Mark Pearson - Death Row

‘Now that might be what you detectives call a clue,’ she said.

*

Doctor Derek Bowman took the lid off the refrigerated box and put it to one side. Beside him stood Lorraine Simons, Kate’s erstwhile assistant, who was now being seconded to different forensic pathologists until a permanent replacement could be found. ‘How was Doctor Walker?’ she asked.

The doctor smiled. ‘Effulgent as ever. Glowing, almost. They do say that about pregnant women, don’t they?’

‘They do indeed,’ Lorraine conceded.

The pathologist shook his head as if disappointed at the world. ‘Quite glowing. Why pretty women such as yourself and she ever wanted to get into the grim world of forensic pathology is quite beyond me. You should be out on the catwalks of Milan or gracing the covers of Vogue ,’ he said, with a raise of one eyebrow.

Lorraine blushed despite herself. She was a strawberry blonde with soft pale skin and a heart-shaped face that betrayed her emotions all too easily. She knew that Bowman was only pulling her leg but she frowned at him, mock serious. ‘I should report you to the politically correct police, sir.’

‘Please, Lorraine, there are no sirs here. It’s Derek, or “Bowlalong” if you prefer — that’s what everyone else calls me.’

‘Why “Bowlalong”?’

The doctor picked up a pair of latex gloves and snapped his hands into them. ‘I had that epithet bestowed on me at school. Always in a rush to get there, that’s my trouble, never taking the time to just stop and admire the view.’

‘You’re a busy man.’

‘That I am. That indeed I am. And talking of busy … let’s see if this poor mistreated creature has any secrets to yield to us from beyond the veil.’

He placed his hands in the box, lifted out the severed head of Maureen Gallagher and placed it on his examining table. The atmosphere in the room changed suddenly, a chill pervading the air as though someone had opened an industrial freezer’s door. There was no humour evident anywhere on either the doctor’s or his assistant’s faces now.

Maureen Gallagher’s skin had become even more mottled, the flesh softer, even though the head had been kept in the cooling box.

‘The press are saying she might be a nun, sir.’

‘The jackals of Fleet Street have got wind of what we’re dealing with, then?’

‘Just heard it on the radio.’

‘It’s certainly a newsworthy item. I can’t blame them for that.’

‘Do the police know who she is, then? Was she a nun?’

‘Just a humble cleaning lady, apparently. A volunteer.’

‘And this is what she got for her sins.’ Lorraine looked at the woman’s head. Her eyes had been closed now and she looked like one of the wax heads that anthropological experts build up over discovered skulls to recreate what the person might have looked like. ‘How old do you think she is?’

‘Forties, fifties. Hard to tell just yet.’

‘Who would want to do something like this?’

‘Somebody very strong, somebody very disturbed.’

‘The news people are talking about witchcraft.’

‘Devil worship, maybe? Satanism, some kind of black magic sect, perhaps … but not witchcraft. Wicca is a religion that celebrates the good, the forces of nature. Whoever did this is coming from an entirely different place.’

Dr Bowman picked up his camera and started to take some shots. An hour later he had photographed the head from all angles, weighed it, measured it and taken samples for DNA testing should it be required.

Lorraine had gone to get them both some coffee and Bowman sat at his desk, looking at the printed-out photos he had taken. He compared them with the ones that Kate had sent across to him and concurred with her diagnosis. The body had been chilled and the head separated from it at the neck with the use of a heavy-bladed instrument of some kind. He looked at one of the photos, a close-up of the side of Maureen Gallagher’s head, picked up a magnifying glass and studied the shot closer.

Bowman opened his desk drawer and took out a small pair of tweezers. Then he crossed back to the head, pulling his chair across. Delicately, he put the tweezers into one of the ears and pulled something from the opening. He held the tweezers up to the light. They now held a rust-coloured fleck of some substance. He placed it in an evidence bag and leaned forward to look into the ear again. As he did so he heard a faint ticking sound. He leaned in closer, thinking he must be imagining things. But, sure enough, it was still there, a faint ticking sound which seemed to be coming from the head itself. He placed the head on one side and then with both hands attempted to open the jaw. Rigor mortis had set in, so it wasn’t easy. He grunted, pulled again and the jaw cracked open an inch or two. The ticking sound immediately grew louder.

*

Diane was standing in her customary position by the open window, smoking. She gestured to Jack to come in as he appeared in her doorway.

‘You want one?’ she asked, blowing out a smooth curl of smoke.

Delaney shook his head. ‘I’m cutting down.’

‘Of course you are.’ She gestured at her desk. ‘Forensics are back on that bullet you found.’

‘Cartridge, Diane.’

‘Whatever.’

Delaney picked up the file. ‘What’s it tell us?’

‘Not a lot. No fingerprints, no DNA. Standard military issue. Pretty much as you said. A tiny bit of plastic in one of the grooves.’

Delaney took the photos of the cartridge and flicked through them, looking at a magnified close-up of one of the grooves on the cartridge. A small transparent piece of plastic snagged on a minute nick in the brass casing. He flicked to the next photo: an even more magnified close-up of the piece of plastic. It was slightly transparent with a small circular crescent on the right-hand side of it. He flicked to the next photo: an even tighter shot of the crescent shape — it was uniform, regular, obviously not made by the tear. He flicked through the paperwork: a lot of words but adding nothing to what Diane had already summarised.

‘Not telling us a great deal, then?’

‘Not yet.’

‘This piece of plastic? Is it significant?’

‘For fuck’s sake, I don’t know, Jack,’ said Diane, tossing the stub of her cigarette out of the window. ‘We’re pissing in the wind here. And your girlfriend on Sky News isn’t making life any easier. We’re getting a thousand calls an hour, calling in with so-called information on everything from Satanic cults in Pinner being responsible to terrorist cells operating out of a pizza-delivery service in Stanmore.’

‘Don’t call her my girlfriend — it’s not funny, boss.’

‘Is any of this funny? We’ve got an attempted murder of a serial child killer and rapist, a boy abducted from the same street he took those children from all those years ago, and now we have the head of a bodiless nun placed on a church altar a scant hundred yards from where the boy was taken. What the hell’s it all about, Jack?’

‘She’s not a nun, she’s a church cleaner.’

‘She was as bald as a billiard ball, so she’s either a nun or the nutter cut off her hair before cutting off her head. Any way you slice this cake, Jack, it’s not looking too tasty.’

‘Some killers do take trophies, you know that, Diane.’

‘Yes, of course I know that.’

‘Especially if there is a sexual element.’

‘A sexually abused nun. Who in hell are we dealing with here?’

‘Lots of women shave their heads for all sorts of reasons.’

‘Yeah, maybe. But their heads don’t turn up on the altars of Catholic churches, do they?’

‘No, they don’t.’

Delaney looked across as Sally Cartwright came into the room, her expression serious. ‘Sally, what’s going on?’ he asked.