It was a late lunch; a tuna sandwich eaten at three o’clock at Wesley’s desk. They had stayed with Clare Mayers until her
mother arrived home at two fifteen but hadn’t discovered anything further. It seemed that Clare had told them everything she
knew.
Gerry had ordered the investigation team to assemble for an update and as Wesley munched his sandwich, everybody had started
to gather in the incident room. At five past three Gerry strode in, solemn-faced, and there was an expectant buzz of conversation.
Wesley took the final, hurried bite of his sandwich, brushing the crumbs off the papers on his desk before taking his place
at Gerry’s side by the massive notice board.
‘Right, everyone,’ Gerry bellowed, like a teacher addressing a class of unruly adolescents. The chatter suddenly ceased. ‘We’ve
got a team out searching the woodland where the body was found. Her clothes are missing and so is her bag
– if she was carrying one: that’s something we need to find out.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘And let me introduce you
to Clare Mayers’s attacker … and the possible murderer of Analise Sonquist.’
Wesley could see Gerry had a large picture hidden behind his back, a blown-up image of the small jackal-headed god found on
Analise Sonquist’s body. He produced it magician-fashion and held it up for everyone to see before pinning it in pride of
place at the centre of the notice board, next to the gruesome crime scene pictures of the dead Analise.
‘Meet our main suspect.’ There was a ripple of suppressed laughter. Gerry held up his hand. ‘Don’t laugh. According to Clare
Mayers this is exactly what the dog-headed man who attacked her looked like. I know I assumed that when Clare said he had
a dog’s head she meant he was wearing some kind of mask like the Neston attacker but even I can’t be right all the time.’
He paused for a flutter of respectful laughter. ‘The killer left this figure on Analise’s body and we need to find out why.’
He turned to Wesley. ‘According to DI Peterson here who knows about these things the mutilations on the body might – just
might – be connected to Egyptian rituals and this figure is the Egyptian god associated with death. The question is, as Egypt’s
thousands of miles away, what’s he doing here in Devon?’
‘On his holidays, sir.’ The newest detective constable on the team, cursed with acne and newly transferred from uniform, looked
round expecting his quip to be appreciated. But his attempt at humour was met with silence.
‘Wrong time of the year,’ Gerry responded quick as a flash. ‘And a lot of places don’t allow dogs.’
Wesley saw the lad blush. If he’d been there longer he’d
have known that only Gerry was allowed to provide the inappropriate jokes during an investigation.
The DCI moved on. ‘Analise Sonquist’s post mortem’s in half an hour’s time so we might find out more then. In the meantime
I want Rachel and Trish to go over to the Crests’ house and search Analise’s room. She said she was meeting someone so there’s
a chance she knew her killer.’
DC Paul Johnson put up his hand. ‘Where does this dog’s head come in, sir? Is it a mask he wears or …’
‘I can’t think of another explanation. Why do people usually wear masks when they’re committing crimes? To avoid identification.’
‘Or there could be some other reason,’ said Wesley. ‘Some kind of ritual the killer thinks he has to follow.’
‘I think DI Peterson has a point, sir,’ said Rachel. ‘Or he might wear it because he gets some kind of kick out of terrifying
his victims.’
‘Could be a combination of all three.’ Gerry began scrawling on the notice board with a felt tip pen. Three words: anonymity,
ritual, terror. Wesley was sure that this just about summed it up.
Perhaps when Neil arrived with his expert on Egyptology, he’d come up with some fresh ideas.
Rachel Tracey didn’t envy Gerry and Wesley having to attend Analise Sonquist’s post mortem. She’d been brought up on a farm,
always close to nature and the cycle of life and death, but the thought of witnessing a human body being cut open filled her
with disgust.
She was, however, rather looking forward to searching Analise Sonquist’s room. When she and Trish arrived at the Crests’ house
at three thirty she rang the doorbell and
when Suzie Crest opened the front door she held up her warrant card.
‘Chief Inspector Heffernan has asked me and DC Walton here to search Analise’s room. Then we’d like to ask you some questions
if that’s OK.’
Suzie Crest didn’t shift. ‘Your Chief Inspector Heffernan went to see my husband at work. I resent all this intrusion.’
