Chapter Twelve

It felt like a cross between a train crash and a rock festival.

‘Police. Move aside, please. Police. Make room.’

With her sharp elbows and her hard-edged copper’s voice, Rose forced her way through the crowd of students. There was a sense of dread here, she felt, real fear in some of the upturned faces – but there were rubberneckers, too, gawping, laughing and taking photos with their phones.

She’d seen it as soon as she’d turned into Radcliffe Square: a black silhouette on the roof of the building they called the Camera, perched at an awkward, ungainly angle, like a giant crow against the morning sky.

Brask had been her first thought – but if Brask was in danger it was Dmitry Rakić who was the threat, and Rakić hadn’t been anywhere near the university. She was sure of that, at least.

Then she’d thought of Olly Stevenage. He’d managed to make an enemy of Rakić, back in Katerina’s meadow, but for a guy like the Croatian gang leader the kid was surely small fry, an irritant, a mosquito bite – not worth going to any trouble for.

But the killer might be of a different mind. It was anyone’s guess how many people in Oxford Stevenage had managed to piss off. Maybe – not knowing who he was dealing with – he’d pushed his Trick or Treat Killer too far, too many times.

Rose reached the front of the crowd and squinted up at the unsettling shape. It was cloaked in black cloth; Rose noted with a rush of nausea that under the cloak its proportions were out of whack, the limbs misshapen, the pose unnatural, the angle of the head all wrong.

Whoever had beheaded Katerina Zrinski and flayed the skin from David Norfolk had done a real number on this poor bastard, she thought.

A paramedic balanced precariously on a roofer’s ladder, trying to make his way up the domed roof to where the cloaked body was fixed. He was a lean guy, bearded, with a climber’s build. In the grip of a cold, aching tension, Rose watched him fumble for a handhold. He was four storeys up, forty metres or so off the ground. One slip and he was history.

All around her the university security team were doing an amateurish job of trying to disperse the heaving crowd of students. But Rose was barely aware of the shouts, shoving and juvenile heckles. In her mind she was up there with the paramedic – with him, and with whoever was under that forbidding black cloth.

The paramedic was off the ladder now, inching his way up the Camera’s ridged dome. Rose tried to zero in on him, see what he was seeing, feel what he was feeling. You think they’re alive under there, don’t you? she thought. Or maybe you just hope they are. Because there’s always a chance, right? That’s why you do what you do. You know there’s always a chance. You haven’t lost hope.

Rose watched the man climb, and burned with something like admiration and something like envy. She couldn’t find any hope for the poor figure cloaked in black.

She glanced across to the foot of the ladder where the man’s colleagues were gathered anxiously by the open doors of a backed-up emergency ambulance. An approaching fire-engine siren skirled over the hubbub. The man on the roof stayed calm, moving inch by inch. Rose could see the paramedic’s mouth moving as he drew close to the cloaked figure: telling whoever was under there that things would be okay, that he was there to help.

Silence settled on the crowd as the paramedic steadied himself and made sure of his footing. The black cloak fluttered gently in the breeze. A camera clicked. Someone at Rose’s shoulder murmured something, maybe ‘Oh God’, maybe ‘Please, God’.

The paramedic extended his arm. Rose realized that she was holding her breath.

When the man, feeling beneath the cloak – for a pulse to check, for a hand to hold – uttered a loud exclamation, the crowd jerked, as one, like a startled animal. When the man yanked his hand back from the cloak Rose saw that it glimmered red with blood.

Someone in the crowd screamed; someone else swore. One of the paramedic’s colleagues started up the ladder. But Rose’s gaze was on the cloaked figure; she’d seen it sway at the man’s touch and now she watched in horror as its balance shifted, as it see-sawed on its base, as its centre of gravity lurched –

As it slipped. As it fell.

The paramedic grabbed and missed as the figure skidded down the domed roof, painting a gaudy stripe of blood across the copper. The crowd stirred, split, broke. A tumult of voices, a thunder of footsteps, screams as the body struck the guttering in a burst of dark-pink spray – a sudden, heart-stopping silence as the body bounced, looped into the air.

There was a panicked scramble as the crowd surged back. Spinning in free fall, the body dropped towards the Camera’s stone steps.

Only Rose moved forwards. Fat red spots spattered the steps. She was at the forefront of the crowd when with a sickening crunch of bone and tissue, the body hit the ground.

It barely bounced. It rolled a few inches, heavily, with a thick, liquid gulp.

It lay still – angled between steps, half-draped in blood-drenched black. The broken ends of red bones jutted out.

Rose let out a strangled noise: a sigh, a groan, a rattling cry of release.

Not a man, not a woman. A pig. A pig’s carcass, nicked from a slaughterhouse, bought from a butcher, whatever –

She closed her eyes, pressed trembling fingertips to the bridge of her nose. Not another murder. Not another victim.

