Cold as Ice (24 page)

After the conference Bowie went back to his office and called Carter and Willis in to see him.

‘Please have a seat, both of you. If nothing happens from the press conference we have to be ready to try something new. We need someone to go undercover. We need to set someone up within
the geographical triangle of the crimes and mirror the women’s lives as closely as we can.’ Carter was nodding his agreement. ‘Detective Inspector Carter and I have discussed this
in private, Detective Willis, and we both agree – we want it to be you.’ Bowie looked at Ebony to gauge her reaction.

‘How would you feel about it?’

Ebony stared back at Bowie whilst she took a minute. Her face betrayed nothing.

‘You don’t have to agree to it; it’s only an idea, but we need someone quickly,’ said Carter. ‘I think you can do it Detective.’ He smiled at her.

‘You’ve done a test purchase before?’ asked Bowie.

‘Yes, Sir, I’ve done TP a few times, test purchasing stolen goods once from a shop in Fulham and I’ve done it twice buying drugs in Central London.’

‘I’ve looked at the reports from those assignments. It says in them that you handled it very well.’

‘Thank you, Sir. Do you think it should be someone from another force, Sir?’

‘It should, in theory – if it was an organized crime syndicate we were watching I’d say definitely but this is one man and we need to catch him fast.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Because of the need for setting up an accurate social media persona and creating it fast we need to bring Robbo and Jeanie on board. Normally I wouldn’t risk any of the team knowing
but Robbo is the only one able to do what we want and fast and Jeanie is close to both sets of victims’ families and to you, Ebony, and this is going to involve a massive team
performance.’ He looked back at Ebony, who had remained impassive. ‘Are you agreed with keeping them informed?’

She looked across at Carter. He nodded his agreement. ‘Yes, Sir. I think it’s the best option.’

‘I will be Ebony’s supervisor,’ said Carter.

‘Agreed.’

‘You’ll need to move into a housing association flat,’ said Carter. ‘We’ll find you a flat in the same geographical area that Hawk is working in and register for
some classes in the college. Get in quickly on the course that Danielle was doing if you can, meet her peers, get into their social networking groups.’

‘What about the fact I don’t have a kid?’ Ebony looked at Bowie.

‘Borrow mine,’ said Carter.

Ebony looked at Carter as if he’d flipped. Bowie was a little more cautious.

‘Why not?’ Carter said. ‘You’ll only need him for a few hours. Take him when you go to the housing office and to college when you first go in to register, that’s
all. Let everyone see you with him once then make excuses why he’s not there after that.’ Ebony was still watching Carter’s face, waiting for him to say that he would get
Cabrina’s permission before involving their son in a police operation. But he was not going to. ‘It’ll be fine, Ebb. He knows you. And you’ll only be borrowing him for a few
hours.’ Bowie was listening. Ebony wondered if he was about to say ‘absolutely not’. ‘The rest of the time you can say that your aunt’s looking after the baby,
something like that,’ continued Carter.

Bowie was weighing it up. He nodded thoughtfully.

‘None of the children have been harmed so far, have they?’

Carter shook his head. ‘Anyway it’s not going to get that far, is it? Ebony borrows Archie just to make it look good, then we can switch to a doll. Job done.’

Bowie agreed. ‘We have to put maximum effort into Ebony’s cover otherwise it won’t work. Stay here in the office from now on, Ebb. Get Robbo to concoct a plausible legend for
you. We need this up and running ASAP.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

Carter and Ebony left Bowie’s office and headed towards the canteen to chat in private. Tina was clearing tables when they went to sit down with their coffees.

‘Looking great, Tina. You lost weight?’ Carter grinned her way. She giggled. Ebony rolled her eyes. Tina fell for it every time.

They sat down and Ebony emptied two packets of sugar into her milky coffee. Carter leaned across the table towards her and kept his voice low.

‘You going to be all right with it, Ebb? Hopefully it’ll be over by Christmas if we get it right.’

She nodded. ‘What about Archie? You have to ask Cabrina if we can borrow him.’

‘Yeah, I will ask, of course, but she’s going to be okay with it.’ He sipped his black coffee and screwed up his face in disgust. ‘When are they ever going to get proper
coffee in here?’

‘You need to ask her.’

‘Ebb . . . He’s my son. I will take full responsibility.’ She held up her hands in surrender mode. ‘Now let’s concentrate on the things we have to get
right.’

