The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Page 14

  “The DNA found on each of the first nine victims’ foreheads belonged to another one of those nine victims…” He swallowed hard. “However, on the two new victims, the male victim had no kiss mark or DNA left at all, and we haven’t worked out why yet, and the other victim, Judith Roper, had kiss DNA that is completely unknown.”

  Craig’s jaw dropped. A new DNA!

  Liam said what his boss was thinking.

  “Crap! That means there’s someone else dead out there that we don’t know about.”

  John was quick to shake his head. “Not necessarily dead yet. The DNA must have been in liquid form to soak into the sponge effectively, and it was colourless, so, unless the killer’s a research scientist who can extract DNA from hair roots and make it liquid, or has the equipment to distil clear plasma from blood, the DNA must have already been in a clear liquid form, and the easiest of those to obtain is saliva. Saliva only flows when you’re alive.”

  There was a disgusted silence while people pictured the killer attempting to collect saliva from someone.

  Craig shuddered and shook his head.

  “That only tells us they were alive when he obtained it, John, not that they still are. OK, so we don’t know that our next victim is dead yet, but we do know that the killer has them.” He turned to Ash. “I want a list of every missing person in Northern Ireland this month. Male and female. Especially anyone reported missing in the past few days.”

  Another damn thing to investigate.

  He noticed the pathologist edging forward, as if he had more to say.

  “Something else, John?”

  “Yes.” He turned to Davy. “Davy, Mike’s emailed over the unknown Kiss DNA and the DNA of our John Doe, so you can run them. There’s something specific on there that might help you ID him.”

  He turned back to the screen. “Next slide, please.”

  A close-up of Judith Roper’s face appeared, displaying the unmistakable shapes of fingerprints on both cheeks. John pushed past the group’s gasps.

  “These are new bruises which showed up post-mortem using black light. I’m going to check the other corpses for the same marks. Some of them are still in our morgue, but,” he turned to Craig, “we could be looking at some exhumations here, Marc.”

  Craig nodded, resigning himself to the grim task.

  The pathologist walked to the screen and traced the dead woman’s cheeks with a finger. “As you can see, these are fingertip marks. Marc, would you mind coming here?”

  Craig obliged.

  “OK. If I stand in front of you and place my hands either side of your face, you’ll see-”

  He checked the screen quickly for reference and then placed his hands along Craig’s cheeks, while Annette finished what he’d been going to say.

  “That he held their faces like a lover.”

  “Harder than any lover, but yes, he definitely held their faces, and then he kissed them on the forehead. Correct.”

  Liam shook his head firmly. “No. Not correct. Where was the sponge? He couldn’t have held it if both of his hands were occupied…” His voice tailed off as he realised something. “You’re saying he wore it over his own lips.” He extended his tongue and made a noise of disgust. “Eurghh. Bloody weirdo.”

  The image made Craig wince too. “If Liam’s right, John, then surely the perp’s own DNA would have been left on the other side of the sponge?”

  “And if we had the original sponge that might help us, but we don’t. And before you ask, no, there was no other DNA on the foreheads. Mike and I toyed with the idea of some sort of sponge stamp that he held, but as both of his hands were on the victim’s cheeks how could he have? No, my guess is the killer coated his lips with something first, to prevent his own DNA transferring.”

  “Lip sealant.”

  Everyone turned to see who’d said the words, so Rhonda grinned and said them again.

  “Lip sealant. You can buy it at any chemist. It’s like liquid plastic. You paint it over your lipstick to keep it on.”

  John nodded. “Yes, that might work.”

  Liam couldn’t resist a quip. “I bet Karl just loves the feel of that.”

  The constable’s romance with Drugs Squad sergeant, Karl Rimmins, had been going strong for nearly two years.

  Craig shot his deputy a warning look and got back to the point.

  “OK, so the killer held the victim’s faces like a lover and kissed them on the forehead.”

  John corrected him. “It might have looked like a lover’s hold, but remember the grip was so hard that it left marks. It would have hurt them.”

  He saw Annette’s mouth open to ask a question.

  “Yes, they were still alive when he did it, Annette. There had to have been blood circulating or they wouldn’t have bruised. But the fact the bruises aren’t visible on normal viewing means they were made just before death, although peri-mortem would have worked as well.”

  Craig shook his head in disgust. “Anything else before we move on, John?”

  The way the pathologist shuddered said that there was.

  “The victims were probably lying down.”

  “What?”

  “When he kissed them. They were probably lying down. That is, the victim was.” He paused as something occurred to him. “Although, they could both have been, of course.” The idea was clarifying as he spoke. “In fact, they must both have been lying down, or he’d have been kissing their foreheads at an angle-”

  Craig raised a hand to halt him before he dug an even deeper hole. The detective’s next words emerged slowly.

  “So…there was no sexual assault…but…what? The killer lay on top of them…held their faces and….and then kissed them on the forehead?”

  John answered with a nod.

  “How do you know? That they were lying down, I mean. And were they definitely still alive when he did it?”

  It sounded better than saying ‘were they already dead?’ and raising the spectre of some necrophiliac serial killer with a kissing quirk.

