Die With Me (23 page)

His blood was humming. He could barely contain himself. He was almost there. Almost. Just one last thing to do. He took his grandmother’s old sewing scissors from his pocket. Resting Yolanda’s head on his shoulder like a sleeping child, he snipped off a long, thick lock of hair then tucked it away with the scissors in his pocket. He was ready. He lifted her up and sat her on the edge of the bridge facing him, holding her tightly by her upper arms so that she wouldn’t tip over just yet. Her head flopped forward and her hair fell over her face, spoiling everything. He had to see her face. Cradling the back of her head in his hand, he swept back her hair and gazed at her, almost unable to contain himself. He needed to freeze this last image in his mind. She was so still. Still as death.

Excitement rising like a tide, he closed his eyes, and breathed deeply for a second. He had the fleeting memory of heat and a garden in full summer. An intense, sweet smell filled his head. The scent of stocks, or was it gardenia? It was intoxicating. Just like the last time. He inhaled deeply again, high with yearning. After a moment, he half-opened his eyes and gazed at her once more. He felt the rush of blood, the wave of heat from deep down and slowly loosened his grip on her arms, watching her topple backwards over the bridge. With a shudder, he gasped, closing his eyes again as he heard the splash.

Tartaglia got out of the car and watched Wightman nudge the Mondeo into an impossibly small parking space up against the railings, above the canal. It was late afternoon and would soon be dark. Mercifully, it had stopped raining, but the air was thick with damp and a wind was getting up. He had last been here in the heat of summer many years before, when he had first arrived in London and had taken a guided walk along the towpath of the Regent’s Canal from Little Venice all the way to Camden Lock.

Gazing over the railings, the only thing that had changed was the horizon, now filled with the glittering cluster of office blocks that had sprung up around Paddington Basin. Immediately below, a strip of public gardens stretched down to the towpath and the canal. Beyond was the large triangle of dark water where three canals converged, known as Browning’s Pool, after the poet Robert Browning who had once lived opposite. It was bordered by an incongruous mix of seventies housing on one side and rows of cream-coloured neo-classical villas, worth many millions, set back above the canal behind manicured hedges. A body was not what you expected to find on your doorstep in this part of town and he saw several people standing in the windows of the houses, watching the activities down below on the canal.

Wightman joined Tartaglia and they walked along the road to where a section had been cordoned off, just in front of where the mortuary van was parked. They showed their IDs to a uniformed PC from the local station and descended a steep, slippery set of stairs to the towpath and canal below.

At the bottom, Tartaglia stopped and looked across the water again, taking in the scene. Apart from the sound of the wind whipping through the trees and across the water, all he could hear was the squawking of geese from the small island in the middle. Even in summer, the pool had been a disturbing thick, browny-green soup. But close up, under a darkening sky, it looked poisonous and he pitied the divers who had had the task of retrieving the body.

Two large narrow boats were moored along that side of the bank, one a floating puppet theatre, the other somebody’s home. Just beyond, the path was screened off and a small forensic tent was pitched on the paving next to an empty tourist boat. Gathered beside it, chatting, with takeaway cups of tea or coffee in their hands, were what he assumed were a couple of officers from the local CID, along with the mortuary van driver and his assistant. As they approached, a young man in a short, dark overcoat stepped forward from the group and introduced himself as DS Grant.

‘We fished the body out a few hours ago from under the water bus, sir,’ he said to Tartaglia, pointing at the tourist boat.

‘I hear it’s a young girl,’ Tartaglia said.

Grant nodded. ‘She got caught up on the propeller.’ He pointed to the far end of the tourist boat. ‘She’s in a right state. Dr Blake’s in the tent with her now.’

It was lucky that Blake had been on call when the body was found and he was grateful that she had made sure that he was called to the scene. He ducked in through the flap, leaving Wightman and Grant outside.

The body lay on the ground, already sheeted up, ready for removal to the mortuary. Blake was kneeling beside it, dictating something into a recorder. She looked up and gave him a fleeting smile.

‘Oh, good. I’m glad you’ve got here. I was just finishing up.’

‘I got your message. I hear there’s a lock of hair missing.’

She nodded and got to her feet slowly, as if she was stiff from kneeling for a while. ‘Just like the last two. That’s why I insisted they call you right away. But there’s one big difference. This girl’s been beaten up and, from what I can see without examining her properly, she’s also been sexually assaulted. Quite brutally, in fact.’

‘Assaulted? He’s never done that before.’ Tartaglia rubbed his chin, surprised. Some killers stuck more or less to the same pattern. With others, like Michael Barton, there was a gradual progression of violence, as if they needed more and more to satisfy them, often leading them to make mistakes. It was usually what led to their being caught. But he had never heard of a change in MO as sudden or extreme as this. There hadn’t been even a whiff of that kind of violence used against any of the other girls, let alone any form of sexual assault. He felt baffled.

