Henley flicked through the photographs from the smartboard on her laptop. Displaced limbs pressed against aged stone, cheap plastic and faded crisp bags. Dark blond hair matted with dried blood lay flat against a white scalp. A wedding band. Someone’s husband, maybe someone’s father. Henley placed her own hands on the desk, waiting for the tremor. It didn’t come, but her stomach was fluttering. She zoomed in on a photo of the head. The area where the ears had been cut off was speckled with the husks of maggots that had turned into flies.
‘As you can see,’ said Henley, ‘our killer has cut off Churchyard’s ears.’
‘His ears?’ Eastwood walked up to the smartboard and traced the section where the ears should have been. ‘Was that it? Just his ears?’
‘Yep. Nothing else is missing. Our killer has also taken Kennedy’s tongue and Zoe’s eyes, but all three have been dismembered and all three have had a double cross and crescent cut into their skin.’
‘Why would someone go to all the effort of cutting up a body and dumping it, but keep such random body parts?’ Eastwood returned to her seat.
‘A trophy. It’s not unheard of. Remember that Marques case seven years ago? He would pick up men outside gay nightclubs, take them home, kill them and remove their penises.’
Pellacia grimaced at the memory. ‘He kept them in a container in his bedside table, but cutting off someone’s dick is very different than removing someone’s eyes, ears and tongue. What are you going to do with all of that? Keep them in the freezer next to the frozen peas?’
Henley didn’t laugh.
‘Olivier didn’t keep trophies,’ said Ramouter.
‘It was never about trophies with Olivier.’ Henley closed down the photographs. ‘He wasn’t interested in collecting mementos. He wanted to show us what he could do. But the double cross and crescent were personal to him. Our symbolism expert suggested that the crescent represented disillusionment and the double cross was betrayal.’
‘Olivier was just fucked up if you ask me,’ Stanford muttered.
‘Thank you for that, Stanford. Right now, we have to establish how our killer found out about the symbols. I’m not prepared to accept that it’s a coincidence.’
‘I agree with you,’ said Pellacia. ‘But why remove Churchyard’s ears, Kennedy’s tongue and Darego’s eyes?’
‘Three wise monkeys.’ Ramouter’s voice sang out from where he was standing in the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of water.
‘What are you banging on about, trainee?’ asked Stanford.
‘Three wise monkeys. It’s a proverb. See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil. You must know? One monkey is covering its ears, the other its mouth, the—’
‘Yeah, yeah, I get it.’
Henley tried to organise her thoughts as she processed what Ramouter had just said. ‘Our killer has a vendetta,’ she said. ‘Each of our victims have been targeted for some reason. What did Zoe see, what did Kennedy say and what did Churchyard hear?’
No one responded. The sound of early evening traffic, making its way through Greenwich, crept through the window. The sky was almost purple as though it were holding back a storm.
‘Three monkeys. Three victims. That should be it, right?’ asked Ramouter.
Henley could sense the lack of conviction in Ramouter’s question. ‘There has to be a psychological motive,’ she said. ‘There’s a reason why they killed. We need to establish the reason.’
Pellacia’s phone started ringing and he went to his office to answer it. Henley waited for him to return before she continued.
‘There is another thing,’ Henley said. ‘Ramouter, go ahead.’
‘Right,’ Ramouter cleared his throat, ‘it’s something that Olivier said to us when we saw him the other day. He claimed he didn’t get any visitors, just fan mail. But then he told us that he has had a few legal visits.’
‘So?’ said Pellacia.
‘So, while you were out, I asked the prison governor for a list. Olivier was lying about the legal visits but he did see someone on a social visit.’
Ramouter explained his investigation into Chance Blaine.
‘Why on earth would a struck-off solicitor be visiting Olivier?’ asked Eastwood.
‘I have no idea, but there’s something dodgy going on. Firstly, Olivier lied about it and secondly the prison confirmed that Blaine had initially tried to book a visit after his own release from prison, in his original name, but he was on the prison’s blacklist. Four months later, he’s changed his name and has a new passport,’ said Ramouter.
‘And he’s booking visits and seeing Olivier,’ Henley concluded.
‘Olivier isn’t an idiot,’ said Eastwood. ‘He would have known that you would check the visits register and find out about Blaine.’
‘And that’s why we’re going back to see Olivier tomorrow,’ Henley said. ‘We’ve got three bodies lying in bits in a freezer down the road. I can’t have Olivier thinking that he can pull the strings in our investigation.’
‘This Blaine/McGrath geezer,’ said Stanford. ‘As part of his legal team, he would have known about the symbols that Olivier used. In fact, he would know everything.’
‘Exactly,’ Henley replied. She picked up a black marker and walked over to the whiteboard. She wrote the name Chance Blaine in the empty suspect box.