  Craig deliberately hadn’t looked at anyone as he’d asked the question, and Nicky’s squeak on “still alive” said that had probably been a good idea.

  John replied matter-of-factly. “I know they were lying down because of the angle and pressure required to leave the prints, and the position of the kiss. The way I showed the grip on you only approximated the fingers’ position; Mike and I had to try several times before we got them spot on, and in order to exert enough pressure to leave bruising it required the victim to be lying down.” He hurried on to avoid jokes, turning towards the analysts. “We’ve sent you magnified copies of each fingerprint. They’re not great but you might get something if you run them.”

  He paused for a moment, deliberating over the rest of Craig’s question before answering.

  “I can’t say they were definitely still alive when he kissed them, just that they were when they were bruised-”

  Liam cut him off. “Sexual. Had to be.”

  Craig disagreed. “It seems more like aggression and dominance to me, and that would fit better with revenge.”

  Annette nodded. “Or justice. In their mind at least.”

  John was still on his explanation. “Although… Someone lying on top of you is pretty strange, so unless the victims had been completely passive they would have struggled and that should have smeared the kiss.” He continued, thinking as he went. “Yes, it definitely makes sense that the bruises and kisses were left just before or even during death.”

  And that was it; the signal for a full-team meltdown. Craig hastily called for a five-minute break.

  ****

  The Glens of Antrim.

  Dan Torrance closed his eyes, retracing the steps that he’d taken that day. Whoever had abducted him had to have known that he would be heading to the civic hall that lunchtime, yet even he hadn’t known that until he’d received the text from Dougie an hour before.

  He tutted at his own stupidity. Dougie never s
ent him texts, he always phoned him, it was his way; something to do with not wanting things written down for anonymity’s sake, a habit learned the hard way through a drunkard’s haze. The text must have come from his kidnapper; Torrance didn’t waste his time speculating how when any teenager could hack a mobile phone nowadays.

  OK, so someone had wanted to get him and now they’d got him. But the real question, as his abductor had already said, was why him? The reformed alcoholic didn’t bother wondering. He’d been a nasty drunk for almost three decades, so the number of people that he’d harmed along the way was plenty long. Under the ninth step he’d made amends to the ones that he could remember as soon as he’d got sober, but he’d always known that had left many more victims without a name. It had to be one of those who’d kidnapped him, and whatever he’d done to them had to have been pretty bad to deserve this.

  That left him with two choices: accept that he deserved his fate, whatever it was going to be, and just lie back and think remorseful thoughts, or, and this was the option he preferred by far: escape, stay in one piece, and try to find out who’d taken him, and when they were safely in jail he could go about the business of saying sorry to whoever else he had harmed.

  Decision made, that left him with how he was going to escape, and the first step in that direction was to hope that whatever paralytic he’d been dosed with would wear off pretty fast.

  ****

  The C.C.U. 5 p.m.

  Craig called the group back to order and summarised.

  “OK, we have eleven victims, all but one found with someone else’s DNA on their forehead, and you’ve heard Doctor Winter theorise how it got there.”

  John went to object to the word theorise but a glance from Craig stopped him in his tracks. They both knew that the pathologist was correct, but right now Craig wanted to keep all things potentially necrophiliac deliberately vague.

  “It also seems that one of the DNAs is from a person so far unknown. So, we must assume that there is a new victim out there and the hope of saving them brings added urgency-”

  He was cut short by a simultaneous snort of scepticism from Susan Richie and Kyle. Kyle spoke for both of them.

  “They’re already dead.”

  Liam gave him a shove. “You spooks are cold bastards, you know that.”

  Susan Richie reared up in her seat. “You can’t say that!”

  Craig gave her an icy smile. “I think you’ll find he just did. And given that there is someone out there that we might still be able to save, your defeatist approach has no place here.” His voice rose ominously. “So, if you can’t say anything helpful, both of you, shut up!”

  Richie’s mouth opened to say something more, but Liam peered directly in her face silencing her as Craig went on.

  “OK, we have a confirmed ID on Judith Roper, but our male victim is still unknown. Davy and Ash are working on that and the missing persons angle. Annette, could you and Rhonda support them on those, please.”

  He was answered by quick smiles that eased his tension. It was amazing how much easier life was when people did their jobs without a fight.

  “Also, Doctor Winter may need some warrants for exhumation, so Andy and Nicky, could you assist him with pushing those through when or if they become necessary, please.”

  “Will do.”

  “Good. OK, we’ll go into each victim in detail at tomorrow’s briefing. I’d like that at four-thirty again, Nicky.” He topped up his coffee as he spoke. “For now, let’s move on. I’ll take Aidan then Andy, and we’ll finish with the analysts, please.”

  With that he took a deep drink of espresso and sat back down in his chair, his mind racing with how to prevent a new death. Aidan Hughes took to his feet, pointedly avoiding eye contact with Susan Richie in case it put him off his energetic stride.

  “Davy, could you show the first slide.”

  An image appeared on the screen.

  “OK, this is the head injury that Anne Morrison received. Run through the other ten images quickly, Davy, please.”