She was looking at him inquiringly. ‘Do you think it could be a copycat?’

He shook his head. ‘Nobody knows about the locks of hair. It’s one of the few details that wasn’t leaked. Do you have any idea how long she’s been in the water?’

‘She’s not in bad condition, so I’d say not long. Certainly less than twenty-four hours and probably closer to twelve.’

‘That’s very helpful. Was she already dead when she went in, or did she drown?’

‘I’m not sure at the moment. I’ll have to get her back to the lab and see how much water’s in her lungs. However, she put up quite a fight and I’m hopeful, given the extent of her injuries, that we may get a DNA profile of your man.’

‘What about a ring?’ he said, thinking back to the other girls.

‘Apart from a gold cross around her neck, she isn’t wearing any jewellery.’

He stared down at the body, wishing, not for the first time, that the dead could speak. Maybe the ring had come off in the struggle or afterwards in the water. Or maybe there was no ring, in which case, was Tom the killer? It still didn’t feel right. ‘You’re sure the hair’s been deliberately cut off? Couldn’t it have been caught up somehow in the propeller?’

Blake shook her head. ‘Some of the injuries to the torso are definitely post mortem and caused by the propeller. But the head is undamaged, apart from some bruising to her face, which happened shortly before death, presumably when she was attacked.’

Still trying to puzzle it out, he said nothing for a moment. Seeing he was unconvinced, she added: ‘If her hair had been caught up on something, it would have been pulled out at the root. However, this was done with a sharp blade, just like the other two I examined. I really wouldn’t have troubled you otherwise. Do you want to see for yourself?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ll take your word for it. I suppose it has to be him then. But it’s bizarre. He didn’t assault the others in any way whatsoever. Why would he go and do this now? It makes no sense from a psychological point of view.’

She shrugged. ‘That’s for you to work out. I can only tell you what I find. I’ll call you once I get her back to the lab and take a proper look. Maybe something else will turn up.’

He nodded and was about to go when she touched his arm.

‘Mark, wait,’ she said, peeling off her gloves. ‘I just wanted to say you were right about what you said last night. About me, I mean. I know I need to sort things out. I just need a good kick up the arse.’ She hesitated, then added: ‘Thanks for being honest. That’s all.’

He smiled, relieved that she wasn’t angry. ‘I didn’t mean to be harsh.’

She shook her head with a rueful smile. ‘I deserved it. Are we still friends?’

He nodded, although the word ‘friends’ again struck a false note. Perhaps it was a euphemism for something he didn’t quite understand. Whatever she meant by it, he decided not to hold it against her. Before he said something he knew he would regret, he ducked out of the tent and walked over to where Wightman and Grant were standing together on the towpath talking.

‘Do we know who she is?’ Tartaglia asked Grant.

‘It’s possible she’s a Spanish girl called Yolanda Garcia. She works as an au pair for a family called Everett in Paddington. They reported her missing when she didn’t come home last night and the physical description fits.’

‘Last night? That ties in nicely with what Dr Blake has just told me about timing,’ Tartaglia said. He turned to Wightman. ‘Call Sam and ask her to go and see the family right away and get some background on the girl and a firm ID. If she lived in Paddington, she didn’t have far to come. Also, ask Sam to see if the girl left any form of a suicide note.’ As Wightman moved away to make the call, he turned to Grant. ‘Do we have any idea where she went in?’ From memory, that stretch of the canal was nearly two miles long. There was no point wasting time and resources knocking on doors and combing the canals for witnesses until they had a better idea of where it had happened.

Grant shook his head. ‘Apparently, there’s almost no current. So, I’m assuming it must be somewhere close by. But you’re best off speaking to the skipper of the boat. He seems to be a walking encyclopaedia on these canals.’

‘What about CCTV footage?’

‘I’ve already spoken to someone at British Waterways and they’ll let us have whatever there is. But there aren’t many cameras along this part of the canal.’

‘I don’t suppose there were any reports of someone being pushed in last night?’

Grant shook his head. ‘No such luck. It’s been so cold, I guess everyone was inside.’

‘Where’s the skipper?’

‘Last time I saw him, he was in the floating café over there, having a cup of tea and a piece of home-made cake.’ Grant nodded in the direction of a narrowboat moored on the other side of the canal. ‘He’s pretty pissed off that he can’t put his boat away and go home until we’re done.’

Tartaglia grinned. ‘Life’s tough, isn’t it. He should try our job for a change.’

