Cold as Ice (Willis/Carter #2)(78)

‘Could be,’ answered Robbo. ‘Every body is different and some organs will fail before others. When they can’t last any longer he finishes them off. He chooses the time for them to die.’

‘Do we have a DNA sample of Hawk from Pauline Murphy’s body?’

‘Yes we think we do. He left semen on Pauline Murphy’s body but he’s not a match for anyone in our system.’

‘All these women went to colleges within the North London college umbrella,’ said Bowie. ‘But we can’t bring in every male attending and working in the North London college network.’

‘I’ve worked out the dates for these missing women. They don’t just overlap; he doesn’t just replace, he keeps them together. They all cross over. Right now Danielle won’t be alone.’ He showed Bowie the last woman on the list of three.

‘Top photo is of Jenny Smith. A single parent with one child. She was attending a computer course at London Metropolitan University while staying in bed and breakfast accommodation. She left a little girl with friends overnight and failed to come in the morning to collect her. That was two years ago and she hasn’t been seen since.’

‘Eighteen months mean she would have crossed over with Pauline Murphy. Why haven’t we found her remains? He’s been leaving the others where they will be found.’

‘That’s a thing he’s grown into. Maybe that’s why he did it – because we never found her body. He wants attention. He wants recognition. What’s the point in going to all this attention to detail if no one knows about it?’

‘Yes, you could be right. Or maybe she hasn’t been killed yet.’

‘He gives a piece of jewellery to those he kills, doesn’t he?’ Bowie picked up the chain and turned it over in his hand.

‘Yes, but we don’t know what makes him choose a particular piece of jewellery to give to the women. We just know that it must be when he has decided to kill them. The chain around Emily Styles’ neck was enmeshed in her hair, caught at the back of her head where the clasp had become entangled with her hair and torn some out by the roots. The hair was torn from living flesh not dead. So he goes through a ceremony before death: mask of make-up, jewellery. He arranges them for death. I looked back through her file and Jenny Smith always wore her grandmother’s antique engagement ring. We have a photo of it.’ Robbo scrolled down the images on his laptop and stopped at the photo of the ring and then he opened his hand and placed the ring on the desk in front of Bowie. He turned it to show Bowie. ‘It’s the same one we found on Emily Styles.’

Robbo went back to his office and laid the two rings and the chain on the desk in front of him. He couldn’t stop staring at it. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what, though. He sat back in his chair and tried to close his eyes, tried to rest. More than anything Robbo had the image of Danielle Foster in the coffin. He started hyperventilating when he thought about it. He could see the body of Pauline Murphy in all its horror, inside the box. He saw the mask of make-up and a chain around her neck. The chain was enmeshed in her flesh and Robbo was trying to pick it out but it was so messy his fingers kept sliding. He looked up at Pauline Murphy’s face but suddenly it wasn’t her face he saw. It was Ebony’s.

‘Robbo?’

He opened his eyes; the smell of apple shampoo surrounded him and he saw Jeanie frowning at him, standing next to him at his desk. The next thing he heard was the almighty clamour of coffee beans being ground. He shot forward in his chair. Carter sniggered.

‘I told Jeanie not to creep up on you.’

‘Bastard.’

Robbo rubbed his face, picked up a handful of Haribo sweets and fed them into his mouth.

‘I saw your update about the ring,’ Carter said.

‘Yeah, the main thing we learn from that is that he wants to carve his name in history, have them include him in the book of serial killers. He’s making sure we know it’s him. He’s got a massive ego. He thinks he’s better than anyone else. He may have a string of short-term relationships but he can’t stay with someone long. He’s easily bored.’ Robbo slid his chair along the length of the desk and then stopped dead as he began furiously tapping on the keyboard. ‘Plus, he has a massively inflated idea of his self-worth; he’s callous, manipulative. These women he killed meant nothing to him as human beings, they were just vehicles towards his notoriety. He’s also irresponsible, impulsive. But he wanted us to find the rings.’

Jeanie picked up the chain and looked at the rings on the end. ‘The chain just doesn’t look right,’ she said.

‘He had no choice but to put them on a chain,’ Carter said as he made coffee. ‘They would have fallen off when the fingers were lost to pond life.’

‘Why didn’t he just put plastic bags over the hands like he did with the head?’ asked Jeanie.

Carter shook his head. ‘If her wrist was already opened by a wound, which it was, then it would have been got at quickly by feeders and she may have just lost her whole hand somewhere in the bottom of the canal, plus these rings were not hers, they probably didn’t fit her hand.’

‘So he had to put them on a chain. Any old chain?’

‘It’s never any old anything with him, is it? He takes months to kill, he’s not going to be rushed into anything, the smallest details matter to him,’ Robbo answered.