Rachel looked the woman in the eye. ‘Your au pair has been brutally murdered, Mrs Crest. I think you’ll find that it’s rather
difficult to carry on as normal in the circumstances.’
It seemed that Suzie knew when she was beaten. She pivoted on her heels and began to walk ahead of them up the stairs, her
feet treading silently on the thick carpet.
‘Was Analise carrying a handbag when she went out?’ Rachel asked casually.
‘She usually carried a shoulder bag – a sort of patchwork thing she bought in Neston. Unless it’s up in her room she’ll have
had it with her.’
Analise’s room wasn’t on the first floor near the family bedrooms. It was up another, smaller flight of stairs in what used
to be the attic. The servants’ quarters. There were two doors up there, both closed.
‘She had the use of both these rooms,’ Suzie said, pushing one of the doors open. ‘When the house was built I suppose the
maids used to sleep here.’
Rachel stepped into the room. It was a small living room with sloping ceilings, a sagging chintz sofa and a battered desk
in the corner on which stood a laptop computer and an assortment of magazines and books. The furniture, Rachel assumed, would
be rejects from downstairs, given to the au pair rather than thrown away. She walked over to the window. At least Analise
had had a wonderful view. Beyond
the rooftops below, the river shimmered in the cold watery sunlight. This might even be the best view in the house.
Rachel left Trish to examine the contents of the desk and followed Suzie to the room where Analise had slept. It was a pretty
room with flowery wallpaper, a sloping ceiling, a small Victorian fireplace and built-in cupboards. It reminded Rachel of
her old bedroom at Little Barton Farm and she felt a sudden and unexpected pang of yearning for the simplicity of her childhood.
But she had work to do; cupboards to search. She thanked Suzie who took the hint and left the room.
Analise had travelled fairly light so the search was easy. Rachel found several letters in her bedside drawer written in a
foreign language which she assumed was Norwegian and she resolved to get Kristina to translate them. Rachel had heard that
the Analise’s parents were dead so at least they would be spared the most terrible pain a human being can bear – that of losing
a child. Somebody was already trying to contact her wider family: Rachel was just glad that the job wasn’t hers.
She sorted through the clothes and shoes in Analise’s wardrobe, all from chain stores; not the cheapest but not expensive
either. No surprise designer labels here: if there had been a boyfriend, he hadn’t been the kind to shower her with gifts.
There was no sign of a patchwork bag which suggested she must have had it with her when she went to her last fateful meeting.
She had been found naked so her clothes and bag must be somewhere. It was just a question of finding them.
As she was pondering this problem Trish entered the room waving a couple of plastic evidence bags triumphantly.
‘I’ve found her diary. I think I’ll leave the laptop to the experts.’
Rachel nodded. She knew only too well that Trish and computers weren’t the best of friends. ‘Anything interesting in the diaries?’
‘It’s all in Norwegian. But quite a few Mondays and Tuesdays – the days she used to leave Alexander with Kristina – are marked
with a star.’
Rachel sighed. ‘Why couldn’t she have put a name … preferably with an address to go with it?’
‘You ready to talk to Mrs Crest about this artist?’
Rachel nodded.
‘I found these as well. She’s with a man in some of them – it might be the boyfriend. We’ll see if Mrs Crest recognises him.’
Rachel took the pictures from the evidence bag and went through them one by one. Some were of Analise with another girl who
bore a strong resemblance to her, probably her sister. From the pure quality of the light and the wooden houses in the background,
Rachel knew they’d been taken in her native Norway. There were other pictures of a slightly different size, obviously from
a more recent batch. These had been taken in a pub where a smiling Analise was posing with an older man. He was in his mid
to late thirties, tall and good looking in a casual sort of way. He wore a cheesecloth shirt with wooden beads around his
neck and his sandy hair was slightly long but neatly cut. The clothes he wore gave him a faintly arty look and he had his
arm around Analise’s shoulders as they posed for the camera.
‘I wonder if that’s Mr Monday,’ she said to Trish.
‘Or Mr Tuesday. Not bad is he?’
Rachel smiled. Trish had been having an on-off relationship with Paul Johnson for a couple of years now and Rachel often wondered
whether she’d spread her wings one
day. But they shared a house and she hadn’t seen any sign of it yet.
