The Sixth Soul (18 page)

Most murder victims know their killer
: the words spun around his head as if on a carousel. He turned his attention to the coroner’s report, scanning it until he came to cause of
death. As he read the uneven typewritten findings, the blurred and speckled print seemed to dance off the page. He felt a sensation like a pair of steel talons bearing down hard on his skull.
Abruptly he was on his feet, the report gripped in both hands.

He looked around the incident room. Seven of the team in. The door to Baxter’s office still closed. Harrison on his way back from the water fountain. Bellwood working on the computer at
her time-shared desk. Gold and Feldman bug-eyed at their laptops. Others coming and going. He sat down, having caught Harrison’s eye, but Harrison looked away. Rosen stared at the
coroner’s report again and said, ‘Carol, got a minute?’

Bellwood strolled over. ‘Still no word back on Flint’s DNA?’

Rosen pointed at the file on his desk. ‘Look at that,’ he whispered. ‘Look at that, Carol, look at the cause of death but don’t react.’

Harrison glanced up from his laptop, looked across and back at the screen.

She focussed on the coroner’s report and read silently: ‘Gwen Swift died of cardiac tamponade after being stabbed in the chest cavity by a thin, sharp piece of metal, possibly the
spoke of a bicycle wheel or a section of a wire coat-hanger.’

‘Just like Jenny Maguire, Alison Todd, Jane Wise, Sylvia Green and Julia Caton. We’ve got a connection from 1973 to today. Who have we got from 1973?’ His mind raced and he
whispered, ‘Susie Armitage’, in the same moment that Bellwood said her name. An image crossed his mind: a girl and a little boy – Paul Dwyer – trapped in a locket with a
lock of black hair on a dressing table at 24 Brantwood Road.

‘Get hold of Susie. We need her to look at the locket from Mrs Swift’s dressing table.’ Rosen looked up at her ‘OK, Carol. Stand right there. If anyone comes this way,
you act as a shield between the screen and their eyes.’

‘Anyone being Harrison?’

‘Anyone.’

Rosen scrolled into the Police National Computer.

He typed in the name Paul Dwyer.

‘How old?’

‘He was seven in the late sixties.’

‘Let’s stay safe with either side of the low forties.’ He typed in ‘Age forty to fifty-five’.

Four names appeared on the screen; three were deceased, one had been a resident of Broadmoor since the eighties.

‘Shit.’ Rosen wanted to bang the table. ‘He won’t be operating under that name, though. Let’s try the HOLMES reader.’

Bellwood fetched her HOLMES laptop from her desk and took over Rosen’s seat as he blocked the view of the rest of the office. She logged on to the system and said, ‘If there’s
one specific commonality between any single detail in two separate cases, this computer system’s going to match them and throw it up. I’ve been up and down the highways and byways on
HOLMES with all the information we have and nothing’s chimed so far. What do you want me to try next?’

He considered. Rosen picked up Harrison’s internet printout, of Alessio Capaneus’s brief and bloody biography.

‘Capaneus. Have you ever typed that into the system?’

She shook her head. ‘I stuck to forensics, time, logistical details, places . . . that’s what HOLMES sorts. In terms of HOLMES, Capaneus is ancient history.’

‘Let’s imagine Capaneus’s crimes have just been reported to us. Put them in the system, Carol. We’ll take some antiquated maybes and see how they square up with some
modern definites.’

He took the scant internet information from the in-tray on his desk and summarized.

‘Alessio, precise birth date and parents unknown, thirteenth century, adopted by Filippo Capaneus and given the family name. Exiled from Florence, he returns from the Middle East and
Africa with esoteric texts. Arrested, hanged for the murder of six pregnant women, notably Beatrice Ciacco, fifth victim, neighbour of the Capaneus family . . .’ Rosen paused.
‘Let’s try that. Type in Capaneus
and
fifth victim
and
adoptive family
and
neighbour
and
Beatrice Ciacco.’

As she typed, Rosen asked, ‘Have you recorded everything about the murder of Julia Caton?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK?’

‘Done,’ said Bellwood.

She pressed ‘enter’ and within seconds a match showed onscreen.

‘Look at the gaps,’ said Rosen. ‘Whose names go in the gaps?’

