Birdman

He had gagged her with packing tape and taken Polaroids as he tortured her; showing them to her afterwards. Susan had cried when she saw the first one, she didn't recognize her poor swollen face, the bulging eyes. But after the first she remembered little. She began to slip in and out of consciousness.

Now the clock on the wall said 5.30, she'd been asleep — unconscious? — for eight hours. She knew she had the beginnings of a fever, and knew it meant the wounds were infected. She could smell them, and the top of her right nipple was yolky and swollen around the crusted black incision.

She lay still, listening carefully. The noise of a bird somewhere in the flat, not singing, but chirruping sickly. And outside the creak and whirr of — what was that? A crane? — the occasional thundering shudder of a tip-truck's load. Building work. She wasn't near Malpens Street, then. There was no building work in her area — So where? Where are you, Susan?

Something answered that she wasn't far from home. She was still in Greenwich or Lewisham.

She closed her eyes and tried to force her memory. Where was the nearest building site to Malpens Street? Where? But the effort exhausted her. She'd rest for a while. Then she was going to try to get to the window.

* * *

The party started to break up. Essex, wearing his shirt again, combed the desks for empty cans and Kryotos, who had picked up as many mugs as she could in both hands, hooking her fingers through the handles, was standing next to the printer watching a SPECRIM report arrive. Betts was taking the photos down from the walls.

Caffery had had trouble relaxing as instinctively as the others: his eyes were sore from the morgue formaldehyde, and he wanted the search complete, wanted the cement dust matched. He had spent most of the evening sitting at an opened window smoking thoughtfully, blowing the smoke upwards into the evening air. It was a few minutes past seven when Fiona Quinn's car pulled up in the street below.

Jack sat forward, pinching out the cigarette. Something was wrong. He could sense it in DS Quinn's tempo as she climbed out of the driver's seat.

He met them in the corridor. 'What's up?'

Logan dropped the yellow exhibits crate on the floor and ran a weary hand through his hair. 'Don't ask.'

In the incident room everyone looked up expectantly. When Maddox saw Quinn and Logan's expressions his face fell. 'Oh, for God's sake — don't tell me.'

'Sorry, sir. Some drugs paraphernalia — almost a third of a k of heroin — but for what we want the place was kosher.'

'Nothing organic,' Quinn said.

'Shit.' He put his fingers to his forehead. 'Back to the drawing board, then. Are we ever going to get shot of this?'

'Sir?' Everyone turned. Kryotos was standing next to the printer with a puzzled expression on her face. A baroque wave of feed paper — a SPECRIM — rose and curled into her hand.

'What?'

'We've got a casualty in Greenwich. Victim dumped in a wheelie bin. She's alive but—' She looked up. 'But the offender did a little amateur surgery on her.'

41

Susan Lister was unconscious and still in Intensive Care when they arrived. The paramedic who brought her in, Andrew Benton, a fresh-faced young black man with a buzz cut so short it looked like only a day's growth, was shaken by the experience. They talked in a small room next to the nurses' station.

'Fucking hell, you know, I've got to tell you, I've seen some things in my time, but this—' He shook his head. 'This has really done my head. And as for him, her husband—'

'He found her?' Maddox said.

'Can you imagine? Finding your lady in that state. She was in the dustbin in the front of their house. That's the value this wanker put on her. A human life, no better than rubbish.'

'What time did you respond?'

'Eleven. I was told it was a purple plus.' He looked from face to face. 'You know, Mr Lister thought she was a goner when he called the services. The guy, the animal, had dumped the lady head down in the wheelie bin, left her for dead.' His face creased. 'God. If I won't sleep tonight — just think how he feels.'

'Tell me about her. Was she dressed?'

'Not dressed. She was wrapped up in a binliner. I think some of your lot took it in for evidence or whatever. They were trawling the whole place. Before I even got her out of there they were taping it off.'

'We like to protect a crime scene.' Maddox was embarrassed. 'Prevents contamination.'

'Yeah, I know. I didn't mean no offence.'

'None taken. Her injuries?'

'Bad. She's so cut up she'll probably die from blood loss, if not septicaemia. Consultant says she's got bronchial pneumococcal and renal failure; they've hooked her up to the ECMO. She was in and out when I got to her.'

'Where are the cuts?'

'On her breasts.' He rubbed his face. 'She'd been stitched up. First thing I thought was she might have been in for surgery, I don't know, some cowboy thing. But then her husband's wailing about how she'd disappeared and then I got her on the gurney and—'

'And?'

'I'm no genius, you know, but even I could see there was something wrong.'

'Something wrong?'

'It was so infected it was difficult to see, but the sutures were all, you know, crazy.'

Caffery looked at his hands. He remembered similar words coming from a CID officer's mouth at North's yard that first Saturday night. 'How about her head?'

'She's been smacked a couple of times, on the side of the head, and she was covered in make-up, like a tart. Hubby reckons she had a haircut too. He kept saying it over and over again. ''Why'd he cut her hair? Why'd he cut her hair?'' like that was the most important thing in the world.'

'No wig. He chose this one,' Caffery muttered.

Benton shot him a look. 'What was that?'

Caffery stood up and pulled on his jacket. 'Nothing.' He looked at Maddox. 'I'm going to have a look at Mrs Lister. Meet you at the scene in, what? Two hours?'

'Where'you going?'

'I won't be long. I've got an idea — just let me speak to someone at Lambeth first — see if I'm on the right road.'

* * *

She lay on a blue pillowcase, on her back with her arms opened outwards, her face turned to the door just as if she'd been expecting a visitor but had got tired waiting and had dropped off to sleep. The hair fringing her bruised eyes was almost white, the colour of sun-bleached sand. Someone had made a rudimentary attempt to clean her, but the mouth was still stained red with lipstick and her hands and nails were grimy with, Caffery realized, dust.

His breath fogged up the window. He pulled his shirt cuff over his fist and rubbed a hole. A nurse had appeared in his eye line, and stood checking the drip lines, obscuring his view. Jack stepped back from the door. He'd seen all he needed to see.

'It sounds just like the others?'

'That's right, Mr Caffery.' Krishnamurthi at Jackson's autopsy. 'Identical to the others.' Identical to the others.

Now he thought he understood what was happening.

* * *

It was getting dark by the time he parked outside the Forensic Science Laboratories in Lambeth Road — the windscreen of the Jaguar was speckled with midges. The foyer lights cast long shadows of potted yuccas across the mosaic in the corridor: Catherine Howard, patiently clutching her rosary in the shadows.

The security guard roused himself from the desk and handed Caffery a pass. 'I'll tell her you're on your way up but we're closing in ten minutes, sir — you'll need to be out in ten minutes.'