10

 

He took his kit out of the boot and handed hers to Jane, before closing it and heading for the entrance to the small house. That morning, the sun had decided to leave its cloud cover, and even though it was only ten, the day was already starting to heat up.

Eric puffed, he’d rather take his jacket off. ‘Are you sure this is the right address?’ he asked, turning to look at his colleague. It was too calm. Where were the other cars?

She replied with a nod. That was when he saw out of the corner of his eye a uniformed officer coming out from the garden.

‘Detective,’ Police Constable Mills called him. ‘We’re all on the other side. The crime scene is in the garage.’

‘All right, lead the way.’

The man’s face was distraught. ‘I’d better warn you it’s not a pretty sight.’

They followed him across the lawn. Once they’d passed the row of hedges, Eric could finally see the patrol cars, all their lights still on and flashing, and the coroner’s van parked along the pavement. As they rounded a corner, they found themselves in front of a garage, its up-and-over door half-open. He could only see the legs of the people inside.

At that very moment, Miriam came out, white as a sheet. She started running towards the gate at the end of the driveway. She briefly glanced at them, but didn’t stop.

‘What happened?’ Jane had turned to look at her, and almost ran into Eric.

‘No idea.’

Once she reached the street, Miriam bent double and vomited.

‘I’ll come in a moment,’ Eric said, alarmed. ‘You go ahead.’ And he rushed to the other woman.

She was steadying herself with one hand on the back of her car and, heaving, tried to vomit again, but nothing came out but gastric juice.

‘Hey, Miriam, is everything all right?’ Eric had reached her and was handing her a paper tissue. He’d never seen her get sick at a crime scene before.

‘Better than the bloke in there, that’s for sure,’ she replied, pursing her lips. She took the tissue and wiped her mouth.

Eric sighed. The day was off to a brilliant start.

‘I really feel like shit …’ she commented in a subdued tone. She seemed angry with herself for her reaction. Or perhaps she was feeling bad about something else?

‘What happened to you last night?’

Miriam rolled her eyes and smoothed her hair. She didn’t seem in the mood to make conversation. ‘I had something to do.’

‘How is that? Did it come to your mind in the middle of the party?’ He wasn’t mad at her for having abandoned him at the pub the night before, after insisting on taking him. He was used to much worse. Nevertheless he was angry, but not with her.

‘Hmm … Jonathan called.’ She waved her hand as if she wanted that vague explanation to be the end of it.

‘Jonathan called?’ he asked in an inquisitive tone. ‘Lennox told me you checked what time it was and then you left. He didn’t mention any phone call.’

‘What’s this?’ she exclaimed, irritated. ‘An interrogation?’

Eric did nothing but look at her without saying a word. He was waiting for an answer, and she knew.

‘He’d called me five minutes earlier, and I’d told him to go fuck off … then I changed my mind, okay?’

‘And how did it go?’ Who knew why, every time they talked about that chap, she cut him short? At this point, he was curious.

‘Ah, forget about it.’ She made a grimace of denial. She wouldn’t say more. ‘I’m going to go ask the neighbours some questions. Have fun in there.’ And she walked away.

Eric felt there was something she was hiding from him. She was nervous, worried. Anyway, as long as she refused to talk to him, he couldn’t help her.

With reluctance, he followed the driveway back to the garage. In order to step in, he had to push his kit inside and bent over to crawl beneath the up-and-over door.

What he saw, as soon as he straightened up, left him petrified.

For a few brief moments, his mind recalled from the depth of his memory horrible images from the past, which superimposed on what was now before his eyes. He released the air he’d held in his lungs.

‘Eric,’ Dawson greeted him. He was half-kneeling in front of the armrest, belonging to a chair on which the victim’s hand was lying, or what was left of that hand, at least.

A flash hit straight in his eyes, shocking him out of the stupor he’d slipped into. He blinked forcefully, and when he could see again, he realised Adele was there, taking pictures of the corpse’s head. The latter was covered with blood and showed a few swellings. There was a bullet hole in its back. The body had been bound at the wrists and ankles, whilst another rope wrapped around the chest, securing it to the backrest and preventing it from falling forward. Jane, instead, was collecting the prints from the fingers spread out across the floor one by one with a portable device.