‘Dwyer and Julia Caton.’

‘And he was fostered, not adopted, which for our purposes amounts to the same thing.’

‘As copycats go,’ said Bellwood, ‘that’s a pretty compelling match.’

‘We need to talk with Susie Armitage. We’ll meet her at 24 Brantwood Road. We need to pump her on Dwyer, take her back in time. We need to mine her memory. You’ve got her
number?’

Bellwood dialled Susie’s number and within a minute she had agreed to meet them at 24 Brantwood Road.

Rosen called Craig Parker.

‘The old lady’s bedroom had been mostly emptied, David.’

‘What’s been left?’

‘The dressing table and the wardrobe,’ said Parker.

‘Can you bring me the gold locket from the dressing table?’ asked Rosen.

‘The heart-shaped one with the kids’ picture and the lock of hair?’

‘Get it here pronto, Craig. I need to place it back at the scene.’

——

H
ARRISON WATCHED
R
OSEN
and Bellwood leave the office, noting their sudden departure and the nervous energy around them, without a
word to anyone. The others, the London officers who looked down their collective noses at him because he dared to come from outside the capital city, were busy at their computers. Harrison strolled
casually across the office to Rosen’s desk and almost laughed out loud. The dope had walked out leaving his mobile phone squarely on his desk for all to see.

Harrison looked around. No one was watching. It was a Motorola, a crap phone for a crap detective, a has-been, resting on laurels grown brown and grey with age, a joke detective who hadn’t
even locked his phone. He put the mobile in his pocket and went back to his own desk, the one he shared with three other people he couldn’t stand and who couldn’t stand him because they
knew he was a threat, a high flyer, the sharpest blade in the box but the one most blunted by Rosen and his lack of imagination.

The weight of Rosen’s phone felt strange in Harrison’s pocket. How he looked forward to seeing who was in the address book and intercepting any texts and voicemail messages intended
for Rosen, the idiot in the eye of a storm.

I
n Isobel Swift’s bedroom at 24 Brantwood Road, Susie Armitage looked like a child locked in the body of a middle-aged woman.

‘Mrs Armitage,’ said Rosen, ‘I’m very grateful to you for coming here so promptly, so willingly.’

‘I feel like I’m on another planet, in some other world.’

‘Most people go through a whole lifetime and don’t go near the scene of a serious crime,’ Rosen said, to encourage her. ‘You’re not only at the scene of a murder,
you’re in a place that was once a childhood home. Thank you for helping us today.’

It felt as though Mrs Swift’s bedroom had been shrink-wrapped in silence. Susie hovered just inside the doorway and Rosen judged correctly that she was scared to the point of panic.

He drew a line in the air that showed her a path from the place she was standing to the place he wanted her to go; her former foster-mother’s dressing table, where the only item remaining
was a gold locket. Bellwood gave Susie’s elbow the merest of touches to send her over.

‘Where is everything? Where’s the bed?’

‘Detective Sergeant Parker has had to remove the bed for our forensic scientists to study.’

‘Oh.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind, the thing we’d like you to look at is the locket on the dressing table. See.’ Automatically, she reached for the object. ‘But, please
don’t touch.’ She snatched her hand back.

It was open, made of worn-out gold, the lock of hair on one side, the picture of the young girl and a small boy on the other. Susie squinted.

‘Would you like some more light?’ asked Bellwood.

‘Yes, please.’

‘Not a problem.’ She flicked her torch onto the locket and Susie let out an incoherent sound that spoke of a lifetime of unresolved sorrow. Bellwood held Susie in her arms and, for
the time being, the questioning was suspended as the woman sobbed from the depths of her soul.

Rosen drifted to the window and looked down at the path next door along which the killer had managed to take Julia Caton, and put her into some sort of vehicle, without anyone seeing him. The
reason dawned on Rosen as he gazed up and down the tree-lined road. The only person who could have had a clear view of the front path of 22 Brantwood Road was the neighbour at 24 Brantwood Road
and, it was his conviction, the killer had murdered that witness some eighteen months earlier.

‘Cunning bastard,’ Rosen spoke quietly, his breath misting on the window.