They found Suzie Crest in the drawing room, sitting on the sofa watching Alexander playing contentedly in a wooden playpen
in the centre of the room. Suzie regarded her son with detached interest, rather like a visitor to a zoo watching some mildly
engaging and exotic creature.
‘He’s a lovely baby,’ Rachel said as she entered the room.
Suzie turned her head. ‘Have you any children?’
‘Not yet.’ Rachel rather surprised herself by her reply. Having children was something she had never really contemplated.
She had always assumed that her nieces and nephews would be the only youngsters in her life. But since she had started seeing
local farmer Nigel Haynes, ideas she had always rejected were starting to form into vague possibilities. She squatted down
by the playpen and passed Alexander a sorting box which he took from her with chubby little hands. All his toys, she noticed,
were of the educational kind. No frivolity here. To Suzie Crest, family life was a serious business, to be sub-contracted
to others whenever possible.
‘I called the agency earlier,’ Suzie said absent-mindedly. ‘They promised to find me someone else urgently. I really can’t
take much more time off work.’ She fidgeted with a button on her silk blouse. For all her outward calm, Rachel could sense
her inner agitation.
‘We’ve talked to Analise’s friend in Stoke Beeching, Kristina. She says Analise was involved with an artist.’ She watched
Suzie’s expression but it gave nothing away. ‘She told Kristina that she met this man through you.’
‘I don’t see how …’
Rachel took a photograph out of the evidence bag she was carrying and passed it to Suzie. ‘Do you recognise the man in this
picture?’
Suzie’s eyes widened for a second. ‘That’s Geoff. Geoff Dudgeon. Before I started my yoga I went to the watercolour class
he used to teach on Mondays. He’s very talented; has his own gallery in Neston. He’s a talented potter as well as a painter.’
‘Did Analise meet him at these classes?’
‘No, that was long before she arrived. But he called here a few times before Christmas because he was helping with the set
designs for one of our Castle Players productions. I suppose Analise could have met him then but I really can’t remember.’
‘Do you have his address?’
‘No. But you’re detectives so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding him. Now if that’s all …’
Rachel knew when she was being dismissed. As she and Trish left the room Alexander began to cry. And when she looked back
from the doorway she saw that his mother had made no effort to pick him up or distract him. She was still sitting there on
the sofa, staring into space.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ Colin Bowman said as he gazed at the mutilated body on the stainless steel table.
Wesley stood as far away from the action as he could manage but the little heaps of internal organs that had been found piled
beside the body were in his line of vision, now placed neatly in a series of metal bowls.
‘The question is, Colin,’ Gerry asked, ‘have we got another Jack the Ripper?’
Colin didn’t reply. He had just taken off the top of the head with a circular saw and was now examining the brain, a frown
of deep concentration on his face.
‘Do you know, gentlemen,’ he said after a few moments. ‘I think our killer’s tried to hook out the brain through the nose.
That was how they did it in ancient Egypt, I believe. Isn’t that right, Wesley?’
Wesley nodded. ‘When I saw the nostrils I did wonder …’
Gerry emitted a grunt of disgust. ‘You are joking, Colin.’
‘I never joke at autopsies. And it fits in with the other mutilations … and the figure of the jackal-headed god found
in the linen sheet.’
‘Apart from the Egyptian business, is there anything you can tell us?’ Wesley asked hopefully, his eyes still averted away
from the action on the autopsy table.
‘Well, she put up a fight. From the state of her fingers, I’d say she tried to grab the ligature around her neck … without
success, unfortunately. Cause of death, strangulation with a thin cord of some kind. Garden twine maybe.’
‘You’ve seen pictures of Clare Mayers’s neck – the girl who survived. Is it the same?’
‘I’d say identical.’
‘Any sign of sexual assault?’
‘Definitely not. She wasn’t a virgin but she hadn’t had sex within the last few days before she died.’
‘And the mutilations?’
‘The internal organs were removed post mortem and placed in separate neat piles beside the body. I said at the scene that
the killer would only need a basic knowledge of anatomy and a sharp knife of some kind. A fairly competent job but not professional.’
‘What kind of knife was used?’