Jacob's Ladder (Stone & Randall 1) Read online

  ‘No you weren’t, Molly.’

  ‘So, what will you do now?’

  ‘Now, I’m going to catch the bastard, and you’re going to help me.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘My time as a copper has ended. People will always look at me and wonder if I did kill my wife and kids. But I have unfinished business with the killer. He took everything that mattered away from me, and now it’s time for him to pay, and for you to redeem yourself in my eyes. I’m going to find him and kill him, and you’re going to help me, Molly Stone.’

  ‘I don’t…’

  ‘What? You don’t think you owe me that? You don’t think he deserves to die? Time to stop sitting on the fence, Molly. Do I find him on my own, or will you help me?’

  Chapter Five

  As soon as she escaped from the asylum, Molly lit up a cigarette with trembling hands. A whirling tornado had begun to form just above her right eye, and the top of her head was turning numb. She had to get some migraine tablets before it became impossible for her to put one foot in front of the other, never mind do some work.

  It didn’t matter what ailment attacked her body, she always assumed it was the onset of schizophrenia, that it would only be a matter of hours, maybe days if she was lucky, before she became a basket case.

  At the edge of the concrete walkway, the press formed a human barrier between her and Tony’s car. If she had lived in America, she could have pulled out her gun and blasted her way through, but she didn’t live in America, and she didn’t have a gun. Instead, she had to suffer assault by microphones, cameras, and objectionable reporters. Questions bounced off her even before she’d finished her cigarette.

  She took a deep breath, and, like a bull in a fight to the death, she dropped her head and hunched her shoulders, then charged through the toreros to reach the safety of the car.

  ‘What about lunch?’ Tony said with a smile as she squeezed into the red Alfa Romeo Spider and slammed the door on her pursuers.

  She felt the debris and dust being thrown out by the flailing tornado hitting the inside of her skull and scrunched up her eyes. ‘I need to get to a chemist.’

  ‘Not another migraine? You want to see someone about those. Normal people don’t get the amount of migraines you do.’

  She wasn’t normal people. She knew she should go and see Dr Lytton and get the migraines checked out, but she was confident she already knew what was wrong with her. He would merely confirm her diagnosis.

  ‘You probably have a massive brain tumour and they’ll need to remove half your brain to get it out.’

  ‘Thanks for that, Dr Read.’

  ‘Hey, what are partners for? So, after we’ve been to the chemist, can we get some lunch?’

  ‘Do you think about food all the time?’

  ‘Mostly. That and sex… oh and cars, of course.’ Tony was still single, with a passion for fast women and faster cars, but he was a good partner and an above average detective.

  ‘Let’s get to a chemist first. I can’t make decisions when my brain is being wrenched out through my eye sockets.’

  Tony punched W12 0HS into his GPS. Hammersmith Hospital on Du Cane Road appeared on the screen. He accepted it, and while the machine oriented itself, he ignored the screams of the press surrounding his car, reversed out of the parking space with screeching tyres and flying gravel, swung round and left Springfield Asylum.

  As soon as Tony was on the A214 heading back towards Hammersmith, she felt better. The whirlwind was still there, but it wasn’t as ferocious. She reclined the seat and closed her eyes. Immediately, she began to process Cole’s ultimatum. God, what was she going to do? If she helped him and got caught doing it she’d loose her job, and probably end up in prison. The people she’d put in there would love that. She wouldn’t last five minutes. If she did help him, and they found the killer, would Cole kill him? Could she allow him to do that? Could she live with herself if she became an accessory to murder? He had nothing else left to lose, but she had everything to lose. How could she not help him? She had let him down before when he needed her. Cole was right; it was time to stop sitting on the fence. But which side should she fall on? How could she do her job and help him as well? If she didn’t help him, she would probably need to arrest him. Could she do that to him again?

  Her breathing began to quicken in an effort to stem the feelings of suffocation. She felt the tornado pick up speed as it traversed from right to left across the front of her head, clattering into the bones of her skull and bruising the soft mushy grey matter of her frontal lobe. She was conscious of an abnormally fast heart rate thudding in her ears, of sweat globules forming in the palms of her hands, under her arms, and between her legs. Jesus, are we there yet?

