Matt Brolly - Dead Eyed

May stretched her legs, tensing her calf muscles. She hadn’t been for a run since Haydon’s body had been discovered. The lack of exercise filled her body with tension. She’d been struggling to sleep recently, her legs twitching her awake at night. She promised herself she would make time for a quick run that evening, before her meeting with Lambert. It would be negligent not to do so. Healthy body, healthy mind, as her father would say.

Talking of healthy body, she hadn’t had a coffee in nearly an hour. She walked to the small kitchen office and dropped some instant coffee into a mug. It wasn’t ideal but was the best available. Two DCs, Tony Chambers, and Lyle Coombes, stopped talking as she entered.

‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’ she asked.

‘No, ma’am.’

Both men worked on the Souljacker case. Clearly, they felt awkward with her presence in the kitchen but they were waiting for the kettle to boil so couldn’t leave the close confines of the room. She didn’t make it easy for them. She leant back on the sideboard and folded her arms, both men doing everything to avoid her gaze. Strange how a simple change of title could affect the way people interacted with you. How you interacted with them. ‘Any news for me?’

‘Um, no, ma’am,’ said Chambers. ‘We’ve interviewed some more of his work colleagues, and they all spouted the same stuff.’

‘Nice enough guy, kept himself to himself,’ said Coombes, gaining courage from his partner.

The kettle boiled. ‘Don’t mind if I jump the queue?’

The men shook the heads, desperate for her to leave.

Back at her desk, she examined the old case files. Ten Souljacker victims in a twenty-one year period, but an eighteen year gap since the last murder. She may have considered Haydon’s death a copycat had there not been the link between him and the last victim, Nolan.

Absurd as it sounded, they had called in a handwriting expert to compare the indentations ripped into the torso of Terrence Haydon, with that of the previous victims. Going on photographic evidence, the expert had suggested there was a high probability that the Latin carved onto the victims, In oculis animus habitat , was made by the same person.

‘How probable?’ May had asked.

‘Hard to say for sure. I could be more precise if I was judging perhaps his handwriting on a piece of paper, but I would say ninety to ninety-five percent chance. If the latest, um, inscription, was made by a copycat, for instance, then I would say they are an expert forger.’

Not only an expert forger, but an expert killer. It would take skill, along with an exceptional coldness to keep someone alive whilst you extracted their eyeballs. The inscription on the body would have taken hours. Each letter was always carved with extreme precision.

One anomaly had sprung up from the handwriting expert. He’d said that the writing on the first victim’s torso, Clive Hale, from twenty-two years ago, didn’t match the others. It was possible that it had been his first kill, and he’d been nervous, but the expert was adamant the writing was not the same as the others.

May opened the office door and called for Bradbury. He appeared two minutes later, the hound dog look replaced with a look of professional attention, as if he’d given himself a pep talk in the intervening minutes. She realised she shouldn’t be so hard on him. In retrospect, he’d always wanted more from their time together than she did. She could have, and should have handled it better. She made a mental note to speak to him about it.

‘Jack, do you know anything about the SIO on the Nolan case all those years ago? Julian Hastings?’

Bradbury stood by the desk. ‘Not much more than I’ve read in the file. He was working here until the late nineties. I heard he was a bit of an old school copper. Bit strict. Not hugely talkative. From what I’ve heard the Nolan case fucked him up a bit.’

May looked up from her file for the first time since Bradbury had entered.

‘Sit down, Jack, for Christ’s sake.’

Hastings had retired six years earlier with the rank of Chief Superintendent, having spent his last eight years in Kent. ‘How was he fucked up, as you so eloquently put it?’

‘He became a bit obsessed with it, you know how it is. Rumour has it that was why he left the city. You know he’s a writer now?’ said Bradbury.

‘Yes, I picked up one of his titles today. Blood Kill .’ May picked up the book from her desk. A crude paperback, the words BLOOD KILL taking up half of the cover in a thick maroon font.

‘Catchy title. Wonder what it’s about?’

May offered him smile. ‘Read any?’

‘One. His first one. Can’t even remember the name now.’

‘Memorable then?’

‘I’m no expert. You could tell he was a copper though. Had all the procedures down to a tee. And the violence, though there wasn’t enough of that.’

The review didn’t bode well. Hastings had published three books since retiring. All police procedurals. Blood Kill was his latest according to the young woman who had sold May the book but according to the inlay page it was published three years ago.

‘Could you try and contact him for me?’ said May. ‘I’d like to get his take on the Nolan case. See if we’re missing anything.’

‘Sure. Anything else?’

‘No. Thanks, Jack.’

It would be good to get Hastings’ input. As things stood there was very little to work with. The killer was still an expert at hiding his traces, though forensics had managed to extract another man’s DNA from Haydon’s hair.

May withdrew the photos of Lambert and Klatzky from their files and entered the open-plan office where the incident room was situated. She walked to the incident board and pinned up the two photos, and drew three lines.

One line connected Klatzky and Lambert.

The other two lines connected the two men with the photos of the last two Souljacker victims.

Chapter 6

May stared at the photos on the whiteboard. Lambert and Klatzky, best friends of the ninth Souljacker victim, and acquaintances of the tenth. It was too much of a coincidence. ‘Jack, get everyone together in five. I want to go through everything again from scratch.’

Five minutes later, the team filtered into the conference room and May silenced them by standing. ‘Okay, let’s go from the beginning. Presuming we are looking at the Souljacker killer, and everything points that way at the moment, let’s start with the first victim and work from there.’

Bradbury cleared his throat. ‘Clive Hale. Twenty-two years ago. Body found in a bedsit in Clevedon. Same MO as the subsequent killings.’

May wrote Hale’s name onto the whiteboard, the marker making a squeaking noise on the vinyl covering. ‘Same MO but not as tidy as the others. The incision marks around the eyes were less precise. Bits of the eyeballs were actually found at the scene, which never happened again. Also, the carving on the body not as intricate or smooth.’

‘He was less experienced then, probably fuelled by adrenalin and rushed the job,’ said Bradbury.

May agreed. It was normally the pattern with the serials. The first kill rushed, as if the killer had to get it out of their system, the subsequent killings becoming more sophisticated as the killer became more practised. There was also the opinion of the handwriting expert to consider. ‘Lana, what do we know about Clive Hale?’

As DC Lana Williams stood, May noticed Bradbury roll his eyes. ‘Hale was nineteen, and unemployed. He’d been in the care system most of his life. No immediate family, no convictions. He attended a local Presbyterian church in Clevedon on occasions but the investigating team at the time discovered that he hadn’t been going there for months.’ Lana’s delivery was succinct and confident.