Killing the Shadows

THIRTY-SEVEN

Fiona looked at the clock on her office wall. Breakfast that morning had been tense, in spite of both their efforts to maintain something like normal life in the face of the fear that flickered below the surface. She had extracted an assurance from Kit that he wouldn’t open the door to strangers, nor would he go out alone, not even for his usual lunchtime walk on the Heath. She could see he was already chafing under these restrictions, but at least he could salvage his pride by telling himself he was doing it to mollify Fiona rather than out of cowardice.

The worst part of it was the not knowing what was going on. She almost wished she had been able to be sanguine about Steve’s refusal to offer Kit any formal protection. At least then they’d be in communication and she would be aware of how the investigation was progressing. But she couldn’t bring herself to forgive his failure to stick his neck out for the sake of friendship. So she would somehow have to deal with her unaccustomed ignorance.

She glanced at the clock again. This was pointless. She was achieving nothing sitting here. The paper she was supposed to be revising before submitting it for publication stared accusingly at her from the computer screen, as neglected as a piece of waste ground In her heart, Fiona knew she couldn’t concentrate in the office. If she took the paper home, she could at least hope to get the work done there. Nothing would happen to Kit while they were in the house together.

The decision made, Fiona was taking her jacket off its peg when her phone rang. She resisted the temptation to ignore it and crossed the office to pick it up on the fourth ring. “Hello, Fiona Cameron,” she said.

“Dr. Cameron? This is Victoria Green from the Mail. I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes?”

“I don’t think so.”

“If I could just explain what it’s about?” The journalist’s voice was warm and ingratiating.

“There’s no point, because I’m not interested. If you bother to look at your cuttings library, you’ll see I don’t do interviews.”

“It’s not an interview we want,” Green said quickly. “We’d like you to write an article for us. I know you write articles, I’ve read you in Applied Psychology Journal.”

“You read APJ?” Fiona said, her surprise holding her back from putting the phone down.

“I have a degree in psychology. I’ve read your work on crime linkage. That’s how I knew you were the best person to talk to about writing an article for us.”

“I don’t think so,” Fiona reiterated.

“You see,” Green continued undaunted, “I’ve got a theory that Drew Shand and Jane Elias were murdered by the same person. And I think Georgia Lester might be the next victim. I’d like you to apply your crime linkage work to these cases to see if I’m right.”

Fiona replaced the receiver without responding. The word was out. It wouldn’t be long before others jumped on Victoria Green’s bandwagon. If she’d had any doubts about going home to Kit, they had ended with the phone call.

The man with the face like a chicken shrugged. “Meat’s meat, innit? Once it’s skinned and off the bone, your human flesh isn’t going to look much different from a piece of beef or venison.”

Sarah Duvall sighed. “I appreciate that.”

“And it’s huge, the market. I can’t begin to count the number of fridges and chill cabinets and freezers in that place. It’s not like walking into your local butcher’s shop, you know. There’s twenty-three trading units in the East Building and another twenty-one in the West.” His dark eyes glittered and his beaky nose twitched in a sniff.

Sergeant Ron Daniels smiled benevolently at the small man. Working as officer in charge of the Smithfield Market policing team, he’d got to know Darren Green, the traders’ representative, over a period of years. He knew that behind his aggression was a reasonable man, provided he was accorded sufficient respect. “Nobody appreciates that more than me, Darren. We’ve got a big job on our hands and that’s why we’ve come to you.”

Duvall turned to the Home Office pathologist. “Professor Blackett, what’s your take on this?”

The balding, middle-aged man sitting behind her looked up from his notebook and frowned. “It is problematic, as Mr. Green points out. But on your suggestion, I read the relevant section of Georgia Lester’s book. And if we’re dealing with a copycat killer, then the cuts of meat he would end up with are going to vary from the standard butchery cuts in several key details.”

“It’s still just going to look like meat, though, innit.” Darren Green insisted.

Tom Blackett shook his head. “Trust me, we can spot the difference.” He flicked his pad over to a clean page and began to draw. “Human beings are bipeds, not quadrupeds. Our shoulders and our upper leg muscles are very different from those of a cow or a deer. Particularly the leg. If you take a transverse section through the middle of the thigh, taking off the head of the femur, which is far too obvious to leave in place…” He pointed to the rough sketch he’d made. Darren Green leaned over and looked suspiciously at it. “You’ve got the rounded outline of the shaft of the femur here. In front of it, you’ve got the anterior group of muscles, the rectus fe moris and the vasti. Behind it you’ve got the posterior group, the adduct or magnus and the hamstrings. And here, on the inside, you’ve got the medial group of muscles, which is where most of the blood vessels and nerves are also situated. The chances are you’re also going to have a lot more fat than on the average animal carcass.”

Green’s face broke into a smile as understanding dawned. “Right,” he said. “That arrangement of meat, it’s nothing like what you’d get on a leg of beef or venison.”

“And of course, a joint of human beef is going to be a lot smaller than the corresponding cut from a cow or a deer,” Blackett continued. “Which is something any butcher would recognize at once, I presume?”

“I dare say,” Green said cautiously. “But even if a group of us do help you out with this search, it’s still going to take forever to cover the ground. We’ll never get it done and dusted before the morning’s trading begins. Don’t forget, it’s not like a shop that opens at nine o’clock. We do most of our business between four and seven in the morning.”

“If we were talking about searching the whole market, I’d have to agree with you, Mr. Green,” Duvall said. “But we do have information that will narrow the targets down considerably. We’re looking for freezers that are not in everyday use. Ones that are for more long-term storage. Probably ones that are locked up. That’s why we need the full cooperation of your members. We don’t want to have to go around breaking into their property. So what I need you to do is to contact everyone who has a unit in the market and ask them to make sure they’ll have staff on the spot tonight who can give us access to all their storage. And that they’ll be there all night if need be.”

“Bloody hell,” Green protested. “That’s a tall order.”

“If you don’t have the resources to do it, I can second some of the market police officers to you. But it has to be done,” Duvall said, her voice adamant as her face was implacable.

“They’re not going to like this,” he complained.

Daniels took over. “We’re not doing this for fun, Darren. This is a very serious matter.”

“That’s right,” Duvall said grimly. “Now, I need you and your volunteers at Snow Hill police station for nine o’clock so Professor Blackett can give you a full briefing on what you’ll be looking for, and so you can be assigned to the officers you’ll be assisting. I intend to commence operations at ten precisely. I have no desire to disrupt your night’s trading. But that depends on you and your members. I suggest you get on with it.” The smile on her lips did nothing to diminish the force of the command. With muttered complaints, Green left the others.

“What do you think, Ron? Will it work?” Duvall asked.

The big man nodded. “I think you’ll get all the cooperation you need. I’ll have a word with Darren, make sure he lets people know that the traders aren’t under any suspicion at this point.”

Duvall nodded. “You seem very confident that you can spot what we’re after, Professor,” she said.

“If I’d sounded as dubious as I feel, your Mr. Green would have been as obstructive as possible. It’s not easy to identify human flesh by sight, Chief Inspector. It’s simple enough to run tests to confirm it once we have something suspicious, but whether we find anything depends entirely on how good your killer is.” Blackett paused, then raised his eyebrows. “Always providing he exists.”