Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

‘That’s me.’ Callum popped the last chunk of sandwich in his mouth and sooked his fingers clean. Flipped the magazine shut and stood. ‘Feel free to tag along, if you like.’

He sauntered out, past a frowning Franklin, and down the corridor into the observation suite. It was subdivided into booths by a series of half-height partitions, each area looking out over one of the dissecting room’s twelve cutting tables. The booths all had their own whiteboard, DVD recorder, collection of uncomfortable plastic chairs, and TV screen.

Dr McDonald was sitting cross-legged on the floor right in front of the TV, still wearing her pink scrubs and stripy top, elbows on her knees, hands on her cheeks — holding her head up. Like a little kid watching cartoons. In front of her, the screen had a top-down plan view of the cutting table, a wrinkled leathery body lying dead centre curled up on its side. Figures flickered and swam around it, moving impossibly quickly, lurching in and out of frame.

She’d swapped her mortuary-issue wellies for a pair of red high-tops, and added a pair of glasses to her ensemble. The fast-forward post mortem reflected in their lenses.

She looked up as Callum walked in. ‘I’ve watched it five times now.’

He waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. No babbling. No non sequiturs.

OK...

She unfolded her legs and stood. ‘I’ll need to see the crime scene.’

‘I can probably swing that.’

McAdams marched into the room, followed by Franklin. Still no sign of Mother.

A big smile and McAdams stuck his hand out for shaking. ‘Detective Sergeant McAdams, you must be Dr McDonald.’

She looked at the offered hand as if he’d grown a vast pale hairless spider at the end of his arm.

The awkward silence stretched.

He lowered his hand. Stuck it in his pocket instead. ‘This is DC Franklin.’

‘Before we start, here’s how this works,’ McDonald walked to the whiteboard and wrote ‘VICTIMOLOGY’ on it in red marker, ‘I give you a series of educated guesses, based on the information you give me. If I don’t know something I’ll mark it as an assumption and you have to take anything based on that with a whole carton of salt. Agreed?’

‘You’re going to profile our serial killer?’

‘OFFENDER BEHAVIOURAL INDICATORS’ went on the board next.

‘No, I’m going to give you educated guesses, remember?’

‘CRIME SCENE INDICATORS’

McAdams leaned back against the partition wall. ‘Go on then, guess away.’

‘PSYCHOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY / BOUNDARIES’

‘From what we know right now, our suspect is probably a goal-orientated killer. It’s possible preserving the victims turns them into some kind of fertility totem, but I don’t think he kills them for sexual release. He kills them so he can mummify their bodies. That’s his goal — it means something to him. What is the bigger question.’

‘I’ll settle for who .’

‘Statistically it’s going to be a white male, mid-twenties. He’ll have access to a facility for smoking meat, and or fish, and experience in using it. You don’t jump right into this kind of thing without practice.’

McAdams snapped his fingers at Callum. ‘I want a list of every smokehouse in a twenty... make it fifty-mile radius.’

Dick.

Callum made a note anyway. ‘What about Glen Carmichael, Brett Millar, and Ben Harrington? Any chance the three of them are killing as a team?’

Dr McDonald looked back at the TV, with its flickering ghosts. ‘There’s a chance, but it’s not very likely. Two of them, maybe — one dominant, one submissive — but three would be very unusual. It’s hard enough getting three men to agree on what pizza toppings to order, never mind how to select, kill, and preserve their victims.’

Fair enough.

She leaned in closer to the screen. ‘Our offender’s an artisan and an artist. This kind of work takes time, care, and skill. He’s probably unattached, lives alone where no one can interfere with his work. He’ll drive a big car, or a van — he needs to be able to transport the bodies.’

Franklin shook her head. ‘We found one of them in the boot of a wee Kia Picanto — small four-door hatchback. You don’t need that much space.’

‘Not when they’re mummified, but while they’re still alive? You need more room.’

And Franklin explodes: in three, two, one... But she didn’t. She just nodded.

‘His post-murder activities are highly ritualised too. Removing the organs and preserving them separately, then stitching them back into the body cavity.’ She wrapped the fingers of one hand into her hair, fiddling with the curls as her eyes narrowed and her voice dropped off to a murmur. ‘You don’t just mummify people for fun, do you, no you don’t, you do it because you want them to live on in the afterlife, you deify them...’ She let go of her hair and straightened. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sort of religious upbringing.’ She pointed at the whiteboard, where ‘PSYCHOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY / BOUNDARIES’ was written. ‘I need to know where the victims came from before we can work out where he’s likely to live.’

Callum nodded. ‘We’re working on it.’

‘Also,’ McAdams took a marker from the shelf beneath the board and uncapped it, ‘we need to decide what we’re calling our boy. Can’t have a serial killer novel with an unnamed antagonist.’ He printed ‘IMHOTEP’ right in the middle. ‘Before the tabloid newspapers come up with something more lurid .’

‘Ah...’ Dr McDonald bit her top lip. ‘It’s a nice thought, I mean I know we’ve got to call him something, but “Imhotep” doesn’t actually work, does it, because Imhotep was Egyptian and Egyptian mummies are always preserved lying flat, and the curled body posture our suspect uses to pose his victims is more reminiscent of ancient Peruvian burial techniques, which results from a completely different cultural and religious background.’ She shrugged. ‘“Paddington” would probably be more accurate, you know, strictly speaking, because of the Peru connection, I think we should definitely call him Paddington, it just makes a lot more sense.’

‘And one final thing.’ McAdams smiled. ‘Aren’t you going to say it?’

Dr McDonald wrote ‘PADDINGTON’ on the board. ‘Aren’t I going to say what?’

‘It’s a cliché of the genre, but the profiler always says it at the end of the briefing.’

A frown. ‘Nope, you’ve lost me.’

‘He will kill again!’

‘Of course he will.’ McDonald stuck the lid back on the marker pen. ‘He’s a serial killer, it’s what he does.’

The God-In-Waiting sways gently in the smoke, head down, hands making delicate figure-eight patterns as it swings. No movement of its own, just that final rattling breath, then peace and stillness. Grace and purity.