Shifting Skin

Chapter 3

‘Come on, boy.’ The man waited as his elderly labrador climbed slowly down the front steps and on to the garden path.

Once on the pavement the man glanced towards the A57 and the park on the other side. Ever since the lady’s body had been found there he’d been put off walking his dog around its litter-strewn confines.

Instead he turned in the other direction, walking along Mount Road, the greyhound racing stadium on his right. This early in the morning the neighbourhood was unusually quiet. Mist filled the street and, as he paused to light a cigarette, the only sound was the scrape of the match and the drip of water hitting the damp pavement as it fell from the glistening tree to his side.

The man continued past a shop. Tip-Top Electricals, all appliances bought and sold. Fridges. Freezers. Washing Machines.

After a couple of boarded-up houses he came to the offices that stood on the corner of the grassy area around which he now walked his dog. Belle Vue Housing Offices said the graffiti-covered sign, a few crocuses flowering in the bare earth beneath it. The building’s windows were clad in metal grilles, and a spiked rail ran below all the gutters.

The sun had seemed about to come out, but now its promising glow faded once again. The morning felt heavy and subdued, as if waiting for something to give it a kick-start. He breathed out smoke and it soon churned to a stop in the motionless air above his head, hanging there like a phantom.

His dog began to pull excitedly at the lead. ‘Bit eager today, Prince,’ he said, not sharing that enthusiasm. He undid the clip and watched the animal disappear into the thick haze.

He stepped over the tyre tracks joy-riders had gouged in the grass, and walked for a short while. ‘Prince!’

No response.

He waited half a minute, then tried again. Tutting, he cut across the verge in the direction the dog had vanished, soon spotting paw-prints in the dew-covered grass. As he moved forwards the mist seemed to recede at the same pace, never allowing him to see more than about fifteen metres ahead. Eventually he discerned a dark form in front of him. ‘Prince,’ he said impatiently,

‘what are you doing?’

Prince’s head was down, nuzzling a discarded white sack.

‘Come on, will you.’

The dog looked up, a bluish loop in its teeth.

The man squinted, then walked closer. It wasn’t a sack. It was a corpse, white skin ending at an expanse of red where the abdomen began. The swathe of raw flesh continued upwards to where the person’s face should have been.

The dog began to slink guiltily away, the section of intestine dangling from its jaws.

Jon Spicer walked into the incident room expecting to be one of the first people in. But there was a man sitting at the desk opposite his. Late twenties, dark brown hair that had been freshly cut, crisp pale-blue shirt. So this is my new partner, Jon thought.

The day before, his boss, Detective Chief Inspector McCloughlin, had mentioned with a meaningful wink that he was being paired up with someone. New resources had been released to the murder investigation and Rick Saville, promoted to detective sergeant only a few months before, was one of seven new officers assigned to it. McCloughlin had described him as

‘slick’. Scrutinising him from across the room, Jon wasn’t sure if the word applied to his ability as an officer or to his appearance.

He thought about the meaning of McCloughlin’s wink. Last summer he’d fallen out with the DCI over the Chewing Gum Killer investigation. Jon suspected Rick Saville had been paired with him to report everything they did back to McCloughlin.

Easy, he told himself. Reserve judgement. As he crossed the room Saville glanced up, spotted him and immediately began to rise.

‘In early,’ said Jon, taking his suit jacket off and hanging it on the back of his chair. ‘Rick Saville, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. Good to meet you.’ Not overdoing his smile.

Jon shook the sergeant’s hand, feeling slightly less pressure returned. Jon kept his grip, waiting for the subtle press of fingers that would indicate membership of the Masons. Nothing happened. Maybe he was a DS this early in his career because he actually merited the rank.

‘Where are you joining us from?’

Rick sat down. ‘I’ve just completed a stint at Chester House

— a project for reducing bureaucracy.’

‘And did it amount to anything, apart from producing more paperwork?’

Rick smiled briefly, though his eyes remained guarded. ‘Not really.’

‘I take it you’re on the accelerated promotion scheme, then?’

He nodded. ‘I did my two years’ probationary down in Chester, but all the action’s up here, so I applied for the fast track with Greater Manchester Police as soon as I could.’

