‘Everything all right?’ Katrin asked, after Tim had walked through the door without shouting a greeting. He turned straight into the living-room and slumped down on the sofa – she heard the thump as it shifted a little and hit the wall. She emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel. Tim was sprawled on the sofa, his eyes closed.
‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?’
‘I’m not ill. I’ve just had a bloody awful day.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Among other things, a woman’s body’s been found in the Fossdyke Canal.’
‘That’s not your problem, is it? It’s on the North Lincs patch, surely?’
‘It is, but of course we’re all expected to co-operate. If co-operate’s the right word for how that prat Michael Robinson behaves.’
‘Oh, I understand what’s got to you now. You don’t like him, do you?’
‘Do you?’
‘Not especially. I don’t dislike him as much as you do.’
‘No, women don’t seem to be able to see through him. He had Juliet eating out of his hand today.’ Katrin let out a shout of laughter.
‘Oh, really, Tim, is that what’s at the bottom of it? Juliet wasn’t giving you her undivided attention for a change?’
‘You know damn well that Juliet’s been able to spare me little energy since she got the DS’s job. However, Thornton told her to drop everything this afternoon so that she could help Robinson draft a press release. It seems he’s not up to it himself. Thornton was all over him – even let him use his office while Juliet was working with him.’
‘Meaning Superintendent Thornton can’t see through Michael, either?’
‘So it would seem. He was almost fawning on the guy. The boot was on the other foot when it came to me. I just got a bollocking for not making any progress with the farm vehicle thefts. It seems that some smart Alec in the Essex force has offered to help out. Thornton’s given me another couple of weeks to get somewhere and if I can’t he’s going to draft this character in to replace me on the case.’
The smile immediately faded from Katrin’s face. She knew how worried Tim was about the stolen vehicles and how much effort he’d put in to trying to solve the case. It had already cost him many late evenings at work and an even larger number of sleepless nights.
‘That is unfair.’
‘Well, as we both know, life isn’t fair. Let’s have a drink. Gin and tonic?’
‘I’ll fetch them in a minute. First, tell me a bit more about the murder victim. Do you think she was local?’
‘No one knows yet. For one thing, she’s headless; for another, there are virtually no other clues to her identity. Her clothes were not distinctive. There was no handbag and she had no means of identification on her. And they haven’t been able to find the head yet. We’ll probably only have fingerprints to identify her, unless we already have her DNA on record. That’ll be difficult if she doesn’t have a record and no one reports her missing.’
‘What do you mean, “they haven’t been able to find the head”? What happened to her head?’
‘I don’t know what happened to it, but it certainly wasn’t attached to the body. It had been hacked off, quite crudely, apparently. It could still be in the dyke. They’re sending frogmen to search for it.’
‘How strange…’
‘You can say that again. It’s the first murder case I’ve been involved in where the victim didn’t have a head.’
‘Of course that’s strange, but it isn’t what I meant. When I went in to the college today…’
‘I’m sorry, love, I forgot all about your tutorial. How did it go?’
Katrin mainly studied for her criminology course online, via distance learning facilities, but occasionally she met other students from South Lincolnshire for a face-to-face tutorial. They met at the WEA college in Holbeach.
‘Fine. I really enjoyed it. But what was strange was that we were discussing serial killers and someone mentioned the Burnley Knifeman. Do you remember the case?’
‘Only vaguely. Remind me about it.’
‘His name was Stephen Jenkins. He was a student at Burnley College – a bit of an eternal student, actually. I can’t remember his exact age, but I think he was over thirty. He’d been a young tearaway – he was sent to a youth offenders’ centre before he’d officially left school. A dead-end kid, but then his mum married a local businessman with plenty of money. The businessman set Jenkins up in a flat with an allowance, on condition that he either got a job or continued his education. Jenkins had no intention of working, so he kept on enrolling for different courses at the college. I don’t know if he ever qualified for anything, but I don’t suppose his stepfather cared. He just wanted to keep Jenkins out of his hair.’
‘It’s coming back to me now. How long ago was it?’
‘When the first body was found? About six years ago. I can look it up if you’re interested. He killed at least three people altogether. They were all dumped in the canal. All stabbed. The first two were local prostitutes who led such chaotic lives that they probably wouldn’t have been missed. The third victim was a schoolgirl. The police theory was that either Jenkins thought she was a prostitute, too, and panicked when he realised she wasn’t, or that he sexually assaulted her and then killed her to shut her up. Either way, he must have had to get rid of her body in a hurry, because she wasn’t decapitated like the others. Her body was the first of the three to be found, even though the evidence shows pretty conclusively that she was the last one to be killed. Police dragged the canal, then, and that’s when they found the two headless prostitutes’ bodies, weighted with stones and dropped in the canal in a very remote spot. As I said, they might never have been discovered if Jenkins hadn’t killed the schoolgirl and thrown her into a shallow part of the canal, almost in the town centre. She wasn’t weighted down and she didn’t sink.’
‘How did they catch Jenkins?’
‘Someone had seen him hanging around the canal – he was one of those killers that can’t resist going back to the scene. The police searched his flat and found the knife, which still had on it traces of the blood of both the schoolgirl – I think her name was Tara something – and one of the prostitutes. And he’d been put in the young offenders’ prison for knife crimes. He didn’t even try to protest his innocence. Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that we should have been talking about him today, just when you were finding out about someone else who’d been decapitated?’
‘I don’t like coincidences,’ said Tim, ‘but I’m not sure that this qualifies as one. I hope not, anyway. If Michael Robinson finds other bodies in the Fossdyke, I may have to eat my words.’
‘Well, it is interesting – and at least you’ve perked up a bit now.’
‘I’ll perk up even more if we have that gin and tonic. Do you want me to fix it?’
‘No, I’ll do it. You’ll put too much gin in it. I always feel as if my throat’s been cut when you make it.’