Darren Craske - The equivoque principle

'I…I suppose it cannot hurt,' Quaint said. 'Dray's father, Sir George, used to own a shipping company working out of Singapore; cargo and trading ships mostly. I never really meshed with the old man's philosophies, but Oliver was all set to take over the reins, the last I heard. I guess something made him change his mind, eh?'

'Maybe your saintly influence rubbed off on him?' Destine jibed.

Quaint laughed. 'I hardly think that likely. We first met whilst I was travelling through Peru…must have been all of twenty years ago now. I saved his life once, too, as I recall. But then, back in those days I was always saving somebody or other's life.'

'Perhaps that is why you have never been concerned with saving your own, hmm?'

Quaint continued: 'The word is that his father and Robert Peel were old friends from their schooldays at Harrow, and Sir George helped pave the way for Oliver's success in the police force.'

'This case could get very nasty very quickly, Cornelius,' said Destine. 'Let us hope this Commissioner friend of yours has a strong stomach.'

COMMISSIONER OLIVER DRAY vomited all over the tiled floor of mortuary in the station's basement. He collapsed onto his knees, his body twitching in convulsions as a thick trail of sputum trailed from his mouth to the floor. Clutching the side of the mortuary table, he wrenched himself up onto his feet, watching though bleary eyes as Sergeant Berry replaced the sheet over Twinkle's body.

'Jesus, Horace…you could have warned me!' Dray said, trying to hide his embarrassment. He wiped spit from his lower lip with his sleeve. 'She looks like a damn mackerel…sliced open to the gullet. And that…thing cut into her,' he said, gesticulating with a shaky finger at the corpse. 'What's the hell's that supposed to be?'

'It's a crucifix, sir.'

'I can see it's a damn crucifix, man, but what on God's green earth is it doing carved into that woman's chest?' Dray yelled. 'What is this, witchcraft or something? It's obscene!'

Berry shrugged. 'Neither Lily Clapcott nor May Deeley looked as bad as this, especially with such…religious significance. There was so much blood it was difficult to ascertain cause of death.'

'Cause of death?' blurted Dray. 'Are you insane, Horace? The woman's got a bloody big gaping hole in her guts-that's the cause of death!'

'You might think so at first glance, but the victim was actually killed by a single knife wound to the heart. The crucifix was cut into her body post-mortem.'

Dray palmed his eyes. 'After? Are you sure?'

'Yes, sir,' confirmed Berry. 'You can tell when you look at the state of her arteries. The heart stopped pumping the blood, you see-'

'If I wanted a bloody pathology lecture, Horace, I'd go see Dr Finch!' Dray snapped. 'And what about this devil you've got locked up? This…abomination of a man…what's he had to say for himself?'

Sergeant Berry looked back blankly. 'Haven't you heard, sir? The man's a mute! It's pointless to try and communicate with him-he just sits there and stares at the wall with those big gaping eyes of his, like he's a hunk of beef, or something.'

'Oh, and you think Whitehall will be satisfied with that, Horace? "He can't actually speak, but take my word for it, Minister; he's as guilty as sin!"' mimicked Dray. 'They'll want a bloody confession, man, nothing less.'

'Commissioner, we've as much chance of getting a confession out of him as we have of a full day's work from Jennings.'

'Well, Horace…you'd better start getting creative, hadn't you. It's not the first time we've had to assist a prisoner with his confession, and it won't be the last!' Dray rubbed at his wrinkled forehead. 'You mark my words…the bloke's probably escaped from some mental asylum somewhere, and then run off the join the bloody circus. Send a couple of men to Bethlem Hospital out Lambeth way; see what they can tell us about any escapees, especially ones with fixations for crosses. That should keep the brass off my back.'

'There's more, Commissioner. You really need to have a read of this.' Berry searched his pockets, and passed Dray a letter. 'It's what I was hinting at earlier.'

'What's this, Horace, your resignation?' Dray said with a smirk, removing a pair of thin wire spectacles from his breast pocket, perching them on the end of his nose. He cleared his throat, squinting at the spidery scrawls upon the letter, and read aloud:

Miller,

So, you have come to London at last, I see. That's right…I'm watching you.

You can't make a move in this city without me knowing about it. Travelling with a circus was a stupid idea…you may as well have taken out an advertisement for your whereabouts in the London Gazette.

You wronged me in the past, but that will not go unpunished for much longer. I have cultivated, nurtured and fed this desire for revenge for so very long. Once, you cut out my heart, and now I will cut out yours. I will destroy everyone you love… I will unleash a terror unlike any seen before, and the corpses of your loved ones will litter the streets.

This is inevitable, Miller. I will not give you the luxury of death; you will suffer a torment as I have done these past years. You will live with the pain that you have given me-and I will be stood right there enjoying every moment.

Dray looked up from the note. 'What's all this is rubbish about, Horace? It sounds like the ramblings of a madman. Where did you get this letter from?'

'It was next to the last victim's body, sir. I thought it'd fallen from her pocket at first, but then, after I checked the prisoner's charge sheet with Marsh, I discovered something interesting.'

'I thought the dead girl was called Argyle or something. Who's this "Miller" character then, the one it's addressed to?' Dray mumbled, waving the letter at Sergeant Berry.

'That's my point, sir, that's why it's so interesting,' said Berry, a grim look whitening his face. 'We managed to get some details out of the giant not long ago, just the basics, name, age and that. Just stuff we got him to write down.' Berry inhaled sharply. 'It seems he's originally from Ireland…and his name is Aiden…Aiden J. Miller. The man the letter is addressed to! This whole case worries me, sir…it has since I first found him by the body. I knew there was something fishy about him, and this note adds a whole new way of thinking to this. It's too convenient, too simple.'

Dray waved him away. 'Simple is right, Berry. Simple mathematics. One dead girl, plus one unconscious murderer, equals we've got our man, case closed!'

'No, sir, I don't agree,' appealed Berry. 'Now we've got this note, everything's changed. The giant may well have been unconscious when we found him at the scene-but I don't think we can just assume that he's the killer. If he's managed to kill twice before and get away with it, why would he be stupid enough to stick around and get caught? And how come he was unconscious when we found him?'

Dray didn't budge. 'It resolves nothing and complicates everything, is what that note does, Berry! We've got three dead women on our hands, and the only man who knows what happened to at least one of them is in our custody. Now what do you want me to do? Let him go? All because of some damned note? For all we know, the bloody giant wrote it himself.'

'You'd be happy to imprison an innocent man, would you? Without proof? Surely you don't want that on your conscience?'

'One more thing won't kill me,' muttered Dray. 'There's already a lot of talk floating around town about these killings, Horace. Sooner or later, it's going to reach the Yard's ears and when it does, it'll be your head on the block if you're wrong about him.'

'But if I'm right, there's a killer loose out there on our streets, and we've got an innocent man locked up!' Berry gritted his teeth to contain his anger. His superior was possibly the most stubborn man he had ever met, but this trait of his had never gotten to the point where it clouded his perception of justice before. Dray was being swayed by his anger, and his concern about being made a scapegoat, and it seemed to be up to Berry to be the voice of reason. 'Commissioner…Oliver…we need to be a hundred per cent sure that the man in our custody is the killer. This won't just dry up and go away, you know, these things never do. I've got a really a nasty feeling in my water about this case. I just know that things are going to get a damn sight worse!'