Steven Dunne - Deity

‘What about?’

‘We wanted to ask him something about DNA.’ Noble smiled.

Brook looked across at the laptop on the kitchen counter. The screensaver was on. He nudged the mouse on his way past. The countdown on deity.com was down to an hour and a half. ‘You’re watching the broadcasts?’

‘Isn’t everybody?’ said Alice Kennedy. She began to cry. ‘It’s my only link with Kyle. .’

At two o’clock, the Incident Room was packed with two teams of detectives. Brook’s team, investigating the death of Wilson Woodrow and the disappearance of the four students, relaxed in chairs, minus Noble who had gone to pick up Len Poole. DS Gadd and her small team, DCs Read and Smee, were preparing to brief Charlton on developments in the search for The Embalmer. Brook sat at the back with Charlton.

‘Noble said DS Gadd and her team have developed an interesting theory about The Embalmer,’ Charlton muttered to Brook.

‘I wouldn’t know anything about it, sir,’ replied Brook. ‘It’s all Jane’s work.’

‘You rate her highly.’

‘Very. She and John should’ve been promoted two years ago when DI Greatorix retired.’

Charlton turned to Brook, wondering if there was any point mentioning the budget again. Instead a better idea came to him. ‘As soon as there’s a vacancy,’ he said, keeping his head steadfastly to the front.

Gadd stood and the room fell silent. ‘I won’t bore everyone with a recap of The Embalmer’s activities but our research has thrown up some interesting facts about his method.’ She threw a brief glance at Brook, a little embarrassed to be taking the credit for Brook’s efforts.

‘Have the missing vagrants washed up yet?’ asked Charlton.

‘No, sir. And if we’re right they may not surface for some time. No pun intended,’ she added with a hesitant smile. She indicated the portable photo array brought in from The Embalmer Incident Room. There was a fifteen-year-old photograph of Phil Ward dug up from the DVLA. Already the ravages of drug and alcohol abuse were visible around the eyes and on his skin. Jock didn’t even merit a picture, just a hastily put-together artist’s impression. He might as well never have existed.

‘We’re not sure why, but we think The Embalmer, Ozzy Reece, may be getting to the end of his process.’ Gadd waved a hand at the images of the two bodies dumped in the water. ‘We’re certain Reece is working to a blueprint of Ancient Egyptian burial rites and we now think Barry Kirk and Tommy McTiernan were rehearsals. Whether he abducted them or simply offered them room and board for a few nights, once under Ozzy’s control these men conveniently died of alcohol poisoning and shortly after, Ozzy started practising on their corpses.’

She moved over to a picture of Barry Kirk’s bloated, barely recognisable head. ‘As you know, both men had their blood drained and their internal organs removed. Both men had significant scarring below the nostrils and both had experienced physical damage to the brain, despite the skull being intact.

‘Pathology concluded that each victim had had a sharp tool with a small hook attached, forced up into the nostril, piercing the brain. The tool was then used to hack at the brain matter and the hook was used to pull the pieces out through the nostrils.’

‘And now we know why?’ ventured Morton.

‘It’s a procedure used by the Ancient Egyptians to slow decomposition and to prepare the dead for the afterlife. The Egyptians would take bodies to the place of purification, sometimes called the Ibu. There, the brain was removed through the nose, and the other organs and viscera were removed through an incision in the left side. Just like Kirk and McTiernan. All the organs would then be packed in large jars, called canopic jars, and treated with natron, a kind of salt, to dry and preserve them. Here’s the interesting bit — the heart was left in the body cavity because the Egyptians thought it was needed for the afterlife.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Charlton.

‘Yes, sir. But there’s something else. As we know, Ozzy Reece picked up his vagrants at a squat on Leopold Street. To keep them there he provided regular supplies of barley wine and whisky bought from a cash and carry in Nottingham. We also know he worked briefly across the road at a funeral parlour — Duxbury and Duxbury — presumably where he first became aware of the squat and got the idea that it could provide a steady stream of available subjects.

‘One day the proprietor of the funeral parlour caught Ozzy interfering with one of the corpses. He’d removed the packing placed inside the body cavity to maintain normal body shape and was trying to replace it with a loaf of bread.’

‘A loaf of bread?’ said Charlton, trying not to laugh. Others who hadn’t heard the story were less successful. ‘Why?’

‘Barley, sir. The Ancient Egyptians cultivated it. It was central to their existence. They ate it, baked bread with it, used it for medicine, brewing beer and at one time they even used it to stuff the bodies of the dead, it was so revered.’

‘That’s why he gave them barley wine,’ observed Cooper.

‘Whisky too,’ said Gadd. ‘It’s also made from grain. He was feeding it to them because he didn’t want his subjects to be tainting their bodies with anything else.’

Charlton looked at his watch. ‘But you said he was just practising.’

‘Look at the scarring under the nostrils, sir. Kirk was the first victim. He was the first body dumped. His upper lip is nearly sliced through. McTiernan was the second victim. The cuts under his nostrils are less obvious. The Embalmer’s getting better at what he does. He’s trying to prepare these bodies for the next stage and to leave them as perfect as he can. Removing the brain was his weak spot. My guess is that once he’s perfected this technique, the victims will start showing up fully embalmed, maybe even mummified.’

‘But not for a while,’ said Brook.

‘No, sir, the embalming takes much longer. That’s why we think Jock and Phil Ward’s bodies haven’t been dumped yet.’

‘As far as we know,’ said Morton.

‘That’s true.’

‘And that’s why you think he’s coming to the end of his process.’ Charlton nodded. ‘Anything from the appeal?’

‘We’ve got people manning the phones and taking names. We’re checking them against what we know — description, history.’

‘History?’

‘Well, given the level of skill, we think The Embalmer may have worked with the dead. And given that the bodies we’ve found were in the initial stages of preservation, he has a working knowledge of how to embalm as well.’

‘He could just be getting it all from the internet,’ said Cooper.

Gadd shrugged. ‘Possible. But the key question now is where he’s doing all this. He needs space for the bodies and equipment and, of course, absolute privacy. The two dump sites we know about suggest somewhere in the countryside east of Derby.’

‘What about the ambulance? You think he worked in a hospital?’ asked Morton.

‘It’s possible,’ replied Gadd. ‘But you’d be amazed how many secondhand ambulances can be picked up for a few thousand pounds.’ She looked across at DC Read.

‘We’ve been looking at CCTV footage for the night you were attacked,’ said Read to Brook. ‘We’ve found an ambulance that doesn’t belong to either city hospital or any private medical facility that we’ve contacted. It’s a 2002 Mercedes Sprinter — licence-plate BA52 SWT. We know you were attacked around four that morning, sir.’

Brook blanched, remembering his unscheduled nap. ‘Around then.’

‘It has to be, because a half-hour later, the rogue ambulance was caught on film turning off the southern ring road on to the Shardlow Road towards the A6 and the M1.’