River of Souls (24 page)

He feels less afraid when he gets outside, the water glistening under the fading streetlamps. The river is slipping west, surface blank with innocence, as if it wants nothing more than to return to its source. A woman from his apartment block walks by with her dog, and he raises his hand in greeting as he unlocks the car; he must act normally, so no one will suspect that anything is wrong. She grins back then sets off along the road, her pale blue soul hovering innocently around her shoulders.

He reaches the old warehouse by seven a.m. This time no sound emerges as he descends the steps, but there’s a skitter of activity. Rats are crawling over the victim’s body; in forty-eight hours they have almost completed his work. The victim’s face is already ruined, purple bruises covering his forehead, skin bloated by the tides that cleansed his sins. Even his friend from the wine bar would fail to identify him. The man opens his bag and reaches for his knives. Rooted to the spot, he listens to the water’s instructions then forces himself to begin. The task is worse by daylight because he can see every incision, flesh slicing from each bone. He works fast, determined to suppress his nausea.

Once the victim’s skin is loosened, he makes one final cut then throws it into the corner; another meal for the rats to enjoy. It takes moments to tie the piece of flint tightly around the victim’s neck, then haul him to the open window. The river laps at the wall below, and the man peers out cautiously. No boats are passing and there’s no one visible on the opposite shore, so he heaves the body over the lintel and listens to the splash as it hits the water. The river claims it immediately, currents dragging it into the deepest channel.

The man watches the river play with its latest toy, pulling it deep then letting it bob to the surface. Rats cluster in the corner, enjoying their feast, and a fresh wave of sickness rises in his throat. He tests the wall brackets, checking they are still secure. Then he escapes from the dark space with the river’s praise echoing in his ears.

33

Jude was propped up in bed when I arrived on Friday morning. I had spent most of the night puzzling over the photo on Jake’s phone, but seeing her put my worries into perspective.

‘I’m surprised they let you in. It’s good to see another human being.’ Her voice had reduced to a breathless whisper, and she looked weaker than before, patchwork skin grey with exhaustion.

‘Did you have a bad night?’

‘This thing doesn’t let me sleep much.’ She tapped the oxygen machine rasping loudly at her side.

‘I wanted you to know they’re making progress finding Amala’s killer. It sounds like she didn’t have an enemy in the world.’

‘I still can’t believe she’s gone.’

‘Did she ever mention any relationships?’

‘Not since last year. She was waiting for someone with the same beliefs.’ There was a long pause while Jude’s exposed eye roamed across my face. ‘Why did you come, Alice? I can tell you’re not here to talk about Amala.’

‘I wondered if you knew anyone from the history department when you were at King’s.’

‘A few, it was a relaxed place. Everyone chatted in the coffee bar.’

‘Did any of the men flirt with you?’

‘There was one guy who used to chat in the lunch queue. He asked me out once. Mark somebody, I can’t remember his surname.’

I looked up abruptly. ‘Mark Edmunds?’

‘That’s him. Blond guy – sweet but a bit odd. He backed off after I said I had a boyfriend.’

‘Did he seem angry about that?’

‘More disappointed. He was nice about it; he said Jamal was a lucky man.’

‘Was there anyone else?’

‘I don’t think so; most of the historians kept themselves to themselves.’

‘That’s helpful, but I still need to know about your childhood. You always steer away from it. Are you ready to say who hurt you back then?’

She flinched. ‘I told you, my past has nothing to do with this.’

‘Was it your dad?’

The nurse burst into the room before she could reply. ‘Jude’s consultant needs to see her now.’ She held the door open but I stood my ground.

‘I hate to push you, but next time I really need to know.’

Jude didn’t reply, lying passively while the nurse tidied her bedding. As soon as I reached the landing I put a call through to Burns but got no reply. I left a message on his voicemail, asking him to find out about Mark Edmunds as a matter of urgency. Afterwards I sat in the foyer, gathering my thoughts. It seemed wrong to pry when Jude’s condition was so serious, but I felt sure her friend Natalie had been correct. She was shielding someone who had hurt her in the past. Even in her weakened state, Jude made a practice of concealment; she had recognised her killer’s voice and seen his face, but hidden both facts under layers of memory.

I pulled my folder from my briefcase and sifted through my reports, hoping that a pattern might emerge. The first thing I found was the lab analysis of the contents of Father Owen’s lungs. The water he’d inhaled had returned the expected result: he’d drowned in Battersea. Grains of chalk dust from a concrete factory that flushed its waste into the river confirmed that he’d died in the borough he’d served. I stuffed the papers back into the folder with a sense of frustration. If Mark Edmunds had carried out the attacks, what had driven him? Jealousy could have made him target Jude. But Father Owen seemed as blameless as Amala. According to Burns, the priest had encouraged homeless people to sleep in the community centre beside his church, and he’d run a soup kitchen there for twenty years. His only known vice had been an occasional glass of whisky. Everything I learned about the victims made me believe that the killer saw them as guilty by association. Being close to the Shelleys had made them targets. But if he hated the family so much, why hadn’t he attacked Guy or Heather, or even the minister himself? His motivations refused to make sense.

I was about to leave the hospital when my phone buzzed loudly in my pocket. Angie’s voice was babbling nineteen to the dozen.

‘It’s happened again, Alice. There’s another body by the river in Wapping. Hancock’s on his way there now.’

The next hour felt like being dragged along by a riptide. Local police had cordoned off the crime scene when I arrived, and the press were already massing. The set of Burns’s shoulders revealed that his tension had hit a new high. The discovery of a third body would raise the media’s interest from high to stratospheric. He nodded but didn’t say a word when I joined him by the cordon. Pete Hancock ambled towards us; the SOCO’s face was as impassive as ever, but his body language exuded gloom.