‘Graduate?’

‘Yes, Exeter University. History and Law. You?’

Jon shook his head. ‘Joined as a bobby over twelve years ago.’

‘You’ve done bloody well to make DI by now, then.’

‘Cheers. How do you find the accelerated promotion scheme?’

Rick kept his hands on the table, interview-style. ‘Very challenging, to be honest. It’s all the tests — they never seem to end.’

Jon leaned back and looked at the paperwork spread out on Rick’s desk. Statements from friends, relatives and associates of the Butcher’s second victim.

Rick saw the direction of Jon’s gaze. ‘A bit of homework. All these tests I do, it’s a hard habit to break.’

Jon sat down. ‘Any first impressions?’ he asked, turning his computer on.

Rick tipped his head to one side. ‘Not really. I just wanted to familiarise myself. But this second victim, Carol Miller, she seems to have been called in on a lot of evenings and weekends to cover the maternity ward.’

Jon shrugged. ‘That’s the nature of locum work, isn’t it? You’re on call for when the full-time staff cry off. Which is usually evenings and weekends.’

Rick tapped a biro on the pile of documents, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. ‘Her last twenty-four hours…She left the baby with her mum just after five in the afternoon, but she wasn’t on duty in Stepping Hill until seven. You don’t leave your baby two hours earlier than you need to, surely? Yet Carol Miller’s mum was under the impression her daughter had left to go directly to work. So what was she up to?’

Grudgingly, Jon admitted to himself that he was impressed. Of course, the discrepancy hadn’t escaped the investigating team. Many suspected Carol was hiding something. Attention had turned to her phone records. ‘That’s what a few of us are wondering. Maybe she just needed a break from the little one, but didn’t want to admit it.’ He opened his briefcase and took out a perspex folder. Inside was the card from the maternity ward’s noticeboard.

His first thought was to keep everything back from his new partner, at least until he could be certain if he was McCloughlin’s stooge or not. He glanced across the desk. Rick’s eyes were roving back and forth across a witness statement. Skim-reading

— something Jon couldn’t master, hard as he’d tried. Watching the younger officer absorbing information like a sponge, he suddenly felt threatened.

He looked at the card again, knowing that teamwork was far more effective.

‘I had a thought yesterday, sparked by something my missus said. Carol Miller was always trying to lose weight, but never very successfully. Then she got excited about something she’d spotted at work. Last night I checked the staff noticeboard on the maternity ward at Stepping Hill hospital. One of the midwives mentioned Carol had been talking about getting a rowing machine. I found this.’ He spun the postcard across the desk.

Rick trapped it under one hand and picked it up. ‘A rowing machine. Did you try the extension number?’

Jon shook his head, ‘I thought it might be more interesting to catch him face to face. His shift starts later this morning.’

By now the room was filling up with members of the investigating team. Behind their desks was McCloughlin’s private office, separated from the rest of the room by a flimsy partition wall. The phone on his desk began to ring.

‘Where’s the boss?’ asked Rick, the word sounding odd coming out of his mouth.

Jon shrugged as Rick got up. He skirted eagerly round his desk, stepped into the office and picked up the receiver. Far too keen, Jon thought, knowing he would now have to take a message. Turning his head slightly to the side, he listened to his new partner.

‘Hello. DCI McCloughlin’s phone…No, he’s in a meeting I think…Well, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know where the meeting is. Can I take. . Right, I see. Hang on.’ He now sounded totally flustered. ‘Jon? This guy’s insisting on talking to the SIO.’

Jon swivelled in his seat. ‘Who is it?’

‘The radio operator downstairs. Can you…?’ He held the phone out as if it was a piece of equipment he no longer knew how to operate.

‘DI Spicer here.’

‘Jon, it’s Sergeant Innes,’ voice sounding strained. ‘Who’s the tool that picked up the phone?’

‘My new partner.’

He heard an exasperated sigh. ‘Where’s McCloughlin?’

‘I don’t know. Have you tried his mobile?’

‘It’s switched off. A call’s come just come in from near a patch of waste ground by the Belle Vue Housing Offices. Are you near a box?’

‘Hang on.’ He transferred the call to the phone on his desk and turned to his computer screen. ‘I am now. Go ahead.’