  ‘Chemist,’ Tony said as he bumped up on to the pavement outside a small row of shops.

  She opened her eyes, put the recliner back to the sitting position, and released her seatbelt. Tony had come off the roundabout just before Wandsworth Bridge. They were on York Road pointing towards Battersea with the boats on the Thames to their left.

  Molly noticed as she stepped out of the car, that as well as a chemist, there was also a café, an estate agents, a 24-hour Mart, and a dry cleaners. Until she had the migraine tablets, she was only interested in the chemist.

  ‘I’ll be in the café,’ Tony said. ‘Do you want me to order you something?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not hungry. I’ll see you in there.’

  Tony pointed the remote at the car, which flashed and beeped. ‘You’ve not got an eating disorder have you, like those wafer thin models in fashion magazines? I’m trying to think if I’ve ever seen you eat.’

  She ignored him and moved quickly towards the chemists. Inside, they had what she wanted. She bought two packets of Imigran and a bottle of water. After taking two tablets she sat on the wall outside the row of shops until she felt the tornado move towards the back of her skull. It would soon dissipate and fizzle out. No doubt coming back stronger next time.

  Maybe the migraines were an early symptom of the onset of schizophrenia. Maybe she should simply let them run their course. Maybe she should stop fighting them and let the madness take her to wherever schizophrenics dwell. She stood up and followed Tony into the café. By the time she’d ordered a black coffee and a salad and then sat down, her head was clear.

  ‘What did Randall say?’ Tony asked between mouthfuls of his pie, chips and mushy peas.

  It was five to one. The café was full to bursting with chattering mothers, pushchairs and children running riot, workmen with hard hats and Bricklayer boots, and old-age pensioners of all shapes and sizes. Her salad and coffee arrived.

  ‘Coming in here wasn’t the brightest idea you’ve ever had,’ she said giving a screaming toddler running past their table the evil eye.

  ‘I obviously didn’t know it was going to be like this until I got in here,’ he said. ‘Randall…?'

  ‘Wasn’t happy.’

  ‘Goes without saying. Is he coming back?’

  ‘No, he’ll get his compensation and quietly fade away.’ What could she say? No, he’s not coming back, but we’ve got a third partner. We’re going to find the killer and then Randall’s going to execute him. She didn’t have a choice. If she didn’t help Randall, God knows what he’d do. At least if she helped him she could keep tabs on him, she’d know what he was planning. And it was true what she’d said to the Chief, he was a good copper. Maybe, with his help, they could find the killer in the time she’d been given.

  ‘Yeah, that’d be the way to go,’ he said rolling his eyes to a far off place. ‘A wooden shack on stilts on a beach in the Maldives, a different woman every night who could cook, and a Bugatti Veyron purring in a lean-to: 267 mph, 0 – 60 in 2.5 seconds, one point five million for the pleasure.’

  ‘Have I ever told you you’re a male chauvinistic imbecile, Tony?’

  He laughed showing good teeth, black hair kept short and gelled, and sparkling dark brown e
yes. Always looked clean and smart in casual clothes. She had no doubt that once he’d grown up, he would be a good catch for any woman. He was certainly an excellent partner, better than she’d ever been to Cole Randall. Tony didn’t deserve to be lied to.

  ‘Lots of times.’

  ‘Well, this time I mean it.’

  Chapter Six

  An inlaid stone at the front of Hammersmith Hospital on Du Cane Road informed visitors that the Poor Law Guardians had commissioned the building in 1902. DI Stone and DC Read had walked past the weathered stone on many occasions and not even noticed it. As they ran from the car park to the Reception to escape the rain, they didn’t notice it again.

  After descending one floor in the lift, they made their way along the corridor to the cold mortuary and waited for Doc Firestone to give them the time of day. The lime-green walls contrasted starkly with the original Victorian brick-coloured tiles still fixed on the floor. Overhead, fluorescent strip lights hung on chains from the sepulchral ceiling, giving the basement room a gloomy appearance.