‘I need to look like the kind of person he’d be interested in,’ said Ebony.

‘Yes. Go around and look at Emily and Danielle’s belongings – take in their lives. Take Jeanie with you. She’s good at spotting things about people and she can tie up
with anything Tracy might have said about Danielle’s character. You will have to stay in contact me with me, Ebb. This feels like a risky situation to put you in. You’re going to have
to be on your own in there, exposed. You will have to be tested first. It’s not a nice experience. I’ve known a lot of officers who just can’t hack it.’

‘I’ll be okay, Guv.’

‘I know you will. Robbo will help.’

The next morning Pauline Murphy’s body was waiting on a trolley in front of the steel fridge doors. She was thawed: her body had come to room temperature.

Harding watched Mark wheel the trolley next to the end dissecting table in the mortuary. He altered the height of the trolley and slid the body across and onto the table. ‘We’ll
leave the sheet beneath her while we examine her.’ Harding placed her papers on the table over the sink at the head of the dissection table. Mark nodded his understanding and then mirrored
Harding’s actions as he stood across from her and peeled back the sheeting section by section.

‘Be careful to fold it in on itself and catch whatever debris she has around her body.’ Mark didn’t answer. He was looking at the body as it unfolded. Harding held her hand out
to indicate where Mark’s eyes
should
be looking. She wanted him to concentrate on her own hands. She wanted his whole attention. Mark obeyed for a few seconds but then his eyes
slipped back to the body. Harding didn’t bark, for once; she understood that he was sensitive. She knew he would be saddened, shocked by the sight of the female form so denigrated. Her eyes
were a lot softer when they focused on him than her demeanour as she stood stick-straight, pencil-thin, all hard lines. For Harding this was her sweeter side.

‘Mark?’

Mark looked up at her and nodded. His nod was a reminder to himself to stay focused. It was an acknowledgement to Harding that he knew what was expected of him and he could fulfil it at least
over the mortuary slab if not in private. Mark was beginning to understand why this placement with one of the best pathologists in the UK was not an easy one. It might have helped if he had fancied
her a bit but he didn’t think so. She was a female predator. She offered herself for intimacy, fornicated, then she crunched loudly on men’s bones. Mark loved to paint, figure painting
– he sketched the women’s bodies in the morgue sometimes, although usually just sections of them, the curve of a breast, the soft round of a stomach. The make-up, dressing side of his
job was a pleasure to him. There wasn’t much about his job he didn’t like. It meant he earned enough to buy the materials to keep his painting going and he was a better anatomist for
it. He was a make-up artist with a flare for making women look beautiful even in death. He had never seen a woman so unkindly brutalized and parodied as Pauline Murphy was. But he was a
professional and he was already thinking of how he could undo some of the damage done to her. Mark had got the job, started training in it because he was good friends with Harding’s last
diener, Mathew. But Mathew had warned him.

‘She’s going to want to screw you – in every sense. Don’t let her know you’re gay if you can help it.’

‘Bi,’ Mark contradicted. ‘Options are still open.’

Mathew rolled his eyes.

‘Just because you were engaged once, to a woman, doesn’t mean you’re bi. It means you were confused. And that’s what you need to leave her thinking until you’re
three months into your contract. That way she can’t dismiss you. Keep her thinking you’re playing hard to get. Keep camp down to a minimum and you might survive better than I
did.’

‘I’m not camp.’

‘Yes you are – as Christmas, after a few drinks, and that’s what she’ll be buying you. She’ll engineer it so you have to work late, so it’s better you go to
hers. She’ll turn on a charm that’s pretty irresistible in the bedroom. She’ll have you trussed up like a turkey in no time.’

‘Really? You’ve made it sound a lot more exciting than I could have dreamed of.’

‘Believe me, been there, done that and got the T-shirt plus the bruises to show for it. She invented the term rough sex, but it’s all one-way. Invent a girlfriend but not a serious
one. Then she’ll think she just has to wait. The main thing in all this is not whether you feel like seeing if you’re really bi; it’s that she gets bored very quickly and then one
day you find your job’s been given to another. Remember – treat ’em mean – keep ’em keen.’

‘You still seeing her then? Thought it was over when it lost you your job?’ Mark asked, a smile creeping across his face.

‘Of course.’ Mathew grinned sheepishly.

