Soul Seeker (13 page)

He had never done a post-mortem like that one and it was many years since doing his job had affected him as that one had done. Yet this was not surprising, because this corpse had been cooked. The skin was crisp, darkened but in a way the sun could never do; the eyes were milky and yellowed, those of an ancient blind man; the hair was fragile, almost carbonized, the tongue was like a desiccated gobbet of ham. The changes seemed uniform, except for the wrists and around the head; there the skin was blackened, blistered, and the flesh charred.

When Eisenmenger had first cut through the abdominal wall – a virgin cut – there had been no blood and the feel had been more solid than he was used to; it had been a curious sensation and not one he enjoyed. It had a grey, greasy texture, one that he could not stop himself from comparing to
belly pork.
When he had the breast plate off and the whole of the torso's contents exposed, there was not the usual palette of colours to gaze upon – the grey speckled pink of the lungs, the brown of the liver, the green of the guts, the ruddiness of the heart – for everything had a greasy, brown sheen; the smell, too, was wrong. Eisenmenger knew well the scent of a freshly open corpse, the dank, acrid smell that was not pleasant, but that wasn't disgusting either; this, in contrast, forced him to take deep breaths to stop himself vomiting, because this corpse smelled of cooked offal. ‘Oh, shite,' he whispered to himself.

Normally, dissection of the organs is a fluid thing, lubricated by blood and tissue fluid, yet this time, it was
dry
, greased only by fat. Normally, though, the victims of fire were completely different; they were charred to nothing in places, barely touched in others; often the organs, although clearly subjected to great heat, had been protected to an incredible degree from the musculoskeletal system. Not in this case. Other than at the head and wrists, everything had been heated through uniformly. He had eaten steaks and roasts and steamed sponge puddings that were less evenly cooked.

And there were those burns quite specifically at two places, burns that, now he examined them more carefully, were suspiciously sharply edged . . .

‘Well?' demanded Beverley after he finished, after he had stripped off the uniform, become something approaching – in shape if not spirit – a human being, but before he could begin to consider himself once more a dues-paid, bona fide and self-assured member of the so-called civilized humanity.

‘It depends on the tox—' he began, but Beverley nearly exploded.

‘Fuck that crap, John. I know that you can't say for certain, but I need a pointer. I need something now, not in a week's time.'

He had known she would say that, but he had thought to try anyway. ‘Two possibilities in my head; he was cooked, but he wasn't roasted, not as he would have been had he been bound and then the room set on fire. The way he was heated through leads me to conclude . . .' He paused, unable to believe that he was about to say what he was about to say.

‘What?' Beverley voiced it but both Lancefield and Clive clearly could have done.

He sighed. ‘That either he was put in a microwave oven, or he was electrocuted very, very slowly.' There was a stunned silence.

Beverley whispered in something that was almost fright, ‘You can't be serious, John.'

‘Oh, yes, I am. He's heated through too evenly for it to be an external source of heat. There are burn marks on his wrists and around his head which makes me think it more likely that it was slow electrocution, but if he had metal manacles and some sort of metal head band, a microwave oven – a large microwave oven – would produce a similar appearance, I think.' He smiled. ‘Of course, I'm not an expert in this area.'

‘Do they make microwaves big enough?' asked Lancefield.

‘Good question.' His tone suggested that he didn't particularly care.

Beverley did not want to look at the corpse, but found she could not stop. It was almost as if in a dream that she asked, ‘Is there anything to identify him?'

She didn't expect anything, but he said tentatively, ‘Possibly . . .'

He took them back to the head of the corpse and beckoned to Clive to grasp the shoulders and lift them so that they could see the back; Beverley remembered that Eisenmenger had asked for it to be photographed. When they crouched down, they saw a large area of blackening, only just visible because of the effects of heating. Beverley peered at it closely but couldn't make anything of it. ‘What is it?'

Before Eisenmenger could respond, Lancefield said, ‘It's a tattoo.'

