Deadly Secrets (Detective Erika Foster #6)(43)

‘Oh my god,’ said Erika as she read the words on the screen. The third attack happened to a Jenny Thorndike, close to Penge East station. She had been walking to get the train early one morning, when a person in black wearing a gas mask had ‘appeared from nowhere’. She’d attempted to fight him off, but he’d punched her in the face and pulled her into a small area of parkland close to the station, where she was badly beaten and asphyxiated.

The most recently reported case had occurred on Christmas Day in Sydenham. A woman in her late fifties called Diana Crow had been returning home from her friend’s house, when she was grabbed in the railway underpass next to the train station. Again, she was asphyxiated and had been punched in the face, resulting in a fractured cheek. She hadn’t, however, reported the incident until the following day.

‘Marissa, you had a lucky escape, but why didn’t you report it?’ said Erika, taking a sip of her espresso. She found the name of the SIO on the gas mask attacker case, DCI Peter Farley, and sent him an email, asking for the case file, and informing him that they could have a crossover with their cases. Her inbox beeped with a new email:

Hi Erika, the Cyber Crime Unit recovered this deleted image file from Joseph Pitkin’s phone.

KAY





Erika opened the attachment.





I have these photos and the video file locked away.

So long as you keep your mouth shut, they’ll stay that way. T.





‘Jesus…’ she said, sitting back. It was an eerie drawing, done with what looked like a black biro on yellowing paper.

There was a knock at her door, which made her jump.

‘What?’

It was Peterson. He poked his head round the door.

‘Is this a good time?’

‘Why?’

‘I just had Isaac Strong on the phone. He’s completed the post-mortem on Marissa Lewis. Wants to know if you’ve got time to meet him?’

‘Okay, thanks. I can call him back,’ she said, rubbing her temples.

Peterson came into the office and closed the door.

‘What the hell is that?’ he asked.

‘Another image recovered from Joseph Pitkin’s phone. He’d deleted it, along with the pornographic photos and video.’

‘A gas mask? You think it’s this guy’s signature, to send notes with a drawing?’

‘I don’t know. I just got the bloody thing. I need you to circulate this to the guys downstairs, get it up on the whiteboards. See if any of the other victims received anything like this, either through the post or via email. Also see if we can match this gas mask drawing with any of the e-fits from the victims.’

‘Yes…’ Peterson looked awkward. ‘Can I have a word?’

‘I’ve got one minute,’ she said, picking up her coat off the back of the chair. ‘Why?’

‘I just need to talk to you about something.’

‘Work-related?’

‘Erm, well…’

‘Can it wait? Can we catch up when I’m back?’

He nodded. Erika grabbed her phone and car keys and left.

Peterson came back down the stairs and met Moss at the coffee machine.

‘That was quick. How did she take it?’

He shook his head.

‘She went off to the morgue. I didn’t get the chance to tell her.’

‘James! You need to let her know.’

‘I know I do. It’s just bloody hard when we’re in the middle of a case.’

‘You need to grow a pair, and make time,’ Moss said, sipping her coffee and heading back into the incident room.





Twenty-Eight





The car park was busy when Erika arrived at Lewisham Hospital, and she had to wait to take a ticket before the barriers would let her enter. She got lost, twice taking a wrong turn, and she had to ask a hospital porter where the parking was for the morgue. Finally, she found it and parked the car next to a short, squat building, with a huge chimney pumping out black smoke into the grey sky.

She had to sign in at a front desk, then she passed a doorway to the hospital incinerator, before finding the morgue at the end of a long corridor, where Isaac buzzed her in.

‘You found us,’ he said.

‘Yes, it’s not as easy as it was in Penge…’

‘And we have to pay for the privilege of coming to work.’

Isaac took her into the large post-mortem room, and she blinked at the bright lights. Six steel post-mortem tables lay in a row, with steel guttering.

‘Keep your coat on if I were you,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a fleece on under my medical scrubs… Sorry that this has taken longer than I would have liked.’

Marissa’s body lay on the first post-mortem table. She was covered to the neck with a white sheet. Isaac pulled it back. Her skin had a sallow yellow appearance. A long line of coarse stitches ran from her navel, spreading out in a Y shape between her breasts and across her sternum. Her body was washed clean of blood, and the repeated slashes across her throat made Erika think of fish gills. Her eyes moved down.

‘She has a diamond tattoo just above her knicker line,’ she said, pointing above the slim line of pubic hair. ‘It’s also embroidered on all of her clothes – the clothes she wore to perform.’