Phil stepped over the threshold, on to the boat. Focused. Processed. Assessed the situation.
A mess. A dead body in the middle of it. But more than that.
Before he went any further, he spoke to one of the two anoraked women standing on the jetty. Both of them looked drained. ‘Which one of you found the body?’
They looked at each other. One wanted to speak more than the other. ‘DC Pam Chapman,’ she said. ‘We both did.’
‘Has he got a name?’
‘Scott Sheriff,’ she replied. ‘He was on the list of local violent sex offenders. We were checking him out.’
‘I’ll bet he’ll be the last call you make today.’
She smiled slightly.
Phil thanked her and went inside, crossing to Jo Howe, the FSI team leader. ‘What have we got, then?’
‘White male, short, stocky, bit paunchy. Looks like an attack.’ She pointed to the body. ‘Or a sex game that went wrong. Look.’
Phil looked. The man’s jeans and underwear were down round his ankles. A leather belt was pulled tight round his neck. It looked like he had been attacked, half his face resembling raw mince. The eye that wasn’t swollen shut was bulging, face turning purple. His fingers were at his neck.
‘Leave the body for Esme,’ said Phil. ‘See what she makes of it. What about the rest of the place, what have you got?’
‘Well,’ said Jo, ‘looks like he lived alone. And looks like he let his attacker in. No sign of a forced entry. The area of struggle was here’ – she indicated the main living area – ‘nothing on the kitchen, bathroom, anywhere else. Localised.’
‘That should help,’ said Phil. He thanked her, turned to the shelves. Scanned the book spines. Mostly non-fiction. True crime. Life stories of famous serial killers. A couple of encyclopedias, a dictionary. Wanted to better himself, he thought. Then looked at the serial killer books again. Maybe not better himself. But he might have had an ambition for something.
He scanned further, gently removing tattered magazines with his gloved fingers. Extreme bondage. Mainly gay. Looked well read. He went back up to the top of the shelf, picked off a serial killer book at random. It was about Ted Bundy. The spine was heavily creased. He allowed it to open naturally. He looked at the page. It was heavily annotated. Notes in the margins, passages underlined. The section dealt with Bundy stalking and selecting victims. The notes questioned his techniques, offering variations, suggesting improvements. One comment said quite simply: More rope. Bigger KNIFE. The last word underlined so heavily the pen had gone through the paper.
Phil put the book back, took down another one. The same thing. He got the picture. Felt a prickling on the back of his scalp.
He looked round the room again. Something caught his eye. A doll’s house, lying on its side, furniture spilled out. Curious, he knelt, examined it. It was old, well-used, made of cheap, heavy plastic. It had been cleaned up, the felt-tip pen marks scrubbed away, the dirt erased, but it would never look good again. The furniture was in a similar condition.
Then he saw the doll.
Lying beside the man’s head, blonde, smiling. It looked familiar. Or the clothes looked familiar. He had seen someone wearing something similar recently… He placed it. It looked like Glenn McGowan. Or rather Amanda. In the DVDs, in the flesh.
The prickling disappeared. He felt a fizzing inside him. He was on to something. He pushed the doll’s house back with a gloved finger, looked underneath. There were two other dolls there. Different to the first one. One was a male doll with its legs cut off. The other was similar to the first, female, blonde, but this one looked like it had been stabbed repeatedly. Frenziedly.
He replaced the house, stood up. Thought. Something jarred about those two dolls. Something very specific. He closed his eyes. It was fairly recent…
He opened them again, feeling like he had just had an electric shock. He took out his phone, called Sperring. Waited for the man to answer.
‘Phil Brennan,’ he said. ‘Listen. That double murder in Edgbaston you’re working. Tell me about it.’
‘What d’you want to know?’ Sperring couldn’t have sounded more reluctant if he’d had his tongue removed.
‘Victims. Details. What they looked like, what they had done to them, that kind of thing.’
A sigh. ‘Keith Burkiss. Male. Mid forties. Lost both legs to diabetes, had stage four cancer —’
‘What did you say?’
‘Stage four cancer.’
‘The bit before. Lost both legs to diabetes?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How was he killed?’
‘Smothered with a pillow, it looked like.’
‘And the other one?’
‘His wife. Well, estranged wife. Kelly Burkiss. She was a right mess.’
‘Was she cut?’
‘Yeah. Loads of times. Whoever did it didn’t like her.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What’s this about?’
‘Tell you when I see you.’ He hung up. Looked back at the dolls. Then round at the room again. ‘Have the cupboards been gone through?’ he asked Jo Howe.
‘Not yet,’ she said.
‘Fine.’ He crossed to a small chest of drawers placed up against one wall. Began pulling them out in order. The top two contained clothes, but the ones nearer the bottom didn’t. Restraints. Dildos. Big black ones. Whips. Nothing wrong with that, thought Phil, not in and of itself. And not proof of anything. He pulled open the next drawer. Smiled. A knife.
‘A big knife,’ he said aloud. ‘Bigger than Ted Bundy’s.’
He knew better than to touch it. He tried another drawer. His smile got wider. A black wig and moustache. Identical to the ones in the video.
‘Gotcha,’ said Phil.
There was one more thing he had to check. He crossed to the body, knelt beside it. Pulled back its right sleeve.
‘Careful,’ said Jo Howe. ‘Leave that for Esme.’
‘Oh I’m being careful, don’t you worry,’ said Phil. He peeled back the sleeve a little more. And there it was. A double helix tattoo.
He let the sleeve drop back into place, stood up. Or as much as the cramped interior would allow him to.
‘I think we’ve got our man,’ he said. Then looked round the room again, taking everything in one more time. The books, the doll’s house, the wig, the knife… Perfect.
Or at least that’s what someone wants us to think…