Eisenmenger said, ‘I'll biopsy the skin to check, but I think so.'

‘What is it?' demanded Beverley. It spanned the back from shoulder to shoulder, ran up the nape of the neck. There was a faint hint of dark greens and blues.

Lancefield twisted her head from side to side as she tried to make out some detail. ‘A bird? An eagle, perhaps?'

Eisenmenger shrugged. ‘I can't be sure. I've had it photographed, so you can decide at your leisure. In any case, it might prove useful.'

Beverley turned to Fisher. ‘Go through the missing persons' file first thing. We might strike lucky.' Of Eisenmenger she demanded, ‘Is that all?'

‘Liver's slightly fatty, and there's a lot of anthracosis in the lungs; he may even be developing emphysema.'

‘But nothing that can help me?'

‘Doesn't look like it.'

Josh and Darren spent that evening playing in the grounds of the Grange, which had rapidly become their favourite place, their secret place, where no one bothered them. Although they did not fully appreciate it, they had something that all children seek, for it was a place that they thought only they ever entered, that was walled, that was strange and mysterious, and that was not encumbered with adults and therefore with reality. Anything and everything was potential for imagination, for play, for excitement and for wonder; nothing was beyond the possible; it was as it should be for children.

Nor did they fully know where they were, had no geographical or topographical references, knew only that it was reached by climbing over a five-bar gate not far from their houses, then a walk of fifteen minutes to the stone wall; that the stone wall was five feet high and topped with broken glass was not a problem for them, not when badgers had made a run under it; it was artfully hidden and only a child playing on his hands and knees near it would have discovered it. What they had on the other side was ancient woodland, untended for thirty years, but they saw only wilderness, a tabula rasa, a hidden garden. To them it was huge, a circular universe, as uncharted as the one through which the planet itself travelled.

But it was not as they had once hoped.

It was in one plane infinite, but in others limited. At the outer boundary there was the stone wall, at the other, inner boundary, there was a high fence of black iron railings. A gravel road ran through this, their desmegne, from the stone wall to this fence, bounded at the outer perimeter by a high and solid, heavily padlocked wooden gate, at its inner by one of wrought iron. Beyond this latter the road led on, curving away and overhung by sycamores, until it disappeared into woodland. And above the trees could be seen their true, spiritual home, the Grange, the place where they really wanted to be. It appeared as tall chimneys and decaying roofs clad in black slate and pockmarked with jagged holes. They fantasized that it might be some sort of castle, perhaps an ancient manor house, perhaps even a citadel on an alien planet. That they could not reach it only made it all the more irresistible, and their desire for it had increased with every glimpse over the weeks, until it became in their minds something completely mythical and therefore something wondrous.

They had learned to live with their disappointment; indeed they had incorporated this faraway citadel into their adventures, much as stage decorators used well-painted scenery. After all, they had enough space to play in, it was still summer, and they were not adults. This particular evening, they were using home-made bows and arrows that they had made the day before and, after uncountable attempts, had succeeded in hitting a tree so that the arrow – a small wooden garden cane, a supply of which Josh had misappropriated from his grandparents' greenhouse and then whittled to a point – actually stuck in rather than bouncing off. They were both elated but, as luck would have it, the tree was on the other side of the railings. Exhausted, they stood and looked through the fence; it seemed to them almost a sign of the magical nature of the world on the far side of it.

But it was still a world that was beyond their reach.

Josh said, ‘Let's get back to base.'

It was getting dark and, in their enthusiasm for their new game, they had stayed out later than they should have, but the fine balance between their thrill of excitement and their fear of retribution was settling in favour of the former; they would be told off anyway, so why not make it last a few minutes longer? They had brought with them some coke and some oriole cookies and it seemed fitting to finish these now, in celebration of their achievement.

