’t end up writing something that makes me look a pillock? Carol, I don’t have to tell you what it’s like. I work in an office full of guys that are running a book on when I’ll make my next cock-up.’
Carol sighed. It was hard to resist. Only the thought of what Tom Cross would make of it in the squad room kept her mouth closed. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve been doing just fine so far.’ As she spoke, a familiar Range Rover turned the corner. ‘Oh shit,’ she muttered, pulling her arm away from the reporter. All she needed was John Brandon deciding she was the police source behind the Sentinel Times’s serial-killer hysteria. Briskly, Carol walked towards Brandon’s car as it jerked to a halt, waiting for someone to shift the tapes keeping the crowd at bay. She stopped and waited while the constables rushed to impress the ACC with their efficiency. The Range Rover nosed forward, giving Carol the opportunity to spot the stranger in Brandon’s passenger seat. As the two men climbed down, she scanned Tony, committing the details to the memory bank she’d trained herself to develop. You never knew when you’d need to come up with a photofit. Around five-eight, slim, good shoulders, narrow hips, legs and trunk in proportion, short dark hair, side parting, dark eyes, probably blue, shadows under the eyes, fair skin, average nose, wide mouth, lower lip fuller than upper. Shame about the dress sense, though. The suit was even more out of fashion than Brandon’s. It didn’t look worn, however. Deduction: this was a man who didn’t spend his working life in a suit. Equally, he didn’t like throwing money away, so the suit was going to be worn till it fell to bits. Second deduction: he probably wasn’t married or in a permanent relationship. Any woman whose partner needed a suit occasionally would have pitched him into buying a timelessly classic style that wouldn’t look so absurd five years after its purchase.
By the time she’d reached this conclusion, Brandon was by her side, gesturing to his companion to join them. ‘Carol,’ he said.
‘Mr Brandon,’ she acknowledged.
‘Tony, I’d like you to meet Detective Inspector Carol Jordan. Carol, this is Dr Tony Hill from the Home Office.’
Tony smiled and held out his hand. Attractive smile, Carol added to her list of particulars as she shook the hand. Good handshake, too. Dry, firm without the macho need to crush the bones that so many senior officers exhibited. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said.
A surprisingly deep voice, faintly northern. Carol kept her own smile tight. You never knew with the Home Office. ‘Likewise,’ she said.
‘Carol’s heading up one of the murder teams we’ve got on these killings. Number two, is it, Carol?’ Brandon asked, already knowing the answer.
‘That’s right, sir. Paul Gibbs.’
‘Tony’s in charge of the Home Office National Crime Profiling Task Force feasibility study. I’ve asked him to take a look at these murders, to see if his experience can give us any pointers.’ Brandon’s eyes bored into Carol’s, making sure she realized there were lines to be read between.
‘I’d appreciate any help Dr Hill can give us, sir. From the brief look I’ve had at the scene of the crime, I don’t think we’ve got any more to go on than in the previous similar cases.’ Carol signalled that she understood what Brandon was saying. They were both walking the same tightrope, but from different ends. Brandon could not be seen to undermine Tom Cross’s operational authority, and if Carol wanted a tolerable existence in the Bradfield force, she couldn’t openly contradict her immediate superior, even if the ACC agreed with her. ‘Would Dr Hill like to see the crime scene?’
‘We’ll all have a look,’ Brandon said. ‘You can fill me in as we go. What have we got here?’
Carol led the way. ‘It’s in the back yard of the pub here. The scene of crime is obviously not the scene of death. No blood at all. We have a white male, late twenties, naked. ID unknown. He appears to have been tortured before death. Both shoulders seem to have been dislocated, and possibly his hips and knees. Some tufts of hair are missing from the scalp. He’s lying on his front, so we’ve not had a chance to see the full extent of his injuries. I’d guess the cause of death is a deep wound to the throat. It also looks like the body had been washed before it was dumped.’ Carol ended her flat recitation at the yard gate. She glanced back at Tony. The only difference her words had made was a tightening of his lips. ‘Ready?’ she asked him.
He nodded and took a deep breath. ‘As I’ll ever be,’ he said.
‘Stay outside the tapes please, Tony,’ Brandon said. ‘The SOCOs will still have a lot to do, and they don’t need us dumping forensic traces all over their murder scene.’
Carol opened the gate and waved the two of them through. If Tony had thought her words had prepared him for the sight inside, one look told him otherwise. It was grotesque, made all the more so by the unnatural absence of blood. Logic screamed that a body so broken should be an island in a lake of gore, like an ice cube in a Bloody Mary. He had never seen a corpse so clean outside a funeral parlour. But instead of being laid out calm as a marble statue, this body was twisted into a loose-limbed parody of the human frame, a disjointed puppet left lying where it fell when the strings were cut.
When the two men entered the yard, the police photographer stopped snapping and gave John Brandon a nod of recognition. ‘All right, Harry,’ Brandon said, seemingly undaunted by the sight before him. No one could see the hands clenched into tight fists in the pockets of his waxed jacket.
‘I’ve done all the longand medium-range stuff, Mr Brandon. I’ve just got the close-ups to go,’ the photographer said. ‘There’s a lot of wounds and bruising; I want to make sure I’ve got it all.’
‘Good lad,’ Brandon said.
From behind them, Carol added, ‘Harry, when you’ve done that, can you snap all the cars parked up in the immediate area?’
The photographer raised his eyebrows. ‘The lot?’
‘The lot,’ Carol confirmed.
‘Good thinking, Carol,’ Brandon chipped in before the scowling photographer could say anything more. ‘There’s always the outside chance that me laddo left the scene on foot or in the victim’s car. He might have left his here to collect later. And photographs are that much harder for the defence brief to argue with than a bobby’s notebook.’
With a sharp snort of breath, the photographer turned back to the corpse. The brief exchange had given Tony time to get a grip on his churning stomach. He took a step closer to the body, trying to glean some primitive understanding of the mind that had reduced a man to this. ‘What’s your game?’ he said inside his head. ‘What does this mean to you? What translations are going on between this broken flesh and your desire? I thought I was the expert in keeping things battened down, but you’re something else, aren’t you? You are truly special. You’re the control freak’s control freak. You are going to be one of the ones they write books about. Welcome to the big time.’
Recognizing