‘Have a look at this FWIN.’

Jon typed the Force-Wide Incident Number in and the operations room report filled the screen. ‘Oh, shit, another body.’

‘Yes. Minus her outer layer — and I don’t mean clothes. I’ve told the nearest uniformed units to get over there and secure the scene. The major-incident wagon’s also on its way.’

Jon scanned through for the exact location of the incident.

‘Off Mount Road? I don’t believe it.’

Anger surged through him. The bodies were being dumped right on their doorstep, and Jon felt as if the killer was deliberately goading him. He felt his grip tightening on the telephone receiver. ‘OK, we’ll get over there. Leave a message on McCloughlin’s voicemail will you?’

Before he’d hung up, Rick was in his face. ‘Mount Road? Where’s that?’

‘Put it this way. With the traffic at the moment, it would probably be faster to walk there.’

Despite that, they drove, Jon anxiously listening to the police radio for any sign of McCloughlin’s whereabouts as they fought through the commuters clogging the A6, siren only slightly speeding their progress.

Finally they turned off the main road on to Kirkmanshulme Lane, only to join the end of a stationary queue of cars. The oncoming lane was just as choked, and Jon realised there was no way of cutting through. ‘Bollocks,’ he said, his fingers drumming angrily on the steering wheel.

Rick looked out of the side window. ‘Belle Vue. Strange name for such a grim-looking area.’

Jon glanced at his passenger, then at the surroundings beyond their windscreen. ‘Belle Vue? In its day this was the biggest leisure park in Britain. There was a zoo, complete with mangy lions and miserable bears, a huge roller coaster, boating lakes, dodgems, miniature steam railway. Even a speed-racing track.’

‘Where?’ asked Rick, twisting in his seat, trying to find evidence of what Jon had just described.

‘This whole area. The speedway track was over there, where that car auction site is. One of my earliest memories is of coming out here with my dad, getting sprayed with the red grit that the bikes used to kick up as they roared past. I used to wear a pair of old flying goggles to protect my eyes. They still race, but at the greyhound track nowadays. Of course, you’re not allowed to perch on the barriers at the bends any more.’

‘I bet there was hardly any trouble, either.’

Hearing the wistful note in his voice, Jon let out a short cough.

‘Don’t you believe it. There’s no harking back to a lost golden era with Manchester. The housing around this area was shocking — still is, in fact.’ He nodded at the road in front. ‘There are houses just up the road in Gorton on the market for five grand. Negative equity is alive and well around here. When the leisure park was first built it was surrounded by back-to-back terraces crammed in around the cotton factories and chemical works. Smoking chimneys, open drains, the stench from the knacker’s yards.’

‘You make it sound like a Lowry painting,’ Rick laughed, a note of disbelief in his voice.

Jon’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘That’s because it was, man. Lowry painted life as he saw it, no gloss. When my family first moved over here from Galway they lived in an area called Little Ireland in Ancoats. You’ve never heard of it?’

Looking a little bored, Rick shook his head.

‘Engels described it in his Condition of the Working Classes in England,’ Jon replied, resisting the temptation to make a comment about his partner’s university education. ‘It was the worst slum he’d ever seen. Hundreds of Irish families shared cellars as their homes, slept on straw. You’re from Chester. Did you never learn about the region’s history at school?’

Rick reddened. ‘I went to boarding school down in Surrey.’ Jon clenched his teeth. Should have bloody guessed.

Rick broke the awkward silence. ‘So it wasn’t all polite promenading, then?’

Jon sighed. ‘People needed an escape. Working in a factory all week was tough back then. That’s what led to the music halls and drinking dens. I’ve read about what used to go on and it was pretty much the same as today, including the drunks, the prostitutes, the gangs.’

‘Gangs?’

Enjoying the fact he was giving a history lesson to a graduate in the subject, Jon nodded. ‘Scuttlers, they were called. Peaked caps, bell-bottom trousers. They’d form a group and steam into people — knock them down and rob them. Manchester’s always had gangs. Three lads from one were arrested for breaking into the zoo. They got into the bird enclosure and kicked a load of penguins and pelicans to death.’

‘Recently?’

