Grind Their Bones (2 page)

'We commissioned a psychological profile of the Grey Man from Doctor Alan Hardwick, a copy of which is in each of your hands. He has decades of experience working in secure units with some of the most infamous crazies that we’ve caught. Although I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t express it in quite the same way. I want you all to take a few moments to digest the content, and then we’ll bounce around a few ideas with regards to how we can use this to focus and redefine the hunt.'

We were gathered for a briefing session on the top floor of Warwickshire Police HQ, a pine-scented, wood-panelled room in what had once been a grand old stately home before the force acquired and renovated it in the sixties. In light of recent drastic cuts to our budget it was increasingly starting to look like we’d be searching for a new home before long though.

I scanned the details rapidly, eyes jumping back over the words again as soon as I’d finished, and my heart sinking like a lead weight. The important parts of the report rang completely counter to everything I felt I’d learned about our killer so far. A white male, forties to fifties, of average to slightly above average intelligence, solitary in habits with independent financial means allowing him to devote time to victim selection. So far nothing contentious or new. Most of us accepted that guys who ate their dinner guests weren’t likely to have many friends or likely to be the centre of a harmonious family unit, but after that opener it went swiftly downhill. Predominantly ‘disorganised’ offender despite ‘staging’ of scenes, history of severe mental illness resulting in contact with the mental health authorities, probable prison record for violence esp. against women, strongly driven by rage and misogynistic feelings, sexually inadequate, probably impotent, socially inept, considered ‘odd’ or abnormal by those around him, forensically aware. I stopped reading and tried to pull together the thoughts swarming like bees inside my head. I respected the doctor’s credentials. He’d written a book a few years back on the subject of offender profiling that had been well received, after all, but this was just plain wrong.

From what we knew, the Grey Man was careful and incredibly well organised, before, during, and after the commission of his crimes. He selected victims who were anything but vulnerable; smart, successful and affluent women who would not be easily fooled, and there was nothing to suggest that they had been drugged or violently coerced into accompanying him to one of his dinner dates. I couldn’t see any of them going along with an obviously mentally ill or ‘odd’ individual without some kind of force being necessary. If we were dealing with a violent, uncontrolled, woman-hater then surely that would be evidenced by his treatment of them before they died? By contrast, in my eyes, everything about his crimes was carefully measured, no sign of rage or violence beyond the obvious fact that he cooked them and cut pieces off them to eat. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and tried to avoid catching Fred Russell’s eye.

‘DCI Wade, you’re leading this investigation. What are your initial thoughts on the profile?’

Damn it, of course he was going to ask you first, especially since this guy’s been writing to you. I fumbled for words that neither agreed nor disagreed with Dr Hardwick’s assertions, clearing my throat several times before I began.

‘Offender profiling can be a very powerful tool in narrowing the search for serial killers, as evidenced by our overseas colleagues in the US, and I for one am grateful of any help I can get right now. But however good it is, it won’t catch him for us guys. We’ll bring this one in when he makes a mistake, or when we pay close enough attention to spot a mistake that he’s already made. In the meantime I suggest that we be mindful of the profile, but don’t automatically rule out a suspect who doesn’t match it until we’ve got other very good reasons to do so.’

Chapter 5

The Grey Man sat at the breakfast table with Lexie and Annabel taking up a knee each and scattering jammy toast crumbs all over his pristine suit trousers. He was smiling like a good granddad should and pressing down hard on the urge to wring their scrawny necks.

'Come on girls, get down off Granddad now. You're covering him in your breakfast.'

Grandma Madeleine swept the excitable tots onto the floor and showered their sticky faces with kisses, knowing how her husband preferred to be immaculate whenever possible, but the younger of the two, Lexie, trotted back over to him, grinning with bits of breakfast between her tiny white teeth and puckering up her Cupid's bow mouth.

'A beautiful young lady all smothered in strawberry jam and dusted in breadcrumbs. Delicious. I think I'll eat you all up for elevenses.'

He gave his best pantomime villain laugh and leaned down licking his lips, taking pleasure in her half-laughing, half-shrieking retreat into Grandma’s arms.

‘What’s elevenses?’

Frowned Lexie, looking perplexed.

‘It’s an old-fashioned name for a snack in between breakfast and lunch.’ Chimed in Grandma before he could reply.

'Anyway you can't eat people!'

Annabel joined in, running up close and aiming a gentle slap at his knee before dodging just out of reach of his mock lunge, wild blonde curls bouncing around at the movement.

'Why not? It's all meat isn't it?'

He grinned and started to move out of his chair towards them in a crouch, hands forming claws and his mouth dropping open to show off his surprisingly good teeth. The girls hid their faces in the folds of Grandmas pretty floral dress, giggling and sneaking quick peeks at him as he got closer. Strange how children of a certain age were convinced that if they closed their eyes and couldn't see you, then you in turn couldn't see them. Of course he'd seen adults revert back to that same tactic early on in his 'career' too, back before he'd managed to perfect his techniques.

'Come here!'

He scooped up a squirming girl in each arm and pulled them in pretending to bite them and then putting them back down before the action developed any substance. That wouldn’t do at all now, would it?

'Delicious. A waltz of flavours across the tongue, simply divine.'

He hammed it up, smacking his lips in pretend satisfaction while the girls clapped in delight.

'What does it taste like, what does it taste like?' they chorused excitedly, hopping up and down.

'Hmmm…'

He pretended to chew and consider, winking at Grandma, who shook her head in exasperation at his antics.

'I'd say it tastes something like suckling pig. Not as good to eat as a teenager, but certainly better than a chewy old man, at least.'