‘The house and the car are in the name of a Tom Ridley, manager of an art gallery in the West End.’ Mills was talking placidly, his gaze pointed at the wall. ‘Sixty-two, a widower, no children. We’re trying to track down a relative for the identification, unless something else comes out from the fingerprints.’

Eric couldn’t stop staring at the corpse; it was like a magnet. ‘What else do we know about this Ridley?’ He was hyperventilating. He needed to calm down now. ‘Any criminal record?’

The officer shook his head. ‘Clean record. Not even a parking ticket. Immaculate.’

‘You said he managed an art gallery,’ Jane cut in; she’d completed her thankless task and was now loading the data into their server so that they could be forwarded to IDENT1. ‘Perhaps he had something valuable in the house or here in the garage.’ She turned to the dusty but empty shelving. ‘Did you see any signs of robbery in the house?’

‘Nothing apparent.’

‘A robbery gone quite bad,’ Dr Dawson commented.

Hearing those words, Eric was overcome by a wave of nausea. No, it couldn’t be true.

Another flash. Adele had stepped in front of him and had bent down to photograph the hands.

‘They amputated his fingers one by one with one clean blow. Perhaps they used this.’ The medical examiner pointed at a small bloody cleaver lying on the floor. ‘Given the amount of blood, I’d say he was still alive while they were torturing him. And then …’ He rose to his feet and, with his latex-gloved hands, turned the victim’s head. ‘They hit him repeatedly in the head with a blunt instrument.’ He examined closely one of the wounds on the temple, then used a pair of tweezers to extract some wood fibre, which he put into a little transparent plastic bag.

‘There are medium-velocity blood spatters in almost every direction,’ Jane said. ‘He was struck many times, with different angles, and he just kept on bleeding.’

Adele took a picture of the floor, where her colleague was pointing. As she backed off, she bumped Eric’s arm and for a brief moment, their gazes met. He opened his mouth to say something, although he hadn’t quite any idea what, but she withdrew before he had a chance.

‘Finally, they gave him the coup de grâce in the head,’ Dawson concluded. ‘As for the bullet, you’ll have to wait for the autopsy, though.’

Eric nodded slightly, still dazed. Deep in his heart, he already knew what that weapon was. That sense of familiarity he’d felt the day before during the meeting now had an explanation. The images of the three bodies sprang up before him, one after the other, followed by the frightened eyes of a little girl.

 

 

From Mina’s blog

 

This time, it was harder. When you pull a trigger, and the other person dies, it almost seems like a game. You deceive yourself that it’s so, to avoid thinking you’re taking a life. The second time, it’d been even fun. The hunt, the chase. But Ridley’s death took a long time, too long. All that blood coming out, pumped by his heart that persisted in beating.

At first, he hadn’t understood what was happening. He believed he was being robbed. He stayed calm. He’d told me to take whatever I wanted. He didn’t think I could be something other than a simple thief. He hadn’t realised I was there for him.

It was after I tied him to the chair that he started to be scared. I could almost smell his fear. Then he saw the blade and heard my name, and he understood what was in store for him. He wasn’t coming out of this alive, not after he knew my identity. But it wouldn’t be over for a long time yet.

His calm vanished in an instant. The monster had turned into a whining child. He didn’t have even an ounce of the dignity my father had shown in the same situation. He would have sold his own children in the blink of an eye to save himself, if he’d had any. He implored me, even though he knew it was no use.

He passed out with every amputation. I shook him back awake so that he would witness the next one.

By the time I was done with his hands, he’d become prey to hysteria. He kept screaming like he was possessed, even though I yelled at him to stop, otherwise I would make it last even longer. But he wasn’t listening to me anymore. So I grabbed one of the logs stacked against the wall and I started hitting him in the head. A bright red stained the floor, the walls, my clothes. I felt the viscous liquid squirt onto my face. He begged me to kill him once for all, but I kept going, over and over again, until all my strength failed me. He was motionless, but his blood kept pouring, along with brain matter.

All at once, his entire body was seized by convulsions.

‘Stop it! Stop it!’ I shouted at him as if he could hear me, as if he could obey me.

A powerful nausea grabbed my stomach; I was afraid I could vomit any moment. So I pulled out the gun, and I shot. And everything stopped.