Harding almost stamped her foot as she waited irritably for Mark to finish observing and start laying out the tools of dissection on a tray. The stamp was transmuted to a series of toe taps. She
had a nervous, irritable constant twitch in her demeanour – a coiled spring. She lived on her nerves. But Mathew had been right. She hadn’t given up hope of bedding Mark so she kept her
eyes soft as she watched him prepare for the autopsy.
Patience.

‘Ready?’ He nodded. ‘Ah, just in time,’ she said as she saw Willis and Carter walked in, suited up in protective gear. ‘Take hold of the camera please, DC Willis. I
am about to start the autopsy examination of the female body found on Hampstead Heath yesterday morning. Height: five foot eight inches. Weight: five stone one pound. Colour of hair: dyed black,
originally mid brown. Ethnicity: Caucasian. She was wearing a charm bracelet around her right wrist which has been removed.’

She stood back to record the general condition of the body: ‘Severely malnourished. Yellowing of the skin possibly due to hepatitis B infection or liver failure. She has several gangrenous
wounds on her that have maggot infestation.’

Mark went to switch on the extractor beneath the table. She held up her hand to stop him. She leaned over the body and breathed in the smell.

‘Rat’s urine,’ she said. ‘Mixed with the smell of gangrene from her infected wounds.’ She nodded to Mark that he could turn it on now. Carter breathed out again as
the smell was carried from below the body.

‘Injuries: skin peeled up from over both breasts, done by using a scalpel or razor blade to cut the skin on the underside of the breast. It has then been pulled by hand, cut again around
the nipples. The stripping of the skin has led to a feathered tearing around the edges of the flesh.’

Harding ran her gloved hand down the arm; she turned the hand over to expose the inside of the forearm and the irregular sections of missing flesh. She shone a light down and examined the
injury.

‘These are bite marks here from rodents; the action is one of gnawing as opposed to tearing. The scars are at many different stages of healing – these bites were inflicted on living
flesh. There are other puncture wounds, pairs of fine needle punctures. The chafing in the skin around the ankle is uniform. Wounds are not deep.’ She carried on as she moved up to the
wrists. ‘Soft tissue damage here at the wrists too, same type of wound, same width, deeper though. The damage to the flesh is angled as such: it cuts in where there was weight pulling against
it.’

‘So she was suspended again – same scenario as with Emily Styles, held with her arms above her head, you mean?’ asked Carter.

‘Yes.’

Harding moved up to Pauline Murphy’s head and examined her neck. ‘There are scars here, tissue still repairing. Not made with the same force as with Emily Styles. They concentrate
more on the sides of the neck, over the carotid artery.’ Harding looked up from her examination. Ebony held her gaze. ‘Looks possible that there were previous attempts at killing her or
that it wasn’t the first time she’d been strangled in the weeks before she died. Maybe not with the intention of causing death.’

‘Asphyxiophilia,’ said Ebony.

Harding nodded. ‘I agree. ‘An intentional cessation of oxygen to the brain for sexual arousal.’

‘And exact cause of death, Doctor, please?’ asked Carter.

‘The flaying of the skin on her breasts was the last injury inflicted on her. We need to examine her heart to tell whether it gave out but I think the shock, the pain killed
her.’

‘One of the oldest forms of torture,’ said Ebony. ‘In Medieval times they used to try and get the skin off in one piece.’

‘He looks like he tried to make an item of clothing out of it,’ Mark said.

‘Yes,’ agreed Carter. ‘He masks and he reveals. He covers the skin in make-up as thick as a mask or he peels back the bare skin to show the raw flesh beneath.’

‘The female form defaced, reviled,’ said Mark.

‘It seems like the actions of someone young to me. Someone finding their way through a minefield of emotions,’ Harding added.

‘Someone seriously mad,’ Carter said. ‘And getting progressively worse. He takes a step further with each woman. He’s a work in progress. He wants us to see
that.’

On the way back to Fletcher House Carter looked across at Willis.

‘I’ve been thinking about it, watching that post mortem. I’m not sure I’m happy for you to go into this without knowing more about the man we’re up against.’
Ebony didn’t answer. ‘We could wait till we are further into the investigation to send you into it.’ Ebony still didn’t answer. ‘You know, Ebb, you might understand
what it’s like to have a difficult childhood but it doesn’t make you the best at coping with the man when you find him. You’re going to have to act like these women, be sociable,
flirt even – that’s a first.’ He joked but his eyes stayed on hers; they were full of concern.