‘Have we got a name?’ Burns asked.

‘Julian Speller. His driving licence was in his pocket.’

‘What condition is he in?’

‘The worst yet, boss.’ Hancock disappeared behind the forensics van abruptly, as if events had suddenly overwhelmed him.

‘Did you get my message?’ I asked Burns, but he shook his head. ‘Mark Edmunds, the student I told you about, was rejected by Jude, just before her attack. He’s in the team that’s been excavating here. The bloke’s obsessed by the history of the Thames.’

‘I’ll get someone to run another check, but so far everyone at King’s has come up clean.’ Burns’s expression showed that he was too concerned about the new attack to absorb the information. ‘Guy Shelley went missing two nights ago. He slipped out of his flat when his security guard was on the phone; he hasn’t been seen since.’

‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’

Burns’s scowl deepened. ‘What could you do? Pound the streets searching every alley?’

He strode back to the CSI van and left me processing what had made Guy run from his own home. He was still on my suspect list, guilt or panic about the likelihood of being caught making him escape from his bodyguard. I watched the SOCOs completing their work, a line of white-suited drones crawling across the tarmac on their hands and knees. The crime scene was metres from Execution Dock, where Amala had been found – the killer seemed to be claiming the area for his own. I glanced back towards St Katharine Docks. The High Street was at its narrowest there, surfaced with old flagstones and cobbles. It was easy to see why the area would attract a history fanatic. Horse-drawn carts would have brought goods to the cargo ships docked below; and a sign pointed towards King Henry’s Stairs - a reminder that the crime scene was a stone’s throw from the Tower of London, the Tudor royals’ favourite home. Tania appeared while I was trying to make sense of the new killing. Her expression had darkened from tiredness to disgust.

‘Don’t ask how it’s going,’ she said. ‘We’ve made fuck-all progress and now this happens. This one’s even younger than Amala.’

‘When’s the last time you had a break, Tania?’

‘Christ knows.’ She smoothed her hand over her short hair. ‘Sorry, you caught me at a bad time.’

‘It’s not surprising. You must be exhausted.’

‘Knackered is too mild a word. You’d better wait here; they’ll call you when they’re ready.’

She handed me a Tyvek suit and plastic overshoes then hurried away. By now the crime scene was in full swing, uniforms manning the outer cordon and keeping the press at bay. A few dogged photographers were pointing foot-long lenses at the blue plastic curtain that screened Wapping Old Stairs. They seemed to be hoping a sudden breeze would reveal the murder scene in all its glory.

My discomfort grew when the team trailed back up the steps. Nothing neutralises people’s smiles quicker than observing a corpse, and today even the seasoned veterans looked unsettled. Burns appeared just as my instincts were advising me to make a quick exit.

‘You don’t have to do this, Alice. You’d be better off looking at the photos.’

‘I need to see the victims. You know that.’

Burns’s protectiveness irritated me. Witnessing the bodies in situ always helped; the chance to see the killer’s handiwork explained more about a perpetrator’s mind-set than photos ever could.

I pushed past him towards the steps trailing down to the riverbank, stone worn smooth by a million tides. My plastic shoes slipped on the wet surface as I saw the man’s corpse lying directly ahead. The river seemed to have tired of him suddenly, his body splayed across the stairway as if he’d been dropped from a height. One of his feet was bare, the other still wore a pointed shoe, neatly laced. As I knelt down I saw that his hands were grotesquely swollen, but it was the wounds on his wrists that disturbed me – they were so deep that the pain must have been excruciating. His clothes revealed how comfortable his life had once been, a Jermyn Street label inside his jacket proving that he’d had taste as well as money.

Burns’s wide shadow appeared on the brick wall, reminding me that my time was almost up. The specialists were impatient to take over: crime-scene photographers, a police medic and Home Office pathologist. I stared at the victim’s body again. There was no doubting that the killer was the same person who’d attacked Jude. A sharp-edged piece of flint, a couple of inches long, had been tied around his neck. The same neat incision circled his face, flesh ripped from bone until nothing was left, his broken jaw wrenched into a lopsided yawn. River water dripped from his ragged eye sockets in dark brown tears.

I fought my nausea and stumbled back up the steps. Burns was standing at the top, issuing orders into his phone. I wondered how he could carry on a conversation while the cacophony raged. Engines revved in the background, and a radio blared from a squad car’s window, but he seemed oblivious.

‘Julian Speller was a UK national, twenty-eight years old,’ he said. ‘Oxford law graduate, living near the Oval. Take a guess who he worked for.’

‘The Shelleys?’

‘At Westminster.’ Burns gave a slow nod. ‘He was a parliamentary adviser to the Minister for Employment, a key team member.’

‘It looks like anyone inside Shelley’s circle is vulnerable: his daughter, then his priest, the children’s ex-nanny, and now a close colleague. You could call it a homicidal fixation: anyone who’s touched his life is fair game. Failing to kill Jude the first time probably deepened his obsession.’

‘You think he’d try and hurt her again?’ he asked.

‘It’s unlikely. He’ll still be haunted by his mistake, but he’s moved on to new targets.’

‘I’ll put more security at the hospital just in case.’

I tried to gather my thoughts. ‘The factor linking the victims could be intimacy. Jude knew every family secret. Father Owen had heard all the family’s confessions, and Heather and Jude confided in Amala. Maybe Julian Speller knew the minister’s professional secrets.’

‘You think he’s killing people the Shelleys confided in?’