‘I’m sorry.’ Susie was calming down, and Rosen returned to join them at the dressing table. ‘That’s a picture of me, and the little boy with me, that’s Paul
Dwyer. I’ve been talking to the others since I last saw you. I can tell you more, much more about what happened.’

‘Thank you for that, Susie,’ said Bellwood, softly.

She pointed at the image of herself and Paul Dwyer in the locket. ‘She must have still cared for me, deep down, to keep my picture like this.’

‘It wasn’t you she rejected, Susie; it was the whole world she pushed away.’

‘And the lock of hair?’

‘It’s not Gwen’s hair. Wrong colour.’

‘Her husband?’

‘He was fair haired.’

The beam of the torch played on the sleek black hair, the same colour as the single hair recovered by DC Willis from the loft of 22 Brantwood Road.

‘It’s the same colour as Paul’s hair. See.’ She pointed at the hair, then at the image of the little boy.

‘Why would she have taken and kept a lock of Paul’s hair?’

‘She was lovely to all the children, but especially to Paul, as he was . . . vulnerable.’

‘Vulnerable? Did he have learning difficulties? A physical disability?’

‘He wasn’t an attractive child. I think she viewed him with great compassion and that compassion turned to love for the son she could never have herself. You’ve got to remember
she had him from a baby and he was just snatched away seven years later. You know, she went strange after what happened to Gwen, but it wasn’t an overnight change. Things took a turn for the
worse after Paul’s birth mother arrived. I was sixteen when Paul was taken away, and I left shortly afterwards. I visited but . . . after Gwen, well, you know what happened with Gwen and the
foster-children, don’t you, Carol?’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘I think that hair is Paul’s. He’s not in trouble, is he?’

‘We’re not sure.’

‘I hope and pray not.’

‘If he is in trouble,’ said Rosen, ‘we’ll do what we can to help him.’

But as he spoke, Rosen thought about the guns of CO19 – Central Operations Firearms Control – at one extreme and, at the other end of the spectrum, the folk who took care of the
criminally insane in Broadmoor in the south and at Maghull up north.

‘What happened when Paul was taken away by his birth mother?’

‘His real mother turned up at his seventh birthday party. She was dressed formally but you could tell by her face, she looked harrowed. Drugs, a former drug addict, now wearing this huge
cross around her neck. She was with a man in a dog collar who called himself Pastor Jim. He tried to calm Isobel down. Paul’s mum was a member of the Church of the Living Light. The old ways
were over, she said. She’d seen the light and she’d found Jesus. It sounded good but there was something that just felt bizarre and horrible about the whole thing. Paul was clutching on
to Isobel, crying, “Mum, don’t let them take me!”’

‘Where was the social worker?’ asked Rosen.

‘Standing behind the pastor, saying, “We did notify you, Mrs Swift, we did tell you this was going to happen but you ignored us. As an experienced foster-parent, you know the birth
mother has this right.”’

‘What do you know about Paul’s mother?’

‘She came from a wealthy family. As long as she stayed clean from the drugs, they paid her an allowance.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Kate, Kate Dwyer. That’s all I know. I’ve been interrogating my memory, interrogating myself for detail, but that’s all I can honestly remember.’

Susie looked around the room, at the space where the bed used to be, and seemed completely wrung out.

‘Can I go now?’

‘Thank you, Mrs Armitage. If you think of anything else, please call me or DS Bellwood.’

Bellwood said, ‘Let’s go and get some fresh air.’

She took Susie by her elbow and left Rosen alone in Isobel Swift’s bedroom.

Rosen considered his available manpower. Harrison was the least busy. He wanted some background on the Church of the Living Light. Harrison could do the digging. He reached into his pocket where
his phone should have been and cursed quietly.

Rosen rebagged the locket and, as he left the room, felt Isobel Swift’s pain at the snatching away of a much-loved child and the gaping absence that followed the theft of love.

O
n the way back to Isaac Street, Rosen pulled away sharply at a green light.

‘We’ll get a confirmation from the DNA database one way or the other, if the hair in the locket’s a match for the loft sample,’ he observed, accelerating.

‘Hopefully this side of Christmas,’ said Bellwood.

The speedo on the dashboard said forty-five and the sign on the pavement thirty.

‘David?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you think Flint did commit those murders in Kenya?’