Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(3)
“The fact he leaves his DNA on the victims. It’s not just carelessness or lack of control. It’s as if he’s marking his territory. Like a dog.”
“You think he wants us to catch him?”
“Yes . . . No . . . Possibly.”
“He’s behaving like he’s invincible.”
“He thinks he’s invincible. But he’ll slip up. They always do,” said Kate.
They turned off into the north entrance to Crystal Palace Park. A police car was waiting, and the officer waved them through. They drove down a long, straight avenue of gravel usually reserved for people on foot. It was lined with large oak trees shedding leaves, and they hit the windshield with a wet flapping sound, clogging up the wipers. In the far distance, the huge Crystal Palace radio transmitter poked up above the trees like a slender Eiffel Tower. The road banked down and ended in a small car park beside a long, flat field of grass, which backed onto a wooded area. A large police tape cordon ringed the entire expanse of grass. In the center was a second, smaller cordon around a white forensics tent, glowing in the darkness. Next to the second cordon sat the pathologist’s van, four squad cars, and a large white police support vehicle.
Where the tarmac met the grass, the tape of the first police cordon flapped in the breeze. They were met by two uniformed police officers: a middle-aged man whose belly hung over his belt, and a tall, thin young man who still looked like a teenager. Kate and Peter showed their identification to the older officer. His eyes were hooded with loose skin, and as he glanced between her and Peter’s police ID cards, he reminded Kate of a chameleon. He handed them back and went to lift the police tape but hesitated, looking over at the glowing tent.
“In all my years, I ain’t never seen nothing like it,” he said.
“You were the first on the scene?” asked Peter, impatient for him to lift the tape but not willing to do it himself.
“Yes. PC Stanley Gresham, sir. This is PC Will Stokes,” he said, gesturing to the young officer, who suddenly grimaced, turned away from them, and threw up over the police tape. “It’s his first day on the job,” he added, shaking his head. Kate gave the young officer a look of pity as he heaved and threw up again, thin strings of spittle dangling from his mouth. Peter took a clean white handkerchief from his inside pocket, and Kate thought he was going to offer it up to the young officer, but he pressed it to his nose and mouth.
“I want this crime scene locked down. Not a word to anyone,” said Peter.
“Of course, sir.”
Peter fluttered his fingers at the police tape. Stanley lifted it, and they ducked under. The grass sloped down to the second police cordon, where Detective Cameron Rose and Detective Inspector Marsha Lewis were waiting. Cameron, like Kate, was in his midtwenties, and Marsha was older than all of them, a thickset woman in her fifties, wearing a smart black trouser suit and long black coat. Her silver hair was cropped short, and she had a gravelly smoker’s voice.
“Sir,” they both said in unison.
“What’s going on, Marsha?” asked Peter.
“All exits in and out of the park are sealed, and I’ve got local plod being bused in for a fingertip search and house to house. Forensic pathologist is in there already, and she’s ready to talk to us,” said Marsha.
Cameron was tall and gangly, towering above them all. He hadn’t had time to change and looked more like a louche teenager than a detective in his jeans, trainers, and a green winter jacket. Kate wondered fleetingly what he had been doing when he got the call to come to the crime scene. She presumed he’d arrived with Marsha.
“Who’s our forensic pathologist?” asked Peter.
“Leodora Graves,” said Marsha.
It was hot inside the glowing tent, where the lights were almost painfully bright. Forensic pathologist Leodora Graves, a small dark-skinned woman with penetrating green eyes, worked with two assistants. A naked young girl lay facedown in a muddy depression in the grass. Her head was covered by a clear plastic bag, tied tightly around her neck. Her pale skin was streaked with dirt and blood and numerous cuts and scratches. The backs of her thighs and buttocks had several deep bite marks.
Kate stood beside the body, already sweating underneath the hood and face mask of her thick white forensics suit. The rain hammered down on the tight skin of the tent, forcing Leodora to raise her voice.
“The victim is posed, lying on her right side, her right arm under her head. The left arm lies flat and reaching out. There are six bites on her lower back, buttocks, and thighs.” She indicated the deepest bites, where the flesh had been removed, so deep as to expose the girl’s spine. She moved to the victim’s head and gently lifted it; the length of thin rope was tied tight around the neck, biting into the now-bloated flesh. “You’ll note the specific knot.”
“The monkey’s fist knot,” said Cameron, speaking for the first time. He sounded shaken. Though the masks of their forensics suits obscured her teammates’ faces, Kate could read the looks of alarm in their eyes.
“Yes,” said Leodora, holding the knot in her gloved hand. What made it unusual was the series of intersecting turns, like a tiny ball of wool, almost impossible to replicate with a machine.
“It’s him. The Nine Elms Cannibal,” said Kate. The words came out of her mouth before she could stop them.