And perhaps there was a little bit of magic – possibly, though, black magic – that made Darren then look to his left and spot for the first time a tree (it was a walnut tree, but neither of them recognized it as such) that was easily climbable and that overhung the fence; the limb that did this was stout, easily able to take their weight.

Darren turned to Josh, pulled at his T-shirt and pointed excitedly. ‘We can get in!' With this he rushed to the tree and began to climb the low slung limbs easily. He knelt on all fours on the thick branch that led out over the railings. ‘See? We climb along here and then drop down.'

Josh was built of more thoughtful, perhaps more timid, substances. ‘How do we get back?'

Darren frowned; he was not of a far-seeing nature. The question was a tricky one, even he could see that. ‘Well . . .'

He had in his head ideas of piling up stones to form a mountain to climb up, but when he articulated this, the look on Josh's face told him he had failed to carry his friend with him. He thought again. ‘There's bound to be something we could use in the Grange,' he said eventually.

‘Like what?'

This was harder. Eventually he said, ‘They'll be some steps or something. Bound to be.'

He was not hopeful that this would be enough and Josh's expression at first gave him little encouragement. He pressed his case. ‘Come on, Josh. It's not that high. All we need is a chair or something, and there's got to be something like that left behind.'

More hesitation, to which Darren responded with, ‘We can't wimp out. It'll be so much fun!'

And slowly, Josh began to nod. ‘Yes,' he admitted. ‘It will, won't it?'

He did not appreciate it, but Darren would have had a great career ahead as a salesman.

TWENTY-TWO

‘
U
sually, when you are dealing with serial killers, half the work is done by the profilers; a serial killer has an idea in his head and his crimes tell them what that idea is and what kind of head it's in. They establish a pattern that allows you a way into catching them.'

Beverley and Eisenmenger were sitting outside Taylors, a pleasant, ivied town centre pub in Cheltenham. It was not a bad way to spend an hour of an evening and perfect for people-watching. ‘But not this guy?' he guessed.

‘The profiler is completely lost. Apart from the fact that this guy clearly enjoys killing, he hasn't got a clue about who or what he might be.' Eisenmenger's opinion of profilers stayed silent in deference to politeness. She went on: ‘A serial killer operates within his gender and socio-economic class.' She said this as if she were reciting by rote. ‘They use the same method of killing, indulge in the same fantasies. They have a pattern, and move solely within the confines of that pattern. Usually, their motivation is sexual.'

‘Just because I can find no evidence of genital interference doesn't mean these aren't sexual killings.'

She was momentarily interested, then a soft snort indicated her considered opinion. ‘You think he was jerking himself off whilst watching some unfortunate fucker die by slow electrocution? I don't think so.'

‘Just an idea . . .'

The look Beverley gave him started as contemptuous, but rapidly dissipated into one of resigned concurrence. ‘I know,' she sighed. ‘And I'm precious short of those right now.'

The silence of contemplation and sociability landed on them for just a moment as they each took a drink. As the glass came down upon the beer-ringed green shamrock of the cardboard mat, Beverley asked of him plaintively, ‘Where's the fucking pattern, John? It's not fair. Serial killers have a predictable MO, yet this one doesn't; different sexes, different ages, different ways of killing . . .'

Inside the pub, the large TV screen was showing BBC News 24, a warehouse fire in Hertfordshire seen from a helicopter. It was a warm evening and Eisenmenger's lager was rapidly becoming tepid, and he hated lager that wasn't ice cold. He drew a pattern in the condensation on the glass, a cross in a circle and found himself wondering what that meant. He murmured almost to himself, ‘Execution.'

‘What's that?'

He came to, almost had to draw himself together as if deep contemplation had allowed his bones to separate slightly. More brightly, more aware of his surroundings and what he was saying, he repeated, ‘It strikes me that beheading and electrocution are means of execution, that's all.'

For a moment, he saw that her expression was one of wonderment, but then that mutated into a frown. ‘Our most recent victim was
cooked
, not electrocuted.'