Even for officers in SCU, messages arriving before six in the morning were so rare that they tended to mean bad news. Heck wasn’t aware what time it was when the mobile, which he always left on his bedside cabinet at night, began bleeping in the darkness. Before his groping hand managed to locate the offending article, he focused across the room on the digital clock, whose glowing numerals read 5.58 a.m.
He put the phone to his ear, at the same time yanking the pull-cord on the bedside lamp. ‘Yeah, Heckenburg?’
‘Heck!’ It was Shawna McCluskey. ‘Are you online?’
‘I’m in bloody bed. What’s going on?’
‘You’d better get online quickly.’
Heck cradled the phone under his chin as he blundered down the darkened passage to the small, cold room he used as his office.
When he got online, he found that Gemma had just circulated an MPEG.
‘That’s crime scene footage … shot about an hour ago by Merseyside Police,’ Shawna said.
Heck’s matted hair stiffened as he gazed at the pixellating image.
‘Well?’ she asked. ‘What do you think?’
‘What do I think?’ he said. ‘I think someone’s just cancelled the Easter break.’
Bad as it had appeared on film, the crime scene was even more terrible in reality.
Though most of the team was able to cut short their weekend break early, the Bank Holiday traffic was flowing thickly by mid-morning, so it had taken them several hours to flog their way up the M1 and M6 motorways, and then join the M62, where it ran west from Greater Manchester into Liverpool. The weather was fine, remarkably sunny for an early day in April, so that made the going all the heavier.
The slagheap in question, a great barren hummock of spoil-land on the north side of the motorway, had once been part of the Sutton Manor colliery complex, the rest of which was now long vanished. It stood maybe fifty metres at its apex, so its upper ridge was visible from the M62 even though Merseyside Police had managed to screen off its lower section with tall curtains of canvas and steel, which they’d borrowed from a festival staging company and had deployed along the motorway’s hard shoulder, having first closed that stretch of the nearside lane and turned it into a temporary car park. Gemma’s team left their vehicles here because in this first instance they themselves were not permitted access to the slagheap. An unmade road led onto it from the rear, but for the time being that, and much else of the open land on the other side, had been closed off for finger-tip inspection by Merseyside crime scene examiners.
‘Good God!’ Mike Garrickson said, peering up the motorway embankment. ‘Good God in heaven!’
‘Well he isn’t down here, I’ll tell you that, boss,’ Gary Quinnell replied in a daze. ‘Not today.’
‘They wouldn’t like that in Chapel, Gaz,’ Shawna McCluskey replied.
The big Welshman made no further response. His mouth had sagged open. Heck understood why. For everything they’d experienced thus far in this specialist murder squad, none of them had ever seen anything like this. In fact, it was likely that no one had seen anything like this for several centuries or more.
‘Someone tell me this isn’t real,’ Charlie Finnegan said.
‘This is the most real Good Friday you’re ever likely to experience,’ Garrickson replied.
Mid-way up the slagheap slope, three heavy crosses had been set up in a row. They had been constructed from new, freshly-sawn timber, and were all roughly the same size: their uprights stood to about eight feet; their crossbars, which had been bolted into squared-off grooves cut specifically to accommodate them, spanned about six feet each. At first glance, the symmetry of the display was amazing, even down to the naked bodies spread-eagled on each frame. Those to left and right were white males of as yet undetermined age, but in rank-poor physical condition – spindly, undernourished, covered with old scars and jailhouse ink. Their legs were mottled purple by post-mortem bruising, their lifeless faces fixed in contortions of agony. The one in the centre was a white female; she was in a slightly better state – if it was possible to use those terms to describe someone who had died by crucifixion. Her fair hair hung down over her face in a stringy mat, covering it, but her body was hourglass shaped, only wrinkled here and there, which suggested she’d been no more than thirty years old. She was white as porcelain, though, like the others, her lower limbs were tinged purple where the blood had settled after death.
The only movement came from the early-season flies crawling on the bodies, and the two Merseyside medical staff in Tyvek coveralls, taking measurements and writing on clipboards. Further out, beyond the inner cordon of tape, officers from the Merseyside photography unit were packing up their gear.
There were ongoing gasps as more SCU arrived, crowding into the narrow space behind the screens. It occurred to Heck that Claire would turn up at any moment. She’d presumably set off at roughly the same time as all the rest, but she’d be driving her own car and was unlikely to be as gung-ho about getting here as the others. It was tempting to go around to the other side and wait for her, to advise her to gird herself for what she was about to see, but there was no time. Heck was already assessing the scene, trying to bring a professional eye to bear, and immediately noticing oddities.
Whoever the three victims were, they had been transfixed to their crosses in the traditional way, by nails or spikes. No other bindings were visible – no ropes, no chains. But there was a variation from the norm – at least the norm as it appeared in Church artwork. The victims’ hands were all hidden from sight, because they had been nailed to the back of the crossbar, the steel driven in from behind. Likewise, they had not been nailed through the front of the feet, but through the ankles, one to either side of the upright. So four nails had been used per victim, instead of three. Heck wondered if this could be a mistake, though so far the killer had been very meticulous. If he had consciously altered the method that everyone else believed had been used when Christ had been crucified that first Good Friday two millennia ago, then something told Heck that everyone else was wrong.
‘When in Rome,’ he said under his breath, ‘do as the Romans do …’
Quinnell glanced around at him. ‘What’s that?’
Heck turned to Gemma. ‘Ma’am, this guy knows what he’s doing … to the absolute letter.’
‘Gotta be more than one guy,’ Shawna said. ‘To pull off something like this.’
Heck nodded. ‘I thought that when I saw the shots from Yorkshire – there were two implements used to break open that chimney breast; a pick and a hammer. That meant two assailants. Now I think there are more even than that. Maybe more than three.’
‘More than three?’ Shawna looked astonished.
‘This was put on as a show for motorway users on Good Friday morning. Must have been erected during the hours of darkness last night, that’s what … eleven hours? Knock a couple off either side to allow for twilight. Say seven hours of pitch-darkness. Not long enough for anything less than a whole gang of them.’
Quinnell turned to Gemma. ‘What do you think, ma’am?’
‘I think we need more men,’ she said, white-faced. ‘A lot more.’