‘No, late fifties. My granddad told me about it. They all got packed off to borstal.’ He paused, then couldn’t resist adding,

‘Their grandkids are probably the ones mugging clueless southerners who come to study at Manchester University today.’

Rick started to pick nervously at a thumbnail. The last comment had definitely hit home.

Eventually they started inching past the huge expanse of a multiplex cinema’s car park. It was empty except for a group of lads racing radio-controlled cars across the smooth asphalt.

A pang of guilt played in Jon’s head. Trying to make up for his cutting remark, he said, ‘The lake was right there, massive thing with an island in the middle. The roller coaster was called The Bobs, one of those old, creaking wooden things. The cars rattled round it, looking like they were about to fall off at any moment. There’s not much my old man admits to being scared of, but he happily let me know that The Bobs terrified him half to death. I was too small to be allowed on — probably saved me from a lifetime of nightmares.’

‘So it was all here when you were growing up?’ Rick asked, sounding chastened.

‘Yeah, just, though it was well past its heyday by the time I was old enough to visit.’

‘What happened to it?’

‘It closed down during the seventies, bit by bit. Bigger and better attractions elsewhere: Chester Zoo, Alton Towers, Blackpool. Plus tastes change — there used to be a huge ballroom where they held the national brass band contest. Not much demand for stuff like that any more.’

Rick was staring at the cinema. ‘How long’s that been here?’

‘The Showcase? Early nineties, maybe. After the last parts of the park were demolished this place was waste ground for over a decade. The facelift started with that. Burger King and Pizza Hut sprang up on the back of it, and so did the bingo hall. But I hear they’re all struggling again. The Printworks in the city centre is dragging huge numbers of cinema customers away. If the Showcase folds, it’ll revert to wasteland again, I suppose.’ Jon thought about the processes of decay and regeneration that seemed to wash regularly across the city like a tide lapping at a beach.

At last they turned on to Mount Road and a couple of minutes later they pulled up by the Belle Vue Housing Office. Council workers were crowded in the car park, staring through the metal struts of the fence. The mist had burned away, and across the grass several uniformed officers were attempting to keep a small gathering of locals at bay. Jon and Rick started across the grass, warrant cards ready.

‘Has someone been killed?’ A council worker in a shiny grey suit called through the fence. The eager note in his voice riled Jon. ‘It looks like a corpse.’

Jon paused and stared at the man, took in his pallid skin and fish-like eyes. ‘So do you.’ He carried on, leaving gasps of shock behind him.

Without turning his head, Rick murmured, ‘Please, don’t mince your words.’

He smiled to indicate sarcasm but Jon’s face remained stormy.

‘One thing I hate is members of the public getting a thrill from this sort of thing.’

As they reached the rendezvous point in the outer ring of tape Jon noticed a young man nearby lining up the crime scene in the viewfinder of his camera phone. ‘If I hear that click, I’ll impound your phone as evidence.’

The man lowered the phone, an uncertain expression on his face. A uniform stepped over and, as he noted down their names, Jon nodded towards the man with the phone. ‘Take his name and address.’ Then, louder, ‘The perpetrator of a crime often returns to where he committed it.’ The man looked as if he wished he’d stayed at home.

Jon and Rick proceeded to the inner cordon. The pathologist and crime-scene manager had yet to arrive, so no one was entering the circle of tape. Beyond it was the body. Like the first two victims, she was naked except for a pair of knickers. Unlike the first two victims, her face had been removed.

Jon felt his throat contract. Shit, we’ve got an evil bastard on our hands.

Rick looked away first. ‘That’s grotesque. It’s like something from that exhibition.’

Jon turned his head. ‘What exhibition?’

Rick looked up at the sky. ‘What’s his name? Von Hagen, that’s it. He removes the skin from corpses, preserves them, then puts them in various poses. The exhibition was down in London not long ago.’

They turned back to the dead woman and regarded her for a little longer before Rick added, ‘She seems too young to have lost that many teeth.’

Jon nodded. The smooth and supple skin that remained on the corpse’s limbs was that of a young woman, yet half of her teeth were missing. Keeping his eyes on the body, Jon began walking round the perimeter. With each step the sense that he was viewing some sort of display increased. ‘You should investigate that.’