  ‘I’ve found a pubic hair,’ Doc Firestone eventually said while peeling off his bloody latex gloves and then switching off the microphone, which dangled overhead from a wire and an adjustable metal spring-like arm. Maurice Firestone was a small pallid man with an expanding waistline. What was left of his grey hair had been combed over the wide expanse of his baldness, and he had recently grown a goatee beard in an attempt to hold back the years. He was counting down the months to retirement, and there was a dog calendar stuck to the white tiles on the back wall above the worktop. Thick red crosses had been scored into the white boxes for the first four days of November. The dog of the month was a miserable looking Pug.

  Molly wondered what time of day he marked the red cross in the box. She would have done it first thing in the morning, so that in her mind the day had come and gone and it was just a matter of putting her coat on and going home. Maybe that was an example of the thought processes of a schizophrenic. Doc Firestone obviously put the cross in the box at the end of the working day. Maybe there was some logic to both approaches. Before she could ask Tony when he would have done it, Doc Firestone spoke again.

  ‘DI Stone, always a pleasure to see you. I missed you in the early hours of this morning?’

  ‘I was there, Doc, but I didn’t hang around.’

  ‘Yes, I can understand why you wouldn’t have wanted to. So, Cole Randall is innocent after all then?’ Doc Firestone had been practising his grisly trade at Hammersmith Hospital for just over ten years, and had carried out the post mortems on all the bodies involved in the Butcher Murders.

  ‘Certainly looks like it,’ she said wondering where to put her hands. She didn’t want to lean on anything just in case she contaminated some evidence, or human secretions soaked into her jacket. Her slacks were far too tight to use the pockets for hands. She let them dangle but then felt conscious they were too big.

  A bank of eight large freezer doors was inset into the wall to their right. Each door had a pull handle and a lock. Molly wondered whether the lock was to keep the dead in or the living out.

  ‘What’s this about a pubic hair, Doc?’ Tony said bringing the conversation back to the present.

  All four stainless steel dissection tables had cadavers laid out on them – two adults and two children. The two tables to their right were covered over with white plastic sheeting, but the shape and size of the bodies underneath betrayed the occupants.

  Owen Bowen, the ghostly-looking Anatomical Pathology Technologist, was busy walking round the second table photographing the pieces of Steven Turner – the kitchen fitter, husband and father – from every conceivable angle before the external examination was carried out. Steven Turner had been a muscled thirty-something with short thinning hair and calloused hands, but his corpse looked like a marionette that just needed wiring together and the control strings attaching to the head, hands and feet.

  On the table in front of them, Doc Firestone had made a Y-shaped incision in the headless and limbless torso of the mother – Fiona Turner who had worked in Waterstones smiling at customers and selling books. The extra few pounds round her waist didn’t matter anymore. Her head with its lustrous long black wavy hair, two arms and two shapely legs were stacked together at the bottom of the table. The rubber body block, normally used under the back so that the arms and head would act as counterweights to stretch and push the chest upwards and make it easier for the pathologist to cut, had not been used. The incision started at the top of each shoulder and ran down the front of the chest between the small breasts meeting at the lower point of the sternum, and continuing down to the pubic bone, detouring slightly left of the navel.

  The thoracic and abdominal cavities had been eviscerated of organs one by one, which were now standing on the stainless steel worktop behind him in steel trays. Each organ had been examined, weighed and tissue samples taken for further analysis. Due to the natural passage of food through the bowel during digestion, the stomach and intestinal contents had been scrutinised to identify a window for the time of death. The brain had also been removed, and was sitting next to the other organs in a large glass container of formalin.

  ‘Yes, a pubic hair with a follicle attached,’ Doc Firestone confirmed. ‘And it belongs to someone other than the two adult victims.’

  Molly’s forehead creased and she said, ‘You haven’t had time to do the DNA analysis yet, Doc?’

  ‘It’s blonde. All the family have dark hair.’

  ‘Could it be a rogue hair belonging to either of the adults?’ Tony asked. ‘Sometimes you get those weird hairs.’

