DI James was pacing – always a bad sign. Poole glanced around the office at the various members of the team and saw his own suppressed tension reflected in every face. They were knee-deep in bodies, without a clue as to why or who and they were all out of ideas.
If James was pacing, it meant trouble.
Gallan looked as though he was on the point of confessing to the murders himself, just to break the unease that was building in the room. Poole wanted to say something, crack a joke, ease the strain, but knew it would go down like a pair of lead knickers with his boss. She was yet to learn the difference between motivating and terrorising her team.
He wished she’d get on with it; he was due to see the bloody psychologist at eleven and wanted an opportunity to voice his objections to James before he was forced to go to an appointment he didn’t want, hadn’t asked for, but was compelled to attend. So what if his brother had died? It was no one’s business but Poole’s. The fact that his feckless addict brother had died by choking on his own vomit in a cell downstairs was… unfortunate… but it hadn’t affected Poole’s performance, or his ability to do the job, and he didn’t see why his mind had to be pawed over and poked at just to cover the boss’s ass. He suspected they were worried he would sue; he was Richard’s only relative and he had a right to. The stupidity of it was that, as far as Poole was concerned, Richard’s demise was a blessing – the end of a long and bitter life spent doing everything Richard could to passively end it. Richard had got what he wanted. Why would Poole sue anyone for that?
In quiet moments, when he thought about the wreckage that had been Richard’s life, he was more inclined to go and shake the hand of the officer who’d turned a blind eye that night than seek legal redress against him. Poole wondered what the psychologist would make of that? Probably write him off as a sociopath with a complete lack of empathy. He didn’t think he was, but sometimes the numbness, the inability to connect, and the preference for solitude made him wonder.
James’s steady, repetitive trudging across the office had been interrupted by an urgent call. The whole team seemed to be holding a collective breath as she listened and they watched her reactions play across her face as they waited for the ball to drop and their next move to be determined.
When it finally did drop, she whacked it so far out of the park Poole thought it might have landed somewhere on the dark side of the moon. The situation had just become much, much worse than they could ever have imagined.
A woman. Not quietly suffocated while she slept, like Gordon Henderson. Not allowed the dignity or even the discretion of a stroke or heart attack like Bob Silver. Not allowed the opportunity to choose her way out like Philip Moss had. No. This was a murder that had been so savage and angry it was clear the killer had led them into a false sense of certainty regarding his methods.
His?
Poole had been convinced they were looking for a woman until this.
She had been gagged, beaten over the head with something blunt, tied to a dining chair, and her throat had been cut. Not cleanly, not swiftly, but with the jagged blade of a breadknife, which lay next to a paring knife. Both were mired with congealing blood.
Her severed tongue had been placed on the table, and a grisly lump of that had already started to turn and attract flies.
She had bled out slowly, no dramatic spurts or arcs of blood for anyone to analyse, just a slow, seeping pool of red that told them she had felt every moment of her impending death with agonising terror.
Her eyes, two gristly lumps of gore, sat on the table next to the tongue. Lifeless, yet staring at the severed lump as if in accusation of what it might have said.
In all his years Poole had rarely seen anything more stomach-churning. He hadn’t eaten breakfast but wished he had. The bile that churned and roiled in his gut like bitter oil threatened to fill his mouth at any second and he’d rather have thrown up something substantial than retch on nothing at all. Kelsoe already had; for all her bravado, she had puked like a dog, heaving her breakfast into the drain outside as if it was going to be her last solid meal for the rest of her life. The smirk on the face of the uniformed officer who had maintained the crime scene hadn’t gone unnoticed by Poole. Did anyone like Kelsoe?
A neighbour had called the police, concerned by the unholy howling of a dog, a dog in a house that had never contained a dog. They might have ignored it had the house not been connected to a series of murders. Howling dogs weren’t illegal: they were annoying, inconvenient and a matter for others. But when a dog howled where there should be no dog… well, there had to be a reason.
While the SOCOs did their thing inside, he’d gone out into the garden, briefly patted Kelsoe on her trembling shoulder and stared at the mist rolling up the small garden. He took a breath of the damp morning air and turned back to the house.
DI James was perusing the scene in the kitchen with admirable restraint; not even a flicker of green tinged her skin or altered her equilibrium. She turned to Poole as he stepped back through the door in a fresh pair of shoe covers to match his paper suit. ‘What’s this?’ she said, pointing to the eyeballs and the tongue on the table. ‘See no evil, speak no evil?’
Poole shrugged. ‘Possibly. It does seem somewhat symbolic. If it is the same killer, he’s definitely more angry with the women than the men.’
James raised her eyebrows. ‘He?’
‘Is it likely that a woman would be quite so… gratuitous?’
James stepped away from the table and gave him a wry look. ‘Don’t underestimate just how brutal women can be. Given that this woman has just been slaughtered in a very deliberate, non-sexual way, this is all starting to look very much like revenge. Female murderers are either motivated by revenge or defence, and revenge in this case might well be a dish best served by a very cold, very damaged individual. Let’s not speculate too much on gender unless it indicates who the hell we should be looking for.’ She pointed to the dead woman with her lolling, brutalised head. ‘I very much suggest we focus on finding Estelle Hall, and fast, because either she’s going to kill again, or is going to get killed – either way, I want it stopped.’
Poole nodded, trying to equate his impression of an ageing woman of refinement with the capacity for butchery and murder. ‘We’ve still got Connie in custody. That woman knows something she’s not letting on, but we can’t hold her much longer – especially with this.’ He waved a hand at Connie’s dead and permanently silenced daughter. ‘I wonder if she’ll talk now it’s arrived so close to home? Do you really think Estelle Hall did this?’ he said, looking away from the dead woman and wishing there was such a thing as eye bleach. He was sure this particular murder scene was going to be etched into his mind for a very long time.
