Helen Fields - Perfect Kill

‘It can be anything from just making a place smell good, to a belief that myrrh is an antioxidant. It’s from a tree sap. There are all sorts of claims made about its medical properties, including a treatment for arthritis, neuropathic pain, for asthma and indigestion. It’s generally regarded as being purifying and cleansing; certainly it has antiseptic properties. It can also be used for embalming. Historically, it’s been used for centuries as part of rituals. You know the Bible reference, obviously, but most cultures have used myrrh at some point. Today you find it in candles or essential oils.’

‘Thank you, Miss Desai,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘I’m guessing it’s easy to get hold of then?’

‘It is. Can I help with anything else?’ she asked, standing up.

‘Just this. The other chemical found in relation to the body was lanolin. Would that ever be used in connection with myrrh that you’re aware of?’ Callanach asked.

She paused, twisting a bracelet around her wrist a few times, and frowning slightly.

‘The only thing I can think of is that it might have been added to create an ointment, maybe for dry skin, or as a way of applying the myrrh, but you have to remember that myrrh’s medical properties are still doubted by many. There’s not much western acceptance of its uses. It’s more often found in Chinese herbal medicine.’

‘Thank you,’ Callanach said. ‘We appreciate your help. I’m so sorry you had to be involved in these circumstances.’

‘I’m sorry for the boy,’ Indrani said quietly. ‘The look on his face. I assumed emotions would leave your face after death. Even with his eyelids shut, I could read the terror, as if his muscles had frozen. It’s etched into him. I consider myself an advocate of peace, yet for the first time I can see why people call for the death penalty in such cases. Why should the monsters who perpetrate such evil continue to have a place on this earth?’

Jean-Paul showed the aromachologist out of the building.

Callanach stood in front of the board in their room, covered in photos of Malcolm Reilly’s body and the building site where it was found. He wrote a series of notes around the images. ‘Organ harvesting?’ ‘Lanolin – uses, sources?’ Then ‘Myrrh – healing, antiseptic, embalming’. The last option made no sense to him at all. Why consider embalming Malcolm Reilly’s body after his organs had been taken from him so unceremoniously, then dumping him at the building site? His body had been used. That was the tragic reality. There was no emotion involved. No crime of passion, or momentary loss of temper. Whoever had taken his life had calculated the value of killing a human being for their own ends, whatever those might have been. He checked his watch. Hopefully Ava would be at her desk soon for him to share what he knew. Not that she’d be in the mood for chatting. Interviewing grieving parents about their dead child was about as depressing as policing got.

Ava knocked on the Reillys’ door. Eight a.m. was too early really, but if years of policing had taught her anything it was that grief guaranteed both exhaustion and insomnia in equal measures. The Reillys would have cried, ranted and been consumed with every negative emotion in the dictionary until they’d finally fallen asleep, then awoken only to lie in the cold, early dark knowing that every day would start like that in their foreseeable future. Yesterday, she’d let specially trained police officers break the news of the death and remain with the family for as long as their presence was welcomed. They would continue to offer support in terms of answering day-to-day questions. Now she had to try and figure out why Malcolm Reilly had been chosen as a victim, and how he’d been identified as a target. Nine times out of ten that meant causing offence. She took a deep breath.

The door opened quietly, and a large woman stood, hands on hips, woollen cardigan stretched over a flowery blouse. Her face looked as if it had been attacked by gravity, jowls hanging, bags stretching for the floor beneath her eyes.

‘You’ll be DCI Turner. We were told to expect you. I’m Malcolm’s grandmother. If you’ll take a seat, I’ll fetch my daughter and son-in-law. They’re upstairs. It wasn’t a good night.’

‘I understand,’ Ava said. ‘Thank you for letting me in.’ She sat quietly in a living room that had become a tomb to a missing young man. They’d been expecting him back, of course. Most young men in their twenties who disappeared suddenly also reappeared. The same was less true of missing young women, but males weren’t as likely to be kidnapped, raped, murdered. Not so today.

‘Good morning,’ a man said, walking slowly forwards and offering Ava his hand. It was shaking as Ava grasped it. He looked broken, tall but bent at the shoulders, his hair greasy and unkempt, his shirt untucked at one side. Grief was the enemy of both the physical body and the mind.

He was followed by a sweet-looking woman, dressed in pale grey – trousers, shirt, jumper, even her socks. She looks like a ghost, Ava thought, literally as if the life had bled from her. The woman tried to smile, but the wobble it brought was too much.

‘Mrs Reilly,’ Ava took over. Sometimes it was easier to speak than wait to be spoken to. ‘Forgive me for asking to speak with you at such a terrible time, but I need to know as much as I can about Malcolm and his disappearance. Interpol is working with the French police, and we have a liaison officer out there making sure nothing is missed. I’m in charge of the case at this end. Could we sit?’

Malcolm Reilly’s mother nodded slowly and turned on unwilling feet to head for a sofa. Ava pulled out a notebook, noticing the photos of Malcolm in ski gear against endless bright white backdrops.

‘I appreciate your talking to me. I know the shock of Malcolm’s death is still new. Telling you both how sorry I am for your loss won’t help you, but perhaps finding the person or people who hurt him will offer something more valuable. I want to know as much as you can tell me about your son, particularly about his final day. You’ll have given that information to the police before when you reported him missing, but sometimes additional questions occur to me when I’m listening to people talk, and now that we know it’s a murder investigation I may have different queries. All I can ask is that you bear with me, all right?’

Malcolm’s parents made eye contact with one another, giving their consent only by not objecting. Ava understood perfectly. Words were hard enough to come by when you lost someone you loved through illness or accident. When they’d been cut open and their organs stolen from their body, what could you possibly find to say that did justice to the explosion of horror and grief your life had suddenly been reduced to?

‘He went to the gym,’ Mr Reilly said. His voice was hoarse. Ava had images of the night he and his wife had spent sobbing in one another’s arms as he continued to speak. ‘He went most days, unless he had an injury or needed to rest.’