Will levered himself back to his feet.
‘You’ll agree,’ Ms Green Suit said, as he stepped gingerly over the cables snaking across the sticky floor tiles, ‘that the attack pattern looks frenzied, disorganized. Furious. I’d say our killer was white, male, aged between twenty-four and thirty-two. Slovenly appearance. Lives alone or with his mother. She’s got no idea what he’s up to.’ She didn’t need to say unemployed, on this side of the river that was a given.
Will smiled-it was the classic serial killer profile, straight out of the field manual. ‘I know this isn’t my case, but are you sure your killer’s disorganized?’
‘Course he is. Attack’s too messy for him to be anything else.’
Will pointed at the remains. ‘Look at the hands.’
She frowned. ‘What about them?’
‘The fingertips are pulped, so we can’t take any prints. The jaws have been demolished, so we can’t use the dental database. The eyes have gone so we can’t take a retinal scan. The only way we’re going to get an ID is if our victim’s got a record and his DNA’s still on file. If not: chances are we’ll never know who he was.’
Her lips moved soundlessly for a moment. Then, ‘So the killer must be organized enough to cover his tracks.’
‘At the very least.’
The scanning array gave a low rumble and a clank, then fell silent. Stein treated it to a brief bout of swearing and a good hard kick. The machinery started up again, the sonics grumbling and buzzing like a catarrh-filled geriatric full of wasps.
‘OK, people,’ Beaton flipped a switch on the side of the casing, ‘time to vacate the premises if you don’t want to be immortalized in glorious, invasive scanovision.’
They all shuffled out into the corridor, avoiding the hole in the floor, and waited for the scanners to do their thing. The low phlegmy rumble turned into a deafening whine-the closed door cut the noise a little, but not much.
The concrete particles were settling, coating everything and everyone in a thin layer of gritty grey dust. Private Dickson stood at the far end of the group, cradling her Bull Thrummer and nursing what looked like a pretty big grudge; glowering at the Bluecoat who’d treated her to that bout of electroconvulsive therapy.
Ms Green Suit leant over and said something Will couldn’t really hear.
‘What?’
‘WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL?’ She had to shout directly into his ear before Will could hear her over the scanners.
‘WHAT? CALL WHEN?’
‘WHEN YOU CAME BARGING INTO THE TOILETS. WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL AND LET US KNOW YOU WERE OUT HERE? IF YOU HAD, YOUR LASS WOULDN’T HAVE GOT HERSELF ZAPPED.’
Will swore under his breath. ‘I…’ He couldn’t come up with a good excuse, so he kept his mouth shut and waited in silence like the rest of them.
The floor beneath their feet trembled as the subsonics kicked in and Will shut his eyes, leaning back against the wall. That way he didn’t have to look at the large hole in the floor, or Dickson’s angry face. Good job Bluecoats weren’t allowed to carry anything stronger than a Zapper, or Will would have another funeral to speak at. And this one really would have been his fault. Stupid, stupid, stupid…
At last the scanners gurgled and pinged to a halt.
‘Right, that’s your lot.’ Stein stuck a finger in his ear and wriggled it. ‘Give us two minutes to pack up and we can all go home.’
They filed back into the blood-smeared toilet, doing their best to stay out of the way as Beaton and Stein battered and cursed the equipment into its casing, then chucked it out into the corridor for Private Dickson to look after. Beaton produced a body-bag, squatting to pick up chunks of red and purple meat from the sticky tiles.
Now that the scanning gear was out of the way there was nothing obscuring Will’s view of the dirty room. Broken sinks. Walls covered with graffiti. Cracked mirror. The floor was peppered with dead flies, their little shiny bodies not robust enough to stand up to the scanners. Blood everywhere. Will didn’t envy the poor sod who’d have to sanitize the scene when they’d gone…
He frowned. A set of cleaning equipment sat abandoned in the corner: mop, wheely-bucket, scrubbing brushes, big container of industrial disinfectant.
‘What happened to the halfhead?’
The Bluecoat in the green suit frowned. ‘Halfhead?’
Will pointed at the mop and bucket. ‘Know anyone else who’s going to be scrubbing urinals in this part of town?’
‘Damn.’ Her mouth became a thin line. ‘I’ll get someone to look in to it.’
That was two points he’d picked her up on. Have to watch that if he didn’t want the old hostility back.
‘Of course,’ she said, while Will did one last tour of the crime scene, ‘down here halfheads go missing all the time. We’re pretty sure it’s the local militia: they grab them, torture them for a couple of days, then kill them. Never any proof, but we know they do it.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Believe it or not, there’s a rumour going round that they eat them. Kind of a ritual cannibal orgy thing. Can you believe that?’
Something cold slithered down Will’s spine. All he needed now was the sound of homemade drums in the darkness. Corridors. Death. Blood. His heart hammering rusty nails into his chest.
He wiped a hand across his damp forehead, then turned to see if Beaton and Stein had finished, so they could get the hell out of here…but something made him stop.
The SOC team were wrestling the victim’s torso into the body-bag. Beaton’s dress uniform was covered in a thin film of dust, the chrome buttons smeared with dark red. Will reached out and stopped her from closing the tags over the body.
There was something tugging at his memory, something dark and familiar.
‘What’s wrong?’
Something he’d seen before.
‘Hello?’-Ms Green Suit was staring at him.
‘What? Oh…nothing.’
He stood back and let Beaton seal the bag. The last tag snapped shut, hiding the victim’s ruined face from view.
There was something here. Something he half recognized, but couldn’t quite grasp.
Something that had killed before.
3
The bluebottles have flown away, looking for something dead to feast upon, letting the buzzing in her head settle down to a dull ache. Everything hurts: the colours, the sounds, the smells. Sharp and sparking. Like electricity dragged across her brain…
She does not think about that. She shuts it out and keeps on walking.
Sparks, and the smell of burning meat.
SHE DOES NOT THINK ABOUT IT.
She stops, one hand resting against a wall of hot brick, the surface rough beneath her fingers. Warmed by the sun and the beat of the darkened heart.
This is what happens when she does not take her medication. Things…break.
A bird lies in the gutter, on its back, a ragged hole in its side, wings crawling with mites. Beak open. Praying to the beating sun in the voice of dead things.
It’s a lovely sound.
She wants to sing. Like the dead bird. But she can’t, because of the sparks and the burning meat.
Because of Him.
She struggles on the operating table, fighting against the restraining straps. It won’t make the slightest bit of difference, but this is no place for rational thought. She’s authorized enough halfheadings to know that. These sharp, broken, terrified thoughts will be the last ones she’ll ever have.
The surgeon tries to say something, but she screams him down. Her mouth is operating on automatic: hurling abuse, obscenities, threats. Then the pleading starts: wild bargains and promises to change. The small part of her that is still lucid watches all this with detached interest: a professional behaviourist, categorizing the mental stages of the condemned mind. She wets herself.