Private London

Chapter 38

The woman was estimated to be in her mid-to late twenties, was naked and had no identifying marks or tattoos on her body.

Her fingerprints didn’t show up on any database. Neither did her DNA but it had taken three weeks for DI Webb to get that information: the report had landed on her desk only that morning. The dead woman’s teeth were intact but were useless for identification purposes – unless they found a candidate to match them against.

The only significant clue apart from the fact that she had had her heart surgically removed was the fact that the third finger on her left hand had been severed at the second knuckle. If she had been married there was no evidence of it now.

The press had run wild with the story. All manner of theories were put forward. The most lurid of which was that the woman had been slaughtered in some kind of blood sacrifice or voodoo ritual.

It wouldn’t be the first time. Kirsty remembered the West African boy that the Metropolitan Police had called Adam. His torso had been found in the Thames. Chemicals in his stomach had been identified as a so-called ‘magic potion’ containing traces of pure gold, a clear indication that his murder had most likely been a ritual killing.

And now, three weeks since the first mutilated woman’s body had been discovered on the banks of the Thames, a second had been found a few miles away in King’s Cross.

Organs removed, wedding-ring finger amputated. Kirsty Webb had no doubt they were dealing with a serial killer.

Or killers. If the same people had taken the young student Hannah Shapiro last night – then the police were definitely dealing with a group of them.

Remembering Hannah made Kirsty think of Dan Carter and his god-daughter, still lying unconscious in an intensive-care room. And thinking of him made her remember that today was their wedding anniversary – and then she really, really did want that cigarette.

Damn the bloody man! Everywhere she turned in London he popped up like the proverbial bad penny. But fingers crossed that all that would change soon. Kirsty was on the shortlist for a new initiative being set up to coordinate worldwide information on serial murder. It was a prestigious job, carrying with it a promotion, a commensurate salary hike and, most importantly of all, it was based in Manchester! About two hundred miles north from Dan bloody Carter as the crow flew.

If she could crack the mystery wide open she had a far better chance of getting the post. The only thing was, of course, that the serial-killer element had taken her off this case as lead. She was just a cog in the machine now.

So Kirsty needed to make things happen – which was why she was here on her day off watching the post-mortem on the unknown woman found in a vermin-riddled lock-up in the King’s Cross area.

She had tracked down the owner of the garage. A certain Edward Morrison, a retired motor mechanic from Paddington. They had arrived at the address with enough blue lights to decorate Oxford Street. However, a startled Mr Shah and his young bride, the new occupants of the ground-floor flat, had informed them that Edward Morrison no longer lived there.

He had died of a heart attack some six months earlier. There were no living relatives and no one had been officially aware of the lock-up until the Met had traced its ownership. It was another dead end in a series of dead ends.

Doctor Harriet Walsh looked over at the detective. ‘Still no idea who she is?’

‘None at all. We’re going through the missing-persons register, obviously, but she could be from anywhere in the country. It’s going to take time.’

The doctor nodded thoughtfully. ‘Or from another country.’

‘Exactly. There anything you can tell me ahead of the post?’

‘Are you lead on this?’

‘No. Just conscientious.’

The doctor smiled. ‘Fair enough.’

‘We know about the finger being cut off. Are there other similarities?’

The doctor walked across to a cabinet and picked up some photographs.

‘There was extensive damage done to the soft tissue, as you know.’

‘The rats.’

‘Yes. I took some photos and then had them enlarged. If you look here on the third rib you can see a definite scratch.’

Kirsty took the photo and looked at it. ‘And this tells us what?’

‘It tells us that this didn’t come from a rat’s teeth but from a man-made item.’

‘What kind of item?’

Doctor Walsh walked over to her instrument tray. ‘One of these,’ she said – and picked up a scalpel.