Tartaglia found Ed Sullivan, the skipper of the tourist boat, huddled in a corner of the café, nursing what looked like a fresh mug of tea. In his late forties, he was thin and wiry, with short, greying dark hair and the permanently tanned skin of somebody who spent most of his life out in the open. After being told again firmly that he wasn’t going to be able to take the boat back to Camden for a while, Sullivan seemed resigned to his fate and relaxed into his seat to tell his story.

‘I was just going under that bridge over there, when the engine stopped,’ he said, taking a gulp of tea and pointing out the window towards the small bridge that spanned the entrance to the Regent’s Canal. ‘I opened the hatch to take a recce at the propeller and when I reached inside, I felt something soft and a bit mushy, sort of like a wet carpet. But I couldn’t shift it so I had to let the boat drift to the bank over there. Then I got out and took a look. When I dug around underneath the platform with a boat hook, I found a foot. That’s when I called you lot.’ He took another mouthful of tea. ‘Had a whole load of Russians on board. They got out and started taking pictures. Can you believe it? The ghouls. I couldn’t bloody get rid of them and they had the cheek to demand their money back, even though we were practically home and all they had to do was walk across the ruddy bridge. I suppose we should be thankful nobody’s slapped us with a lawsuit for emotional damage.’

Tartaglia shook his head in sympathy, although nothing surprised him any longer about human behaviour. ‘You said that the body was under some sort of a platform?’ he asked, knowing nothing about boats.

Sullivan nodded. ‘See over there, on the left-hand side at the end.’ He pointed to one end of the tourist boat on the opposite side of the pool. ‘The platform sits just on the water, in front of the engine room. It’s where I stand and steer the boat. The girl was lying crossways, wedged in between the platform and the propeller.’ Noticing Tartaglia’s puzzled expression he added: ‘Look, I’ll show you.’ Sullivan took out a pen from his pocket and drew a diagram on the back of a paper napkin.

Tartaglia looked at the drawing for a moment. ‘Thanks. That makes it much clearer.’ He studied Sullivan’s weather-beaten face, surprised at how unaffected he seemed by what had happened. ‘You seem very calm. Are you all right?’

Sullivan waved his hand in the air nonchalantly. ‘Oh, don’t worry about me. This isn’t the first time.’

‘Really?’

Sullivan nodded matter-of-factly. ‘I was working on a dredger on one of the Oxford canals and got another body jammed in the propeller. It was some poor student who had fallen off his bike into the water and drowned. He’d only been on the bottom of the canal a short time when the boat snagged him. They offered me counselling and everything but I’ve been fine about it. Can’t let these things get to you, can you? Otherwise we’d all be nervous wrecks.’

‘Quite,’ Tartaglia said, glad that in addition to being apparently unaffected by what had happened, Sullivan seemed not in the least bit curious as to how the girl came to be in the water. No doubt he assumed it was another accident. ‘You say the engine stopped when you went under that bridge over there. Is that where you think the girl fell in?’

Sullivan shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. She
could
have been caught up on another boat first or maybe we picked her up somewhere else along the way. We were coming back from Camden and were nearly home when the engine stopped so she could have gone in anywhere along that stretch.’

Tartaglia shook his head wearily, struggling to understand it all. Blake had said that the body hadn’t been in the water long. Decomposition had barely started and it would have been lying at the bottom of the canal, not floating on the surface. ‘Explain one thing please, Mr Sullivan. How can a body lying at the bottom of a canal get caught up on a boat? Surely there’s ample room for a boat to pass over.’

Sullivan gave him an indulgent look as if he was used to people unfamiliar with boats and canals. ‘This is the boat, right?’ he said, pointing at the drawing on the napkin. ‘And here’s the waterline.’ He drew it in. ‘There’s the rudder, see? And the propeller and the platform we were talking about. The canals around here are no more than six feet deep and less than that in some places. Modern boats don’t have much draft…’

‘Draft?’ Tartaglia interrupted.

‘Depth in the water. The modern ones float over most things without a problem. But an old boat like this one, or the dredger I was working on in Oxford, they sit quite a bit lower in the water. There’s not much between the bottom of the boat and the bottom of the canal. As you go along, the water underneath gets quite churned up, particularly if you’re passing through somewhere narrow and enclosed, like under a bridge.’

‘I see. So, you would have disturbed the body as you passed over it?’

Sullivan nodded. ‘It’s easy for all sorts of rubbish and stuff to get picked up and trapped in the propeller. I often have to stop and clear it out. It’s bloody lucky we didn’t break down in the Maida Tunnel. It’s black as pitch and there’s no towpath. In the olden days, the bargemen had to send the horses over the top and lie on their backs on the roof of their barge and push themselves along inside with their feet. Then they’d re-hitch the horses on the other side. It’s where the expression “legging it” comes from,’ he said with a smile. ‘I wouldn’t like to be stuck in there for long, particularly with all those Russian harpies and a dead body, I can tell you.’