  ‘It’s possible, but unlikely. We’ll need to wait for the DNA analysis, of course, but I’m quietly confident that the hair belongs to a third-party.’

  ‘Where did you find it, Doc?’ Molly said.

  ‘Ah yes, well I found it in the female’s pubic region.’

  ‘Was there any evidence of sexual activity?’

  ‘Yes, the inside of the vagina was inflamed, and I also found evidence of a condom lubricant. The problem, of course, is that without semen I can’t say whether the woman had sex with her husband, the killer – if he’s not the owner of the blonde hair – or another person entirely.’

  ‘Can you tell whether the sex occurred before or after she was dismembered?’ Tony said.

  ‘God, Tony, that’s disgusting,’ Molly said scrunching up her face.

  ‘It’s a valid question, Gov.’

  Doc Firestone pursed his lips and nodded. ‘I’m afraid DC Read is right, Inspector. In view of the way in which this family was butchered, the question is a valid one. Unfortunately though, I don’t have a concrete answer to give you. However, in view of the vaginal inflammation, I would lean towards sex before death.’

  ‘This vaginal inflammation,’ Molly asked. ‘Wouldn’t that mean she’d had sex shortly before she was killed? What I mean is, can’t we narrow the sexual partner down to someone in the house because of the time frame? It was the middle of the night, Doc?’

  ‘Yes, I know what you’re saying, Inspector, but the inflammation can last up to twelve hours, possibly longer.’

  ‘Longer? Shit.’

  ‘A sustained period of sex, or sex with a number of partners at the same time, or one after the other would increase the length of time the inflammation was detectable.’

  ‘Even after death? Wouldn’t there be… you know, changes down there?’

  Doc Firestone ripped off the green plastic apron and bundled it into a large metal bin. He then turned and picked up a plastic container from the corner of the worktop. ‘Eventually, yes.’

  ‘Can you tell whether she…’

  ‘No. Without semen I can only tell you she had sex, not with how many, or for how long.’ The Doc prised the snap-on lid from the clear plastic container and extracted half a brown bread sandwich. ‘I’m trying to diet,’ he said taking a bite from the sandwich. ‘I hate brown bread, but my dietician says it’s good fo
r me. You wouldn’t like one would you?’ he asked hopefully.

  Molly shook her head. ‘We’ve eaten. So, what you’re saying is that Mrs Turner had sex before she was killed, but you can’t say when or with whom?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it?’

  ‘She could have been having an affair with a colleague at work,’ Tony offered.

  Molly shrugged. ‘There are a number of possible scenarios. Once we get the DNA analysis on the pubic hair and it’s been put through the National Database… When will that be, Doc?’

  ‘Tomorrow, after one p.m.’

  ‘When we get that, we’ll see what the possibilities are.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got for us, Doc?’ Tony said.

  ‘What do you mean, "Is that all?" I’ll have you know that finding a pubic hair with the follicle attached in a murder investigation is a significant discovery, Detective.’

  ‘On its own,’ Molly said, ‘I don’t think it’s going to help us, Doc, even if we identify its owner.’

  ‘I can’t believe that, Inspector?’

  ‘First, the killer has never left us any evidence before with the exception of the Randall crime scene. There, he manipulated the evidence to frame Cole Randall, and everyone fell for it like suicidal lemmings. Finding a blonde pubic hair at last night’s crime scene seems too good to be true. I have the feeling the killer left the hair to drop us in it again.’

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean. No wonder you’re not overly excited by my find.’

  Tony unwrapped a stick of chewing gum and slid it into his mouth. ‘At least this time we know the evidence could have been planted.’

  ‘There is that,’ Molly said. ‘The trouble is, we don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore.’

  Doc Firestone pushed the last of the sandwich into his mouth. He then turned and picked up a brown envelope from the worktop and passed it to Molly. ‘Photographs. I’ve completed post mortems on the two children and the mother. I’m doing the father after my late lunch. You’ll get the remaining photographs and the reports tomorrow morning.’