Rick looked at him enquiringly.

‘That Von Hagen thing. It occurred to me when looking at Carol Miller’s body — why risk dumping it in the middle of a public park? He must be trying to make some sort of a point. I thought it was a warning, but maybe it’s a display.’

He looked around. Once again houses bordered the grass: a council terrace down one side, more-expensive-looking properties with large rear gardens on the other. Several worried owners stood behind their fences, exchanging comments. Above the roofs he could just make out the tops of the floodlights that ringed the greyhound track. A solitary phone mast towered over the scene, topped by ugly panels of grey metal. ‘If only there was a camera on that.’

About five minutes later the Home Office pathologist arrived.

‘Fast mover,’ observed Jon as the pathologist folded his long limbs into a white suit.

‘The call came through when I was on my way to work. It was easier to come straight here.’ He slipped on white overshoes and, laying down footplates before him, approached the body.

While Jon waited for him to complete his initial examination, the major-incident wagon pulled up in the Housing Offices car park. Several officers approached the crime scene, carrying poles and a white plastic canopy. As soon as the pathologist had properly surveyed the body Jon said, ‘What do you reckon?’

‘Well’ — the pathologist stood up, one knee popping loudly

– ‘she’s been here most of the night. There was a heavy dew and some mist this morning. I don’t know when the dew point occurred — I noticed my car had a light covering when I took the dog out for a walk at about eleven o’clock last night.’ He looked at the sun, still low in the sky. ‘The side of the body still hidden from the sun is soaking, as is her hair.’

‘Any idea on time of death?’

‘Rigor mortis is pretty well established. The facial muscles are stiff, though whether the fact that they’ve lost their layer of skin is relevant I’d have to find out. Despite that, the limbs are also going. Her being out here all night would have delayed its onset, but I’d say she was killed a good twelve hours ago, maybe more.’

‘And the lack of blood around the body. She was moved here?’

‘Just like last time. One thing I’m not sure about is the damage to her abdomen. The wounds are very rough.’

‘Dog bites,’ said Jon.

The pathologist looked dismayed and Jon was pleased to have broken through his professional detachment.

‘What’s your opinion now on this guy’s medical skills?’ Jon asked, hands in his pockets.

The doctor looked at him, regret tugging at the corners of his eyes. ‘To remove a face in its entirety like this takes a lot of time and skill.’ He crouched, extending a finger to the victim’s hairline. ‘He’s created a coronal flap by cutting from one ear, across the top of the forehead to the other ear. Then he’s peeled the skin away — not particularly hard where the forehead is con- cerned, since the peri-cranial flesh is quite loose and you only have the frontalis muscle to worry about.’ He pointed to his own forehead and raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s the one that lets you do that. Next, I imagine he made incisions down the sides of the face and right along the jawline. This is where it would have got complicated. The muscles in your body are attached to your bones by tendons. Your facial muscles differ from all your other muscles in that they attach directly to other muscles or to the skin, which is why the human face is capable of such an amazing array of expressions. The movement of one muscle has an effect on its neighbour — a kind of ripple effect, if you like.

‘Whoever did this has divided the skin from the ocular muscles — which surround the eye — almost perfectly.’ He pointed to an exposed eyeball. ‘Just a tiny nick here, then he’s carried on down the face, leaving all the muscles around the nose perfectly intact — I forget their names, levator and Compressor naris or something. Next, he reached the mouth. He’s removed her lips, with the result she now looks like she’s grinning for kingdom come. Perhaps that’s what he wanted.’

‘So he’s had formal training of some description?’ Jon asked, relieved to look away from the mutilated corpse.

‘He’s got surgical knowledge, without a doubt. The key to surgery is all about finding a plane — the layer between the dermis, or outer layer of skin, and the sub-dermal tissue. Once you’ve found your plane, you make your incision along it and the skin lifts away quite easily. But to find your plane and keep it while navigating all the contours of the face and its delicate arrangement of muscles? That’s quite a feat.’

Jon nodded his thanks and turned away. When he got his hands on whoever was doing this, the bastard had better admit to everything straight away. Otherwise it would take more than the duty officer to stop him visiting the sick fuck in his cell and beating a confession out of him with his bare hands.