  A series of external injuries, some apparently minor, flashed by, as Aidan provided the narrative.

  “What you’re seeing here are all of the external injuries found on our victims. In some they were major, in others not.”

  Craig started paying attention. Aidan was about to show them something good; he was sure of it.

  “OK, so I thought, if we think one killer is doing all of this, then why aren’t all the external injuries identical? If they’re part of a signature, then they should be as identical as possible. It’s part of the ritual.”

  Craig murmured. “Except that they’re not part of a signature.”

  Aidan nodded. “Right. They’re showing us something instead.”

  Liam wrinkled his forehead. “What? Some other bunch of eleven people who were battered that way?”

  Aidan smiled. “Almost. What if the killer isn’t copying eleven other people but just one?”

  Craig nodded, seeing where he was heading. “You think one person suffered all of these injuries.”

  Aidan gestured Davy to show the next slide. It was a body outline diagram, of the type used by detectives, CSIs and pathologists to mark injuries on, and it was covered in red marks.

  “I’m just at the start of my analysis, and I want to break it down by age and sex as well, but for now I’ve ignored both of those things and just marked all of the external injuries on one body. This is the front of the body, and the next slide shows the injuries found on the back. The dots represent bumps and puncture wounds, the slashes cuts and abrasions.”

  Davy clicked, and the posterior outline appeared. Hughes glanced over at the analyst.

  “Davy, can you display the photographic versions underneath them, please.”

  A moment later they could see where Hughes had got his sketches from, as they viewed two composite photographs made from overlapping post-mortem images, arranged to show all of the victims’ external injuries, front and back.

  John Winter rose to his feet. “Can you display just the two sketches side by side, Davy?”

  He walked over to the screen and stood staring at the images.

  Craig was staring too.

  “Have you ever seen one body with that many injuries on it, John?”

  The templates were a mess of red.

  The pathologist’s answer was thoughtful. “I’ve certainly seen bodies that have been a catastrophe, especially from trauma like explosions, but they’re usually dismembered and thankfully we don’t have many victims nowadays that fit that bill.” He stepped closer to the screen, looking more intently. “But you might see this with mechanical injuries… people caught in factory or farm machinery… and maybe…”

  As his voice tailed off, Aidan took back the floor. “I was thinking that I could work with Doctor Winter on the different templates, chief, maybe to see if there were any cases that matched.”

  As Craig nodded vaguely, Liam made the obvious leap.

  “That’s why you mentioned revenge! You’re talking about a revenge killer.”

  Deidre Murray joined in. “That could make sense. Someone who had a loved one killed in a horrific way and wants to get back at those they feel were responsible, so they’re doing the same to them. Maybe a Troubles killing-”

  The Troubles was the term applied to the thirty-year conflict in Northern Ireland that had claimed over three thousand five hundred lives and injured almost fifty thousand.

  Craig shook his head. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s take a step back. Aidan, yes, excellent, follow this through wherever it goes, but let’s remember who our victims are here. They weren’t paramilitaries, they’re just average Joes and Jo-”

  Liam begged to differ. “Who knows what they did in the past, or who their families were, boss. Someone could be killing them for what they did.”

  Craig conceded the point. “Fair enough. OK, check into their backgrounds, Aidan, but don’t go disappearing off down rabbi
t holes. Do you have anything else for us?”

  Hughes shook his blond head, daring to look at Susan Richie for the first time. It was a triumphant, two-fingers-up glance that made Craig smile.

  “OK, very good work. Andy, you’re up next.”

  This DCI approached the screen in a much more leisurely way, nodding to Davy.

  “Maestro. If you please.”

  It was the signal for a series of straight lines to appear, colour coded as Craig had seen them before. After another nod Davy added a set of X and Y axes.

  “OK, these lines represent the positions in which the bodies were left at the crime scenes. You’ll see that they’re all at different angles to the horizontal, ranging from five to ninety degrees, and one victim, Richard Jarvis, faced in a different direction to the others. So far, in trying to make sense of what they might represent, and with the help of our analysts and pattern recognition software, I’ve ruled out three dimensional objects and barcodes, and we’re currently running them for locations, map references, routes and symbols. But I’d be very happy to take other suggestions as to what they might show, especially if we view them all as components of one case as Aidan just did.”

  He indicated the screen hopefully. “Any ideas? Anyone?”

  John spoke first. “Could they be indicating times? On a clock face?”

  A glance exchanged by the analysts said that it wasn’t so far-fetched.

  “Good, thank you. We’ll add times to our list.”

  Deidre Murray ventured an opinion. “What if they represent something in another language? One that we don’t know.”

  Andy wrinkled his forehead for a moment before nodding Davy to note it down.

  It was then that the ideas dried up, with only a few mouths opening and then quickly closing again to say that it was time to move on. Craig stepped in.

  “OK, good. Keep working on it, Andy. Dig into the victim who was pointing the wrong way, in particular, and liaise with Aidan and John there. If this is all linked to one case, the lines’ meaning might suddenly become obvious.”

  Andy was returning to his seat when Liam threw a spanner into the works.