Jams Roses: Son of a Serial Killer

‘You’re sweating, Ben,’ she said. ‘And pale. Go look in the mirror.’

‘No,’ Ben snapped.

Mrs Green reached across the table, grabbed Ben by the wrists and stared deep into his eyes. She saw something, something that shocked her, although it was a pleasant surprise. She let his wrists go and sat back in her seat.

‘I’ve seen those eyes before,’ she said.

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Ben.

She smiled to herself and sipped her tea as Ben took back the paper and flicked through the pages, anything to keep him from having to talk to his mother. He came across the page which gave details on local events and meeting groups. He scanned down and fingered the advertisement for a local anger management class.

‘That won’t help you,’ said Mrs Green, reading his thoughts. ‘You had the urge, didn’t you, my darling?’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mum. I think we need to get you back to the doctor,’ he said.

‘I can see it in your eyes, Ben. You’ve crossed a line. You’ve done it haven’t you?’ she persisted.

Ben made a mental note of the time and address of the meeting that night. He explained to his mother that he had just popped round to check she was ok, and if she needed him to just call. But she was paying no attention to the words he said as he made his way to the kitchen door.

‘Ben.’

He turned his head to face her.

‘Your father was just the same, Ben.’

She reached across the table, closed the newspaper, and placed her hand on the article involving The Phantom.

‘It’s in your blood,’ she said.

Ben took a moment to digest what his mum had just said.

‘Keep taking your pills, mum,’ he said, then left.

Two uniformed officers had sealed off the crime scene, unofficially identified the bodies using the identification found on them, and taken down a brief statement from Mr Wilson, who was walking his dog along the canal when he made the unfortunate discovery of two young corpses floating in the murky water.

He had fished the bodies out and made a fruitless attempt at CPR before calling the police. It was only after he’d put on his glasses to use the phone, that he clearly saw how dead Ricky and Alexia really were.

They had been in the water at least an hour, concluded Summers, as she stood over the recently deceased. She noted the giant wound on the side of Ricky’s head.

Her medical training enabled her to give a rough assessment, fatal blow to the head and damage to the neurocranium. More specifically, his head had been hit so hard that the synarthrosis joint between the Parietal and Temporal bones on Ricky’s left side had cracked open. The Temporal bone jolted inward and probably pierced his brain.

It took a few seconds for Summers to register Alexia’s cause of death, a brief moment before she saw the back of the girl’s head was held together only by matted hair. It seemed the Occipital bone, and one or both of the Parietal bones, the bones at the back of the skull, had been smashed to pieces, exposing and damaging the brain.

Both bodies, battered, cold and soaked, didn’t make for a pretty picture.

As the corpses had already been moved, there was no need to leave them exposed to the few members of public who had now gathered. Summers called out to one of the uniformed officers to help the coroner bag up the bodies, so they could be taken to the lab.

The chances of finding any DNA evidence was extremely slim due to the circumstances, but she asked the other uniformed officer to take a swab from Mr Wilson, in order to eliminate his DNA from any alien DNA found on the bodies. She had already ruled him out as responsible for the deaths; his alibi had been confirmed by phone where he was all morning until thirty minutes ago. Besides, she could see he wasn’t a murderer. He didn’t look capable; trying to save two people, yes, to murder them, no.

Summers joined Kite who had just taken a photo of a bloody mess on the floor. She pointed out small bits of brain in the blood.

‘Thanks for that,’ he said.

Summers positioned herself between the sprays of Ricky’s blood and the canal, facing away from Kite, with her right side closest to the water.

‘This is where the boy stood when he was struck, facing this way,’ she said, thinking out loud. She looked at the lines of claret on the ground, ‘It looks like four, maybe five squirts of blood before he fell, or was pushed, this way,’ gesturing toward the canal, ‘into the water.’

She turned around and Kite stepped to the side so as to not block her view, of what they had rightly assessed to be the girls blood and pieces of brain.

Summers moved to approximately where the girl’s feet would have lay at her time of death, looked back at Ricky’s blood and then again to Alexia’s.

‘He killed the boy first,’ said Kite, answering the question he thought Summers was pondering.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘which means she watched him die, and waited to die herself.’

‘Maybe she panicked, couldn’t decide whether to fight or flee,’ said Kite.

He was right, Summers thought to herself.

She had checked the hands of Alexia. There were no bruises on the knuckles or palms nor any skin or fibres under the fingernails. She didn’t fight. She didn’t flee. She was paralysed by fear. She paid the price as well.

Kite stated the obvious, that Alexia had had her head bashed against the concrete until she was dead. But he wasn’t sure on the weapon used on Ricky.

‘It wasn’t a blade of any sort, maybe a hammer? But you’d expect the hole to be more…’ he paused, ‘round?’

He flashed the close-up image on the screen of the digital camera.

‘It almost looks like a point, but what could make a hole like that?’ he asked.

Summers took another look at the photo; the corner of the brick had left a clear indent in Ricky’s head. They both surveyed the ground, seeing stones, litter, cigarette butts, more stones, and the occasional broken brick.

Summers turned to the wall that went from the ground up to the bottom of the bridge. It was old, and a few of the bricks had literally fallen from the wall on to the pathway over time. She carefully picked up a broken brick in her latex-gloved hands.

‘If I were to smash this brick extremely hard, into the side of your head, what kind of wound do you imagine it would inflict?’ Summers asked Kite.

She examined the brick and found no traces of skin, hair or blood so tossed it into the canal.

‘And that’s where it’ll be,’ said Kite.

Both detectives knew the murder weapon would hold no DNA evidence if it had been discarded into the water, no prints would be found on the rough surface of the brick, so there was no point in sending in a team to search it.

Their best hope at this point was to speak to as many people in the area and try to find a witness. Summers would still have the area combed for the murder weapon, more a PR stunt than anything. The search would likely be a waste of time for the six officers called out to do it.

Summers and Kite spoke briefly with the small crowd who had seen the police cars, it turned out they were just being nosey and had nothing of value to add to the investigation, other than one old lady, another dog-walker, who had seen the young couple together around two hours ago, walking in this direction. Over the next day or so, the detectives would also have to speak to family and friends, to see if anything was amiss or anybody knew something of interest.

But Summers had a gut feeling. The attack looked random to her. If it was planned, why wasn’t a real weapon used? Ricky had nearly twenty pounds in his pocket, if it was a robbery, that didn’t work out either. Ricky’s mother had been called and asked to go to identify the body at the morgue later that afternoon, and on the phone she said he should have been at home, doing chores. Alexia certainly should have been at school, so Summers concluded that hardly anyone, if anybody, knew that the couple were where they were. This would rule out premeditated murder. Both were fully dressed so a sexual motive wasn’t clear either.