Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(16)

“Fucking hell. A monkey’s fist knot?” she said. Kate looked back at the body, which was so badly decayed and bloated that it was difficult to tell what she would have looked like alive. “What do the police say?”

“About you attending my postmortem? They don’t know,” said Alan.

Kate looked up and raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what I meant.”

“A young female DCI is heading this case. I think she was still playing with her Barbie dolls when Peter Conway was on the rampage. I haven’t told her. I wanted you to look at this before I start linking this murder to a historical case.”

Kate looked at the knot again. “There’s no doubt in my mind. Look at it all. It’s the Nine Elms Cannibal.”

“Peter Conway hasn’t escaped, in case you’re worried. He’s still tucked up nicely in his cell at Her Majesty’s pleasure.”

Kate nodded. “I know. If he escapes, I’m one of the first to be told. There are measures in place, to protect me and my son . . .” Kate could see a tinge of pity in Alan’s eyes. They had never discussed her situation, but he obviously knew. “Whoever did this, it looks like a copycat. Am I making a leap here? There is too much here for it just to be a coincidence.”

“Yes. I agree,” he said.

“Do you know when she died? Time of death?” she asked, returning her attention to the body.

“She’s been out in the elements—wind and rain, creepy-crawlies. We have maggots in the flesh behind the left ear and in the shoulder, and the body is bloated. I’d put time of death five or six days ago.”

“That would make it last Tuesday or Wednesday. Conway grabbed his victims on a Thursday or Friday. He’d have the weekend to torture them and kill them, then he’d dump their bodies on a Monday or Tuesday,” said Kate. She looked up at Alan. “Did you get dental impressions from the bites?”

“No. The skin has decayed too much.”

“What about her face? Do you know how it was removed?”

Alan took a small plastic bag from the pocket of his scrubs; it contained a long tooth.

“A canine left incisor,” he said, holding it up. It was smooth and white.

“A dog?”

Alan nodded. “From a Doberman or Alsatian. It would need to be pretty riled up to do this. I dread to think what was done to it. We found the tooth embedded in the remnants of her upper right-hand jawbone, but I don’t believe that the dog alone got the face off. There are also incision marks from a serrated blade.”

“As if the dog attacked and the face was removed, or finished off, with a knife?”

“Yes,” said Alan.

“Have you come across any other murders that have the hallmarks of Conway?”

“No.”

“Can you check?”

“Kate, I asked you for your professional opinion on this body, which I am grateful for . . .”

“Alan. You have access to police databases. If someone out there is copycatting Peter Conway’s murders, then this woman is the second victim. Conway’s second victim was Dawn Brockhurst. She was dumped next to a river . . . Foxes tore off the plastic bag covering her head and ate part of her face. Shelley Norris was his first victim, and she was found dumped in the wrecker’s yard on Nine Elms Lane . . .”

Alan put up his hands. “Yes, I’m aware . . . My job is to give the facts, the cause of death.”

“Can you at least look? Or direct the police to look into it?”

Alan nodded wearily. His assistants were now gently closing up the rib cage in preparation to sew up the long Y-shaped incision on her sternum.

Kate looked down and saw she was still holding the plastic evidence bag containing the soiled length of rope with the monkey’s fist knot. Her hand shook, and she thrust it back at Alan, feeling if she held it any longer, it might contaminate her and drag her back into the turbulent hell of the Nine Elms Cannibal case.





6

Kate didn’t remember leaving the morgue or saying goodbye to Alan. She found herself emerging from the long dank tunnel and out into the car park.

Her legs moved, and the blood pumped so hard and fast in her veins that it felt painful. Everything was muffled; the sound of the busy road as she crossed. A thin mist, which was starting to manifest around the dull yellow of the streetlights. The fear she felt was irrational. It wasn’t one image, or one thought, but it consumed her. Is this fear going to finish me this time, once and for all? she thought. Her neck and back were running with sweat, but the cold air made her shiver.

She found herself in a liquor store across the road from the morgue, and she looked down. There was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in her hand.

She dropped the bottle, and it smashed, splattering the graying linoleum floor and her shoes. A small Indian man sat behind the till watching a film on his laptop, and the noise of the bottle dropping made him look up. He pulled out his earphones and picked up a big blue roll of tissue.

“You pay for it,” he said.

“Of course, let me help,” she said, kneeling down and picking up a piece of the broken bottle. It glistened with the amber liquid. It was so close to her tongue, and she could smell it.

“Don’t touch anything,” he said. He looked at her with distaste—another drunk. Reality clicked back into place for Kate.