DI James frowned, still staring at the body. ‘Either her or Lyle. I’m inclined to say it’s not Lyle. I watched the interview tapes again and there’s no motive. Maura Lyle is either a bad penny, or a catalyst – I can’t decide which. Maybe she’s just a shit magnet. As for Hall, until we locate her, yes, she’s our only logical suspect, unless one of you lot comes up with something more concrete.’
Poole didn’t even want to speculate on why he found her comment about Maura so offensive. Given the circumstances, he pushed the reaction to one side and set his face into what he hoped was a neutral expression. ‘What do you want us to do about Lyle? We’ll have to interview her again.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, I don’t know. Grill her like a kipper and sodding well eliminate her. I’m sick of the sound of her name – if she can’t help us, and she isn’t responsible for this, rule her out and get her out from under the feet of this investigation!’
Poole wasn’t sure how he was supposed to do that given that Maura wasn’t answering her phone and no one had been at home when he’d sent a DC out to check on her. Whatever she had or had not done, Maura was firmly entrenched at the centre of this carnage whether any of them liked it or not. He picked up the evidence bag that contained the dead woman’s mobile phone.
The last number Cheryl had dialled before she’d been so brutally and grotesquely murdered had been Maura Lyle’s.
‘Should we bag the bird?’ It was Kelsoe.
‘Eh?’ Poole said, pulling his attention away from the phone. ‘What bird?’
‘The maggoty one out the back by the drain. Looks like a dead magpie. Coincidence or evidence?’
He pondered it for a moment. ‘Maybe we should…’ He’d not made any connection before, but he’d been finding feathers. The first had been on the day he’d first gone to the Grange, a single, green-black feather wedged under his windscreen wiper when he’d returned to the car. He’d found it odd but not registered any real interest. He scoured his mind for memories; there had been more feathers. Two more had been sitting in a pen pot on the desk underneath the dangling body of Dr Moss. The same type. Long, dark and frankly creepy when he thought about it. There had been something in the report about Elizabeth Moss too; they’d found feathers in her hair. There had been three if he remembered rightly and they’d been identified as magpie tail feathers.
He turned to Kelsoe. ‘Odd question, I know, but did anyone comment on the presence of feathers when Gordon Henderson was killed?’
Kelsoe shrugged. ‘Not that I know of, but I can ask the team to look through the reports. Why?’
Poole knit his brow. ‘I’m not sure at the moment, but ask them anyway. Might be important, might not.’
He looked at Kelsoe’s puzzled expression. He was puzzled too. All that was going through his mind was the old rhyme. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy. Five for silver… shit! Five for Silver.
‘While you’re at it, check for any mention of feathers at any of the scenes.’
Gallan pulled a face and jotted it down. The word “feathers” followed by a large question mark loomed large on the page.
Poole was still repeating the rhyme in his head. Five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told…
At 10.30 he left the scene to Kelsoe with instructions to make sure the dead bird was bagged and tagged for forensics. His appointment with the psychologist was looming and he hadn’t had time to wriggle out of it thanks to the individual hellbent on creating carnage on his patch. As he mooched to his car, reluctance and resentment weighting his steps, he wondered how sane the doctor would think him if he told her he’d rather spend time staring at severed body parts than an hour in her office picking over his feelings about his brother and trying to convince her Richard’s death hadn’t affected him or his loyalty to his job. In reality he’d barely known his brother. They had both grown up in a variety of foster homes, none of which had given either of them the firm base for a secure future. Richard had started abusing drugs and alcohol, and breaking the law to get hold of them, almost as soon as his age had hit double figures. Poole had been the lucky one – after a bad start he’d found decent foster parents, a nice couple with a nice home. They had doted on him until their quiet and peaceful deaths within a few months of each other five years ago. His family home had been full of chintz and cheer, photographs of him littering the lounge like little stamps of pride on his foster parents’ part. Richard’s childhood trauma had travelled with him in the form of a single dirty backpack filled with worn-out clothes and nothing personal, until he’d met Maura and she’d given him some sense of self and pride. She might have been able to take the man out of the shit, but she’d certainly failed to take the shit out of the man.
The only photos of his brother that Poole had access to were in the mugshot files at the station. The man had a past he’d failed to reveal to Maura; she just knew him as a selfish, philandering drunk. Poole doubted she had any idea what his brother had really been like. When Richard had died and Poole had been forced to deal with his “estate”, he’d discovered that his brother’s home after Maura had thrown him out had consisted of one nicotine-stained room littered with empty cans and full ashtrays, situated in a cheap hostel on the edge of town. It had taken ten minutes with a bin bag to deal with his effects and Poole had walked away with nothing because there was nothing worth keeping. The packet of personal belongings that had come to him via the custody suite still sat in his desk unopened and probably always would. Despite what Dr Blake, the psychologist, might have to say, Poole’s feelings about his brother were as dead and buried as Richard was.
What he would have liked to talk about, if he could muster any truck for the need to analyse everything, was why he fancied the pants off Maura Lyle and why that might get in the way of his job. If that little snippet ever got out he didn’t know who would castrate him first – DI James or DC Kelsoe. Either one of them would be champing at the bit to convince him of the error of his ways, James because she would think he was a dick, Kelsoe because rumour had it she fancied him herself. Perish the thought! Even Gallan would find the thought that his sergeant fancied a suspect funny.
Poole wasn’t finding it funny at all.