When she opened her eyes all hell was breaking loose. She’d thought coppers could swear, but they had nothing on the rangy paramedic, who jumped down from the roofer’s ladder and spat a fearsome mouthful of abuse at the nearest gaggle of wide-eyed students. Fucking bastard student cunts think it’s a fucking joke … Rose felt bodies push past her, against her, jostling for a look at the shattered carcass in its pool of blood. The clicking of camera-phones sounded like the descent of a swarm of insects. There was laughter, breaking from the silence like water from a breached dam – the wild laughter of relief and embarrassment.

Fucking Halloween.

A part of Rose told her to clear the square, secure the scene, protect the evidence. There’d been a serious offence committed here; this was more than a prank, this was a grievous waste of police time. This was a crime scene. This was no place for stupid, sniggering, snap-happy students.

But another part of her told her to just get the hell out of there. She had a real crime to deal with.

This was the part she listened to.

As she elbowed her way back through the milling fringes of the crowd, Rose heard a voice she knew. American accents were ten-a-penny in Oxford – tourists, visiting academics, imported postgrads – but this one was distinctive: politely authoritative, ringingly earnest. She looked over. Brask was in conversation with a confused-looking PC and the bald-headed man she’d found him talking to on her first visit to All Souls. Rose moved closer.

‘– big feast, for students, very great, very expense.’ The bald man was agitated, seemingly on the verge of tears. ‘This pig, my pig, from my freezer. For the feast! Stolen, stolen, for –’

The young PC tried to interrupt: ‘Now, sir, you say –’

‘– for this joke,’ the man wailed and wrung his hands.

Brask broke into the conversation again: ‘Luka, it’s all right. The college will cover the costs. There’s been no serious harm done –’ He glanced up, saw Rose. Managed a polite, harried-looking smile. ‘Inspector! How are you?’ He motioned for her to join the mismatched little group.

The young constable touched his cap respectfully as she did so; the bald-headed man gave her a grim-faced nod.

‘Inspector Rose,’ said Brask with a gesture, ‘this is Luka, a cook in the All Souls kitchens.’

‘Yes – we met briefly. Pleased to meet you.’ The man’s handshake was solid and brief. ‘Now – is there a problem here?’

‘I don’t think so, ma’am,’ put in the constable. ‘The pig was apparently in the custody of this gentleman when it was stolen.’ He allowed himself a half-smile. ‘He’s a bit upset about the whole thing.’ Glanced over to the throng on the Camera steps. ‘Not very appetizing now.’

Luka began to speak – not impressed, it seemed, by the policeman’s flippant tone – but Rose cut him off.

‘I’m sorry about the inconvenience to you, Mr – ?’

‘Savić.’

‘– Mr Savić, and the college may be entitled to a payment through the criminal compensation system. I assure you we’ll be conducting a full inquiry into what happened here today.’ She turned from Luka to the PC, caught his eye and nodded. All yours, Constable.

As she started to move away, Brask touched her arm.

‘Luka,’ he said, ‘was the man who intervened the other day. When that animal Rakić and his thug were –’ Brask winced slightly at the memory – ‘were giving me a beating.’ He glanced at Luka. His expression was inscrutable. ‘I believe he saved my life.’

‘It was very brave of you,’ she said to Luka.

It was another rote response. She didn’t have time for this. That desolate field, that desolate thing nailed to a tree were waiting for her.

And if she didn’t get a move on, Phillips would be all over it. She realized with an odd sensation that this had moved beyond office politics. It felt more like betrayal – or theft. This case was hers. Katerina, David, St Catherine, Brask and all – it was hers.

With another nod to the PC, she was off.

To her irritation, Brask jogged after her.

She didn’t slow, didn’t turn her head. She knew what Brask wanted. He wanted an update, and she had nothing. Nothing that would make him feel better, anyway. Brask fell into step with her. Together they left the emptying square and turned into Brasenose Lane. A tough character to shake off, Professor Brask, Rose thought, once he takes hold. Katerina had found that out.

‘I was wondering,’ the professor said, ‘what progress you’ve made on – on the case. The St Catherine connection –’

‘Dead end, I’m afraid.’ She forced herself to be brusque. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to talk over the latest killing with Brask – the guy knew things. The similarities between Katerina’s killing and St Catherine’s execution had been interesting. And talking to Brask beat trading put-downs with Phillips. But there wasn’t enough time. Interviews had to be taken while the memories were fresh, evidence had to be collected and reports pored over. There was never enough time.

They reached Rose’s rain-spotted car. She gave Brask a handshake and a cordial goodbye – that was all. Climbed in and through the streaked window glass watched him walk away.

As she started the engine, she saw a silhouette stir at the edge of a dark-brick building across the street. A man’s dim profile poked from a hood. It was turned her way.

Someone watching.

On reflex she bolted from the car. She was fast, but by the time she crossed the street the silhouette had slipped away. She jogged over to the building without much hope. When she reached the corner there was no one there. No trace of anything or anyone.

Rose wasn’t surprised, but she sighed anyway.

She replayed the lines of the figure. She didn’t have more than a half-seen silhouette to go on, but there was something about his stance, his build, his demeanour … He’d looked a lot like Dmitry Rakić.