By the time McCloughlin showed up, the body was shrouded by a white tent. The pathologist and photographer were inside and flashes kept going off, making it appear like they were in there enjoying a particularly morbid party.

‘DI Spicer,’ McCloughlin announced, rubbing his hands together. ‘First to the scene again?’

The comment wasn’t accompanied by a smile. On the Chewing Gum Killer case, Jon had arrived at a crime scene ahead of McCloughlin and the observations he’d made had eventually led him to the killer. It still bristled with McCloughlin.

‘Sir, I picked up the call to your desk phone,’ Rick intervened.

McCloughlin didn’t seem bothered and Jon glanced at Rick. So, the arrangement you have with McCloughlin extends to taking his phonecalls?

‘And Jon took the opportunity of teaching you how to crack a case all by yourself?’ McCloughlin walked off without waiting for an answer.

Rick spoke from the corner of his mouth. ‘Someone got out of bed the wrong side.’

Jon’s hands were clenched tight in his pockets. ‘I guess that’s our cue to bugger off.’

As they set off back to the car Jon spotted a petite figure with tousled black hair hurrying across the grass towards him. She was struggling slightly with what looked like a large plastic toolbox: Nikki Kingston, the crime-scene manager. He’d used just to fancy her, but with what they’d gone through during the Chewing Gum Killer investigation, the bond between them had deepened to a level he’d never dare let Alice know about.

‘Nikki, you’ve got this one?’

She smiled up at him. ‘Jon Spicer. My lucky day.’ Her eyes lingered on his for another heartbeat before she turned to Rick.

Jon coughed. ‘Nikki Kingston, crime-scene manager. DS Rick Saville, my new partner.’

Rick’s businesslike exterior underwent a fractional softening, and Jon noticed a lightness in his touch as he clasped her hand.

Nikki turned back to Jon. Something was sparking in her eyes and jealousy jabbed him in the chest. ‘So, am I reporting to you?’ she asked.

He shook his head, ‘I’m on another part of the investigation. Carol Miller, mainly.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You mean this one’s connected to the

Butcher? I was just told it was a naked body in a field.’

‘It is. Except her face is about two feet away from the rest of her.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Nikki winced.

Jon gave her a grim smile. ‘See you in the incident room.’ She turned and started towards the crime scene again.

The walk back to their car took Jon and Rick past a makeshift ramp made from an old door and a few breezeblocks. Bicycle tyres had scoured the grass in front of it and left muddy tracks across the door’s surface. As they stepped round it Jon spotted something.

‘Nikki!’ he called.

She turned, saw the urgency of his wave and came back.

‘Is that a latex glove?’ Jon said, pointing. It lay in the long grass beneath the door, fingers slightly curled as if caught in the act of trying to crawl from their sight.

She squatted down to get a closer look. ‘Yes, and that looks like blood covering it.’ She examined the ramp. It had been knocked out of alignment with the breezeblocks. Treading carefully, she scrutinised the area around the door. Pointing to a heel mark in the muddy patch by the foot of the ramp, she said,

‘Looks like someone could have bumped into it.’

Jon looked back at the tent covering the body. With a finger he drew a line in the air back towards the road. The ramp was right in the way.

‘What are you thinking?’ asked Rick.

‘Our man dumps the body and sets off back to his vehicle. Only it’s dark. He walks full into this ramp, stumbles and drops the glove.’

Nikki was nodding with excitement, ‘Don’t go any nearer. There’s another footprint there, too. We need to get this area taped off.’ She turned towards the main crime scene.

‘Nikki!’ He caught her hand. ‘When McCloughlin asks, it was Rick who found the glove.’

‘No way,’ Rick protested. ‘It was your find.’

Jon didn’t take his eyes off Nikki. ‘You heard me?’

‘Whatever,’ Nikki replied with a frown, twisting her fingers from his grip and running away.

In the car Jon began indicating to do a U-turn, then changed his mind. ‘Let’s go for a coffee. If we get back to the incident room now, everyone’s going to be pumping us for information, and there’s no way I’m taking the wind out of McCloughlin’s sails.’

