Steven Dunne - Deity

To Brook’s surprise, Pullin laughed briefly. ‘Good one.’ He regained his taciturn expression a second later. ‘Either way, we’re going to need a butter dish so you’d better suit and boot if you want a peek.’

Brook nodded and took a last pull on his cigarette, ambling back to his car to discard the butt in the ashtray. No sense throwing his DNA to the floor of a potential crime scene.

Noble walked with him. ‘This should be fun.’ A butter dish was Scene of Crime speak for the heavy-duty body bag, meaning the flesh of the deceased would be yellow and putrid, the fats in the flesh turning to pulp, like rancid butter. In that condition, the skin would peel off easily and any hair could be pulled out with little effort. If the recovery team weren’t very careful, vital pieces of evidence from the body could be lost.

Having donned protective coveralls and grim demeanours, Brook and Noble returned to the water’s edge. The police diver was back in the boat and his colleague was manoeuvring the large body rescue bag underneath the pale mass held tight against the boat by the winch. They wouldn’t risk manhandling the remains aboard if the body’s integrity was suspect, especially as shore was only yards away.

‘Who found him?’ asked Noble.

Pullin jerked a thumb at a car on the access road. In the back seat sat a man, ashen-faced with eyes like dinner plates. ‘Angler over there — Peter Fenton, lives in Ambaston. Says he hooked on to something big and when he pulled it up it was a body.’

‘He must’ve thought he’d landed Jaws,’ quipped Noble.

‘Male or female?’

‘He couldn’t tell. Says the body was naked except for some kind of loincloth.’

‘Loincloth?’ said Brook.

‘Like what Sumo wrestlers wear to cover their todgers.’

‘I know what a loincloth is,’ replied Brook, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice.

‘Well, that’s what the hook caught on,’ explained Pullin.

‘So that stray piece of material from the Derwent actually could be part of our first MO,’ mused Brook.

‘Sounds reasonable,’ said Noble. ‘Where’s Fenton’s rod and tackle?’

‘He dropped it,’ answered Pullin. ‘Shock, I suppose. If it’s not still attached to the cloth it’ll be at the bottom of the pit.’

‘And there are fish in there?’ said Noble.

Pullin shrugged. ‘I guess. Doesn’t matter to fishermen. They’re all nuts.’

The boat’s engine noise deepened as the dinghy set off at a leisurely speed towards the bank. The sun was starting its descent towards the horizon and Brook looked at his watch and then at Noble. ‘Better get a statement from Mr Fenton.’

Noble turned to Brook with a quizzical glance. ‘Will you be okay?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Brook with a tight smile. One of the Scene of Crime Officers tapped Brook on the arm and handed him a small tub of Mentholatum ointment. Brook stared at the jar then dipped a finger and smeared some below each nostril. ‘Ask him for any names of other anglers he knows who like to fish here. Maybe someone saw the body being dumped or at least noticed someone suspicious who didn’t belong. Then get on to the station and see if an ID for our Derwent body has come through; also tell Forensics to make the cloth we found in the river a priority. Unless it’s a monogrammed towel, they probably won’t get much from it, but at least we now know it could be significant.’ Noble nodded and turned to leave. ‘And John. Get on to DS Gadd, Morton and Cooper as well. Tell them to clear the decks. We meet in my office in two hours.’

Noble caught Brook’s eye briefly. They exchanged a nod. He could see his DI had that feeling again. It was the dread he got when something big and nasty fell into their lap.

While he waited for Noble, Gadd and the others, Brook sat at his desk with his hands cupped under his chin. He stared at his monitor showing the Google map of the terrain east of Derby, the dumping ground of both corpses. He would have booked one of the smaller Incident Rooms for the briefing with its large, detailed map of Derby, but didn’t want Chief Super-intendent Charlton to get wind that he was scaling up an inquiry into a pair of deaths that hadn’t yet been declared murders.

Noble entered the office and pinned a few grisly photographs to the display board before sitting down on the one available chair. Detective Sergeants Jane Gadd, Rob Morton and Detective Constable Dave Cooper followed, carrying their own chairs.

Brook looked at his watch and addressed his fellow officers. ‘We’re all here. Sorry we’re briefing on a Saturday night, but there it is.’ Gadd and Morton raised their eyebrows at Noble. Apologies from Brook were rare. Noble raised his eyebrows back at them as though it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘I want this inquiry up and running first thing tomorrow morning as we may only have a couple of days on this.’

‘Sunday morning!’ exclaimed Gadd, before she could stop herself. ‘No problem,’ she added quickly.

‘Good. John, how much does everyone know?’

‘Only that we found a body in the Derwent. And now another in Shardlow.’

‘They’re connected?’ said Rob Morton.

‘They are,’ Brook replied tersely. A vision flashed across his mind of soft wrinkled flesh parting like a dismembered jellyfish less than two hours ago. He would never forget the noise as the wound in the dead man’s side had been pulled open and the heart, though roughly attached to tissue in the cavity, had rolled out on to the plastic sheet. ‘It’s the same MO.’

‘So we have a serial killer on the loose,’ said Cooper, trying not to sound pleased.

‘Hold that thought, Constable,’ retorted Brook, before gesturing to Noble, who produced his notebook to begin the briefing.

‘We’ve got an ID on the first body, a vagrant found in the River Derwent on Thursday morning, east of the Borrowash Bridge.’

‘That’s a long way from spare change,’ said Morton.

‘He wasn’t there by choice,’ said Brook. ‘He was already dead when he was dumped in the water, almost certainly from that same bridge in the early hours of Tuesday the seventeenth.’

‘When the road was closed?’ said Jane Gadd.

‘Correct.’ Noble pointed to the head shot of the deceased. ‘Tommy McTiernan was from Aberdeen. He was fifty-five years old and had convictions for vagrancy, theft, aggravated assault, drunk and disorderly and a string of other offences which led to a grand total of nine years inside, served at various times and institutions. He has no family and no fixed abode.

‘Why he was in Derby we don’t know, but we do know he was in the city as recently as three weeks ago because he signed into Millstone House Hostel on the twenty-fifth of April and spent a couple of nights there. We checked with the director. He’s sending us whatever information he’s got on other residents staying on the same nights. There’s no CCTV for the time Tommy was there but as far as we’re aware, nothing untoward happened while he was at the Shelter. The few staff there are low paid but dedicated to their work. One of those, Daniel O’Shea, has convictions for affray and GBH, but that was twenty years ago — before he found Jesus,’ he added.

‘McTiernan’s movements after leaving the Hostel are unknown until we found him in the Derwent. Fortunately the body was caught on a fallen tree or it would have been further downriver. Even so, it wasn’t spotted for a couple of days until two lads saw it from the bridge and went to investigate. The body was naked although we now think McTiernan may originally have been wearing some kind of cloth to cover his genitalia, because a piece of material was recovered nearby and our second body found yesterday was similarly dressed.’