Steven Dunne - The Disciple

He resisted the urge to bang on Drexler’s door and ask him why he’d been at the crime scene. Instead he crept back to his own house and poured a small whisky before heading upstairs. He fell asleep before he’d taken a sip.

Noble led the way to Pathology, Laura Grant beside him. Brook and Hudson brought up the rear, trudging in exhausted silence. They made their way to Dr Habib’s office. It was seven o’clock, barely light, and after the last twenty-four hours, no one was much in the mood for small talk.

Habib was a short stocky man, in his early sixties and wore round pebble glasses. His unlined chubby face cracked into a soft smile when he saw Noble, though the sight of Brook chilled his cheery welcome somewhat. He hadn’t fully forgiven Brook for giving him a hard time during the Wallis investigation.

However, he beamed at Laura Grant with undisguised pleasure. ‘And who is this pretty lady you’ve brought for me to meet, Sergeant?’ he said, grasping her hand and shaking it warmly. Grant, well used to the Jurassic outlook of men over a certain age, accepted his gushing with good grace.

‘This is DS Grant, DCI Hudson.’

‘Ah yes. You’ve taken over our CID, I hear,’ said Habib, finally able to let go of Grant’s hand to chortle conspiratorially.

‘It’s called liaison, Doctor,’ insisted Hudson.

Habib grinned with pleasure. ‘Indeed it is so. Let’s hope you have more luck catching this killer than we had last time,’ he added, completely oblivious to the implied insult to Brook and Noble. ‘Bad business, bad business.’

‘What have you got for us, Doc?’ asked Noble.

‘Well. It could almost be the Wallis family again it’s so similar. It is the same gentleman, is it not?’ he asked with a brief sweep round all their faces, in case of correction.

‘We’re jumping to no conclusions,’ said Grant. ‘What you tell us will help determine that.’

‘Yes, yes. I see. Well. Let’s start with the three boys. Very straightforward really. All killed the same way. In each case the trachea was severed by a very sharp instrument — a scalpel, I gather. Makes sense. As with the Wallis case you’re looking for a right-handed individual as the cuts sweep from near the left ear and finish at the right ear. You won’t be surprised to hear the wounds were inflicted from behind — that’s standard with this kind of slaying. What else? Yes, all three victims were seated and lividity confirms that they died where they were found. I imagine the blood dispersal will show the same.’ Habib reached to consult a manila folder. ‘Ah yes. Can’t be as sure about the killer’s height, but no reason to suggest it’s any different from the Wallis murders. Below average certainly.’

‘Remind us, Doctor,’ said Hudson.

‘Between 1.70 and 1.74 metres. Five seven or eight for the dinosaurs among us,’ he added, with a cold glance at Brook.

‘Were they drugged at all?’ asked Brook.

‘Not by the killer, I think. Plenty of other drugs though. Marijuana, amphetamines. And an enormous quantity of alcohol in the blood — to give you some idea, they were at least five times over the legal driving limit. But the boys, I assume, had self-administered, so perhaps he needed no drugs to control them.’

‘So their food hadn’t been doctored in any way?’

‘Not the undigested meats they had in their stomachs.’

‘What about the couple and the boy?’

‘That’s different. Or rather the same.’

‘Same as what?’ asked Noble.

‘The Wallis family, John,’ nodded Brook.

‘That is so, Inspector. The Wallis family were poisoned with scopolamine and traces of morphine — our old friend Twilight Sleep. Although I can find nothing in the males, it was injected into the woman and the child.’ Habib turned to Grant and Hudson with an apologetic gesture. ‘I’m sorry. You don’t know about Twilight Sleep. Let me…’

‘Actually we do know about it, Doctor,’ smiled Grant. ‘It was used in a murder in Brighton only recently.’ She resisted a sideways peep at Brook.

‘Indeed? How interesting. Then you’ll know the history of the constituent drugs…’

‘And that we’re looking for a 150-year-old medical man, yeah, Doc,’ smiled Hudson, throwing his joke into the mix again, but with less success than before.

‘Did the woman’s partner not get a dose?’ asked Brook.

‘No. Only the woman and the little boy — the man had taken a similar cocktail of drugs to the boys outside. The other two had only drunk a little alcohol…’

‘Even the kid?’

‘Oh yes. He would have been quite intoxicated, but he hadn’t taken any of the other drugs, just the alcohol. Very strict some of these parents, you know.’ He chuckled guiltily. ‘There are differences though. The woman and the child received a much bigger dose than the Wallis family. Both would have died regardless of any other injuries; indeed the boy was near death before being hung. There’s not enough trauma and bruising around the neck, which you’d expect from a hanging, what with all that struggling. Also there was no sign that his wrists or hands were bound. If the boy had been hanged anywhere near consciousness, the hands would have needed to be immobilised.’

‘So the fingers were removed post-mortem,’ added Grant.

‘Indeed.’

‘After he’d been hung?’

‘From the angle of the cuts, probably. But you’ll be able to determine that from the scene. Any spots of blood where he was hung would point to that.’

‘Would a scalpel get through bone that easily?’ asked Hudson. ‘I mean, wouldn’t the killer need some sort of saw?’

‘In an adult, maybe. But the boy was only small. The bones in his fingers were young and thin. They wouldn’t take much cutting with a precision instrument.’

‘Right.’

‘As for the adult male and the female in the bed, they were still alive when their windpipes were cut. They had very powerful blood dispersal. But the other difference is the male was killed with a backhand slash.’

‘Why was that?’

‘With his head against the wall, presumably the killer couldn’t get behind him.’ The doctor shrugged to signal the end of his contribution. ‘Bad business.’

‘Would the murderer have been able to revive them before killing them?’ asked Noble.

‘Not this time. I very much doubt it, Sergeant. Was there any indication that he tried?’

‘None!’ said Brook, with a glance at Noble.

‘Is that significant, Damen?’ asked Hudson.

‘We think so.’

‘Tell me on the way out. Better yet, tell us all at briefing.’ Hudson looked at his watch. ‘We’d better look lively. One last thing, Doctor — we’re going to need a DNA profile from the three dead teenagers. They’re suspects in another crime.’ Noble raised an eyebrow at this, but Brook pacified him with a glance.

‘Of course,’ replied Habib.

They turned to leave but Brook hesitated at the door. He looked back at Habib who had already removed his glasses and was wiping them on a clean apron.

‘Did you check whether the woman was pregnant, Doctor?’

Habib pursed his lips and replaced his glasses before blinking up at Brook. ‘Yes. And no, she wasn’t. That’s why I didn’t mention it,’ he added tersely.

Due to the early hour the noise in the Incident Room was subdued and the yawning quotient high, the strong aroma of coffee testament to the preferred antidote.

The pale sun was just beginning to peep through the high windows, catching the belt of dust orbiting the room. Apart from the Chief Superintendent, only CID officers were present. This time Charlton stood at the back of the room as Brook, Hudson, Grant and Noble collated the information. More photographs were arranged around boards to one side, some of them the grainy snaps downloaded from the mobile phones of the victims.