Simon Beckett - The Chemistry of Death

None of the options offered much cause for optimism.

The monotone hubbub of the flies provided a backdrop as I took my samples. By the time I straightened, my joints and muscles were stiff from crouching.

'Finished?' asked Mackenzie.

'Pretty much.'

I moved back. The next step was never a pleasant one. Everything that could be managed without moving the body had been done; photographs taken and measurements made. Now came the moment when we would see what lay underneath. The crime scene officers carefully began to turn the body over. Disturbed, the whine of the flies became more agitated.

'Oh, Christ!'

I don't know who spoke. Everyone there was seasoned in this work, but I don't think any of us could have seen anything like this before. The mutilation had been reserved for the victim's front. The abdomen had been cut open, and several objects spilled from the gaping wound as the body was turned. One of the officers quickly turned away, gagging. For a moment no-one moved. Then professionalism took over again.

'What the hell are they?' Mackenzie asked in a hushed, shocked voice. His normally sun-reddened face had turned white. I looked at them, but still couldn't say. This was outside my experience.

It was one of the crime scene officers who was the first to realize. 'They're rabbits,' he said. 'Baby rabbits.'

Mackenzie came over to where I was sitting in the open back of the Land Rover, a bottle of chilled water in my hand. I'd done as much as I could for now. It had been a relief to finally take off my coveralls. But even though I'd washed myself at the police trailer I still felt unclean, and not just because of the heat.

He sat next to me without saying anything. I took another drink of water as he unwrapped a packet of mints.

'Well,' he said at last. 'At least we know it's the same man.'

'Silver lining to every cloud, eh?' It came out sounding harsher than I'd meant. He glanced at me.

'You OK?'

'Just out of practice at this sort of thing.'

I thought he might apologize for involving me. He didn't. The silence ran for a while before he spoke again. 'Lyn Metcalf's been missing for nine days. If she's been dead for six or seven, like you say, that means he kept her alive for at least two. The same as Sally Palmer.'

'I know.'

He stared off into the distance, where the mercury surface of the lake shimmered in the heat. 'Why?'

'I'm not with you.'

'Why keep them alive for so long? Why take the risk?'

'I'm sure this isn't news to you, but we're not exactly dealing with a rational mind.'

'No, but he's not stupid. So why's he doing it?' He chewed his lip, looking annoyed. 'I can't see what's going on here.'

'In what way?'

'Usually when women are abducted and killed the motive's sexual. But this doesn't fit the usual pattern.'

'So you don't think they were raped?' The condition of this second body meant it would be just as impossible to say for certain as it had been with Sally Palmer. But it would have been some small comfort if the victims had been spared that much at least.

'That's not what I said. You find a woman's body without any clothes, it's a fair bet there was some kind of sexual assault, at least. But your run-of-the-mill sexual predator generally kills his victims straight away, as soon as he's got his rocks off. Very occasionally you'll get one who keeps them alive until he's tired of playing with them. But what this one's doing here, it doesn't make sense.'

'Perhaps he needs to build up to it.'

Mackenzie looked at me for a moment without speaking. He shrugged. 'Perhaps. But on the one hand we've got someone who's intelligent enough to snatch two women and disrupt the search by planting snares, and on the other doesn't bother to get rid of the bodies properly. And what about the mutilations? What's the point of those?'

'That's one to ask the psychologists, not me.'

'I will, don't worry. But I don't think they're likely to know either. Is he deliberately showing off or just being careless? It's like we're dealing with two conflicting mindsets.'

'A schizophrenic, you mean?'

He was frowning, worrying at the puzzle. 'I don't think so. Someone obviously mentally ill would have shown up long before now. And I'm not sure they'd be capable of this.'

'There's another thing,' I said. 'He's killed two women in, what, less than three weeks? And the second was only ten, eleven days after the first. That's not…' I was about to say 'normal', but that wasn't a word that could be remotely applied to this. 'That's not usual, is it? Even for a serial killer.' Mackenzie looked tired. 'No. No, it's not.'

'So how come he's suddenly in such a rush? What's triggered him?'

'If I knew that we'd be halfway to catching the bastard.' He stood up, wincing as he kneaded the small of his back. 'I'll have the body brought to the lab. Probably tomorrow, OK?'

I nodded. But as he moved away I called him back. 'What about the dead birds and animals? Are you going to go public about them now?'

'We can't release details like that.'

'Not even if he's using them to mark out his victims in advance?'

'We don't know he is for certain.'

'You told me there was a stoat left on Sally Palmer's doorstep, and Lyn Metcalf told her husband she'd found a dead hare the day before she disappeared.'

'Like you said yourself, this is the countryside. Animals die all the time.'

'They don't tie themselves to stones or climb into a murdered woman's stomach.'

'We still don't know he used them to target his victims beforehand.'

'But if there's even a chance don't you think you should warn people?'

'What, and invite all the cranks and practical jokers to waste everyone's time? We'd be swamped with calls every time a bloody hedgehog gets run over.'

'If you don't he could target another victim without them knowing it. If he hasn't already.'

'I know that, but people are scared enough as it is. I'm not going to start a panic.'

But there was an undercurrent of doubt to his voice. 'He's going to do this again, isn't he?' I said.

For a second I thought he would actually answer. Then, without a word, he turned and walked away.

News that Lyn Metcalf's body had been found detonated in Manham like a silent bomb burst. Given what had happened to Sally Palmer, few people could have been surprised exactly, but that didn't lessen the shock. And while Sally, for all her popularity, had been an outsider, an immigrant to the village, Lyn had been born here. Gone to school here, married in the church. She was a part of Manham in a way that Sally could never be. Her death – her murder – had a far more visceral impact on people who could no longer pretend that the victim might somehow have imported the seeds of their fate from outside. Now the village mourned for one of its own.

And feared another.

There could no longer be doubt in anyone's mind that something terrible was happening in Manham. For this to happen to one woman was bad enough. For it to happen to two, in so short a space of time, was unprecedented. Suddenly, we were news again. The village once again found itself caught in the spotlight, a collective traffic accident for the public to gawp at. As all victims do, it reacted first with bewildered disbelief, then resentment.

Then anger.

Lacking any other focus on which to vent it, Manham reacted by rounding on the outsiders attracted by its misfortune. Not the police, although resentment for their impotence was already starting to bubble. But the press had no such immunity. The news-gathering media's breathy excitement seemed to many to evince not just a lack of respect, but also contempt. It was met with hostility, exhibited first by stony faces and closed mouths, but then by more overt means. Over the next few days untended equipment either went missing or sustained mysterious damage. Cables were cut, tyres slashed, petrol tanks spiked with sugar. One persistent reporter, whose tightly lipsticked mouth seemed curled in a permanent and inappropriate smile, needed stitches when a flung stone gashed open her head.