Brandon then changed the subject to ask about Arthur Murphy. Anna gave him all the details that she knew about his murder, and Brandon gave a soft laugh. ‘Well, he got what he deserved; and it saves the Government a lot of money — fifteen years of three meals a day. I bet old Harry was well pleased. He’d have strung him up but then, if he had his way, he’d give lethal injections to every paedophile and killer clogging up the prisons.’
Anna drained her coffee and said that she was due back at her own station by two, so if they could get cracking, she’d be grateful.
The incident room was as Brandon had described, with only a few officers present. She was given access to all the case reports and statements and was surprised at how much paperwork had been done without any result. The black bin-liner had been traced to a factory and matched with a bulk load made six months prior to the discovery. The interviews had focused on the area where the body had been found, but it seemed that every possible clue as to how the child had ended up in the canal had resulted in a blank. He was naked, so they could get nothing from any clothes and, without his hands or skull, they obviously had no dental records to check and no fingerprints to file. His DNA would be kept on record, along with a thick dossier of forensic photographs and autopsy reports. As Brandon had said, all they could do now was bury him.
Brandon did not accompany Anna into the cold storage; he’d already viewed the body too many times to want to see it again. She understood why. Seeing the tiny child’s headless body, his hands severed, was not something she would ever forget. His torso had deep welts across the chest and, between them, a cross had been cut into the skin. The tissue had had time to scar, which led them to deduce that the cuts had been inflicted some weeks before he had died. This was further horror, to think the child had been subjected to this torture whilst still alive.
Professor John Starling agreed to see her at eleven; she did not contact the other voodoo doctors, as she knew she would not have enough time before the briefing back at her own station.
When Anna was shown into his office at the London University campus on the edge of Bloomsbury, she was surprised by the Professor’s appearance. He was very tall and slender and wore a loose-fitting tracksuit. His greying-blond hair was long and tied in a tight ponytail. He had a rather handsome, long face with pale blue eyes. Incense had been used in the room and hung lightly in the air, a musky sweet smell.
‘Please come in, sit down,’ he said courteously, gesturing towards a low sofa.
He offered her water, not tea or coffee. The walls of the office were lined with rows of framed credentials. His qualifications ranged from Egyptology to Hieroglyphic analysis, Anthropology and Criminology. He saw her looking at them, and laughed.
‘I switch interests; I have a drawer full of even more certificates. I also collect Persian carpets but, as you can see,’ he tapped the floor with his foot, ‘this is not one of them.’
He apologized for his tracksuit, but said he was due to give a yoga session to some of his students. He then crossed his legs to sit in front of her on a woven Japanese mat. She found him fascinating — quite unlike any professor she had ever come across at Oxford. She was amused at the thought of Frank Brandon interacting with him; his cologne would compete with the smell of joss sticks that hung in the air.
Starling remained silent as she opened her briefcase and took out the details of the young boy’s body.
‘I’ve been shown these before,’ he said, as she passed them to him, then reached up for a large magnifying glass from a desk with stacks of files on every inch of it.
‘I was wondering if the markings could be made by some kind of voodoo ritual,’ Anna said.
‘No — well, not in any ceremony that I have come across, though it could be some amateur, professing knowledge of voodoo. Voodoo was originally used only for healing; it was very positive. Practitioners were kindly and knowledgeable people and probably came into the US via the slave trade. They had herbs for medical treatments. The slaves were snatched from their own environment, and many suffered severe mental disorientation; they would look to anyone who could ease that agony of separation. Voodoo priests and priestesses therefore became like present-day therapists, giving their patients mental and physical comfort. To dance into exhaustion was healing, to wail was a release, and it was not until many years later that the powers wielded by these priests led them to pervert the original concept.’
He continued to use the magnifying glass, carefully scrutinizing each photograph of the unidentified headless boy.
‘Haiti and many other offshoot countries began to elaborate the ceremonies, because they realized it would generate money. They discovered the power to manipulate their patients using drugs and mind games: the threat of voodoo is a very simple device used to exert control, but only those who believe in its powers will succumb to them.’
He suddenly looked up, and cocked his head to one side.
‘I remember when I was about sixteen years old, a group of us were messing around with a Ouija board. We sat holding hands in a darkened room. One of the kids placed a glass in the centre of the board and started asking questions in a weird high-pitched voice. There was a girl there, Christina, the same age, but from a pretty dysfunctional family. Anyway, we messed around and started pushing the glass backwards and forwards, when it suddenly shot towards her. I didn’t touch it, but I presumed the other kids were moving it.’
He frowned, turning away. ‘I am trying to recall exactly what she asked. I think it was, “Will I be married?” You know, nothing freaky. The glass spelled out NO and there was a lot of whispering and giggling as she asked, “Why not?” And the glass moved to the letter D, then E, then A, and T, H.’
He closed his eyes. ‘How the mind can play tricks. I don’t know which one of us pushed the glass towards her, but six weeks later she was found hanging from the banisters in her parents’ home.’
‘Was that why you have made a study of…’ Anna looked around the room at his many credentials.
‘Good God, no! I am first and foremost an Egyptologist; everything else is more or less simply down to interest and fascination.’
There was a long pause as Professor Starling returned to studying the photographs. Anna wondered if he had told the truth; perhaps it was he who had spelled out DEATH to the young teenage girl.
‘They have found no sexual abuse to the child, correct?’ the man asked.
‘Yes.’
He slowly gathered the photographs and stacked them neatly before passing them back to her. ‘His head and hands were removed, and the body dumped in a black plastic bin-liner in the canal, as if it was no longer of any use. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
He somehow managed to get from the cross-legged position to standing upright in one fluid movement. ‘I would say that the poor child was used by some perverted group of people; if they did not use the child for sex, they used him for some kind of ceremony. I cannot say categorically whether it was voodoo or Satanic.’
He went to a bookshelf and looked along it, trailing his fingers, then removed a book. Anna looked at the open page he offered her: there was a shrunken skull, hanging by its hair from a cross, and around the neck of a man wearing a white robe and carrying the burning cross was a necklace. Attached to the necklace were what looked like blackened birds’ claws.
‘This is a picture taken in around 1940 of a priest in Haiti. As you can see, he has the skull hanging from the cross, and around his neck the shrunken hands.’