‘Why’s he got it in for you?’ Rick asked.

Jon ran a hand over his knee, wondering how much Rick knew. ‘It’s old history. I had a stroke of luck.’

‘The Chewing Gum Killer?’

Jon looked out the side window and nodded.

‘That was the favourite topic of conversation last summer in

Chester House.’

‘Well, there you go. You know already.’

‘Yeah, but it was McCloughlin’s case. He was SIO, he gave the interviews on the TV and to the press when it was all over.’

‘His case, but my collar. You know how it is,’ Jon said guardedly.

‘So why did you tell the CSM to say it was me who found the glove?’

‘We shouldn’t have even been there before him. The last thing I needed was to find what may turn out to be a crucial piece of evidence.’

‘So you got her to tell McCloughlin it was my find?’

‘Yeah,’ Jon answered, hating the fact that Saville now had something on him.

In the coffee shop, Jon tipped a sachet of white sugar into his black coffee. Rick carefully tapped half a sachet of brown sugar into his latte, then reached for the pot of chocolate powder to dust the foam on top. When he spotted Jon watching him, he suddenly changed his mind.

‘Anyway, back to the present,’ said Rick, sitting down. ‘First victim.’

Jon took a seat opposite him. ‘Angela Rowlands.’

Rick sat forwards. ‘Forty-two years old. Divorced for just under two years. Got the three-bedroom semi in Droylesden as part of the settlement. Worked part-time as a legal secretary in a solicitor’s just off Deansgate.’

Jon nodded. ‘You’ve done your homework.’

‘That’s just surface stuff. I’m hoping you know something more interesting.’

Jon took a sip of coffee and grimaced slightly with pleasure at its sharp taste. ‘Her daughter, Lucy, lives down near Castlefield, doing very well in web site design. Lucy told us her mum had been very lonely since the divorce. Hurt too. The husband dumped her for a “younger model”, to use Lucy’s words. Rowland’s stage in life: mid-forties, married for twenty years. She was in a routine. It was safe and comfy, but totally devoid of single men. Lucy had encouraged her to get out and start trying to meet someone, but apparently the idea terrified her.’

‘Don’t blame her,’ Rick leaned back. ‘Playing the field after being out of it for that long?’ He shook his head.

‘Exactly. Apparently, Lucy took her to a singles’ night at a bar in town. Lucy did very well, but her mum didn’t get a second glance. After that Lucy suggested she try dating agencies — but only the upmarket ones.’

Rick toyed with his drink. ‘Ones that advertise in the broadsheets?’

‘Yup. And at several hundred quid just to join, they’re not cheap.’

‘So we’ve got her coming into contact with various men, none of whom had a previous social connection with her. Have we got the list of people she had dates with?’

‘Only just. They were reluctant at first, because their members’ records are strictly confidential. Then someone pointed out to them that having the Butcher of Belle Vue on their books was probably more of a risk to their profits than a few disgruntled members. Rowland received dozens of member profiles, but only had around fifteen actual dates, we think. Each one’s being looked into now.’

Jon downed his coffee in one gulp. ‘According to Lucy, she hadn’t had much luck with any of them. Her confidence was low. Before the divorce she’d only ever dressed up for a few gin and tonics at their local every Friday. Now her wardrobe was hopelessly out of date.’ He tapped a forefinger on the table to emphasise his next point. ‘Then she mentioned to her daughter over the phone that she’d decided to do something. She sounded nervous and excited. She wouldn’t say what, just that it was something she should have done a long time ago.’

‘Did Lucy find out what she was up to?’ Jon shook his head. ‘Next time she saw her mum, it was in the mortuary. We’ve gone over her phone records and bank statements, but nothing of much help there.’

Both men were silent as they turned possibilities over. Jon looked up. ‘What about the porter selling this rowing machine? That was a surgical glove back there. They must be two a penny in hospitals. How about nipping over to Stepping Hill hospital?’

Rick looked uncomfortable. ‘Shouldn’t we run it by

McCloughlin first?’

‘Strictly speaking, yes.’

Rick hesitated before pulling out his mobile. ‘I’ll give him a quick ring, then. May as well play things by the book.’

Jon gave a noncommittal shrug as Rick made the call.