That part was an outright lie. In his experience, it was the lifestyle rather than the age that gave the meat better flavour and texture. After all, if you wanted excellent beef you fed your cows the best diet possible and made sure that they exercised out in the fresh air for good muscle tone.

He bared his teeth again for them and then stopped, catching sight of the news unfolding on the television screen over the top of their heads. He paused for a long moment to drink in the details.

Another grisly find for the Warwickshire police and rampant speculation that the crazed butcher known as the Grey Man has murdered, mutilated and cannibalised yet another young victim.

Madeleine caught his interest and turned to watch too, frowning at the report and reaching for the remote control to protect the grandchildren's precious little ears from the gory details. She looked back across at him and something complex crossed her expression for a split second before it disappeared from view again and she smiled.

The look didn’t bother him at all. In fact it was a good part of why he kept her around. No matter what hideous possibilities and doubts might cross her mind after all these years, and God only knew there had been revelations, she never questioned a single thing he did.

Chapter 6

It was early morning and I was out running in the woods with my mp3 blasting out 'Monkey's Gone To Heaven' by The Pixies. I was absurdly grateful for the light breeze slipping between the trees since I'd been neglecting my usual routine and living on fast food and coffee recently. But my breath was still tellingly ragged and my whole body felt like it was about to burst into flames. As I moved, I tried to avoid thinking about the case that consumed my waking moments just as surely as the monster I had to catch consumed his victims, but resistance was futile.

If man is five then the devil is six …

Mention of the devil in the song lyrics immediately brought back the Grey Man's most recent letter, and I stopped fighting away the details to let the association stew for a while in my mind. I'd solved my very first murder case off the back of a niggling thought that had continued to crop up when I was out running, the drowning murder of an eight-year-old boy called Wayne Brown by his sixteen-year-old brother that had looked like a tragic accident, and it had taught me to listen to my instincts.

By the time I found him he was lying under the surface with his mouth and eyes open wide like a fish.

The teenager's words had caused an immediate reaction in me, an inner spark was the best I could do to describe it, as he'd spoken in a monotone that was devoid of emotion. I was experienced enough of policing in general to know that people respond to grief and loss in different ways, so his demeanour in itself wasn't necessarily unusual. It was something else that bothered me, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was. When inspiration struck, it was as I negotiated a muddy footpath while out on a run, weaving from one side of the path to the other, trying to avoid stepping up to my ankles in the worst of the puddles and cursing the sudden unanticipated change from light drizzle to full-on deluge.

The puddles.

I'd stopped dead, waiting for the swirl of realisation to become more coherent, oblivious to the rain. Then it had hit me. Benjamin Brown was lying about at least one important aspect of his brother's death. I had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the facts in the case, so I knew that it had rained heavily the night before the little boy had died, and that meant that the rain water would have turned the water in the woodland pond as muddy with run-off and sediment as the puddles that I'd been dodging as I ran. He would not have been able to see Wayne's body under the surface of the water, yet he found it before anybody else knew it was there.

The realisation had been like lightning striking, and I had abandoned my run and my precious day off to go back in and re-read Ben Brown's witness statement. Sure enough it talked about the search for the missing boy, and how he had spotted his little brother by chance just beneath the surface from up on top of one of the muddy embankments surrounding the secluded hollow. The older boy had quickly started changing his story under closer questioning, with something menacing fighting to surface in his eyes at each additional strand of his made up story that I pulled away, and the rest was now history.

I snapped back into the present again - past glories weren’t of any use at the moment - and ran back through sections of the Grey Man's letter in my mind.

It's about possession, the desire to keep them close even though I must leave most of their physical bodies where they lie. When I hold my sacred communion with their flesh and blood we cease to be alone and apart and we become one, our molecules fusing together forever into one glorious whole.

What molecules do you suppose we share in common, Zara?

I’d committed the strange note to memory after multiple reads, and the words ran on repeat loop as I continued on my way. Were they a veiled threat or something else entirely?

Chapter 7

‘So what do you think about Doctor Hardwick’s analysis, Wade?’

Detective Supt Fred Russell always looked like he’d trapped his dick in his zipper, even on a good day, although there was an unproven rumour circulating that he’d once almost smiled back in the eighties after solving a long-running and difficult to crack serial rape case.

Today was not a good day, and there was an even more livid red than usual creeping into his round face; today he was preparing a press release designed to appeal to those who might know our elusive killer, and it was on the doctor’s instructions. Russell looked like he’d been presented with a shit sandwich and then asked to eat it with great relish for public viewing. Looking at his complexion and bulging waistband, I started to fear for his heart.

‘If I can speak frankly, sir?’ He impatiently nodded his assent. ‘I think it’s peculiar, to say the least. Some of it runs completely against all of the instincts of our best detectives, guys and girls who’ve been working the case for months and months, and the bits that don’t are those that anybody with even a small amount of common sense could have established for themselves. I think it’s potentially hugely damaging to the direction of our investigation, and I don’t think we should be relying on it at all.’

I knew without him saying that he was having the same thoughts, albeit he’d have expressed them considerably more bluntly, and we both knew he would personally take on the lion’s share of the blame if our fears were found to be well placed after we went public with this.

‘I want you to hold the fort while I play politician for the papers, and I want you to be quiet about the fact that we’re going to pay little more than lip service to the good doctor’s profile. He’s been right when officers have been wrong in the past, and he wasn’t shy about pointing that out. He’s something of a media darling these days, so we could do without looking like chimps if we’re missing something that he spotted. Anyway as far as I’m concerned, we assign somebody junior to looking into the mental health angle, particularly since we’ve already been there, and we keep focussing on the few quality leads we do have while we pray for a breakthrough.’