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

  ‘Are there pictures of the symbol on the girl’s forehead?’ Molly asked pulling the photographs out of the envelope and riffling through them. She eventually found a picture of the character carved into Patty Turner’s forehead.

  ‘Yes, as you can see, Inspector.’

  ‘No sexual assault on the girl?’ Tony asked.

  ‘No, the hymen was intact.’

  ‘Any idea what this symbol means, Doc?’ Molly said waving the picture at him.

  ‘Not my area of expertise, I’m afraid. But if I were you, I’d find someone who knows something about ancient languages. It looks to me like a glyph – a symbol that is part of a writing system.’

  ‘Thanks, Doc,’ Tony said. ‘It was worth coming here after all.’

  ‘You’re too kind, Detective. Now, if there’s nothing else… I’d like to finish eating my unappetising lunch?’

  Molly was already heading towards the door and said over her shoulder, ‘You’ll call us as soon as…’

  ‘As soon as the lab contact me with the results of the DNA analysis, I’ll be on the phone to you like a snitch with an itch.’ He laughed at his joke.

  ‘Thanks, have a productive day, Doc.’ Molly passed the brown envelope to Tony.

  ‘And you, Inspector.’

  A nice day! As she walked along the basement corridor with its flickering fluorescent strip lights, peeling white paint, and shiny red oxide painted floor she couldn’t think of one thing, which might contribute to a nice day. There was no joy in her life, no social life beyond work, no real friendship, no love, and no laughter. Is this how she wanted to spend the short time she had been given on earth? After her parents had died, after she had found out that she might be a schizophrenic, she had lost herself in her work. Now, she wondered where Molly Stone was, and whether she would ever find herself again.

  Chapter Seven

  It was three thirty-five when they arrived back at the station. Tony went to organise the incident board, marker pens, and Blu-Tack, while Molly had a cigarette shivering against the wall next to the rear entrance, and then went to the toilet. As she was washing her hands she looked at herself in the mirror. She was thirty-one now, she’d been a DI and a closet schizophrenic for a year. Her biological clock was ticking loudly in her ear, but there were a number of problems. If she was a schizophrenic, did she want to pass the gene to her offspring? A major obstacle was the absence of any men in her life. The last time she’d had sex it had been with a trainee estate agent that she’d met in a bar eighteen months ago. Trying to forget her dad, and what he’d done, she’d had too much to drink and gone home with him. The next morning she’d been terrified to discover that the sex had been unprotected. Oh, she was on the pill, but the possibility of catching something had stopped her from making any more forays into the dark world of casual sex. With work taking up every waking moment, how could she possibly meet a man who would marry her and give her babies?

  There were two phone calls that she had to make, but first she needed to get a report from the Incident Room.

  The team was busy pouring over the evidence boxes and files from the previous murders, creating incident boards that looked like works of art ready for their presentations in the morning, but mostly making a hell of a mess. The place reeked of Chinese food. Brown bags, greasy aluminium cartons, and a mixture of chopsticks, plastic cutlery, and Soy sauce littered the tables.

  They stopped what they were doing to stare at her as if she were a criminal. Tony was clearing a table to work at. A red mist drifted across her eyes and she said in a voice that could have cut granite, ‘I’ve come to get the psychological profile, then I’m going back to my office to make two phone calls. When I come back, this place better be spotless and smelling of lavender.’ She turned to Tony. ‘Don’t you clear up after them, they can do it.’

  ‘Sorry, Gov,’ DS Frank Lowen said. ‘We got carried away with what we were doing.’

  ‘Get it sorted, Frank,’ she said. ‘Have you got the psychological profile Miller had done by that female doctor?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He rummaged on one of the tables and found a two-page A4 report with a staple in the left-hand corner.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said taking it from him.

  As she walked back to her office she glanced at the front of the psychological profile and confirmed that Dr. Marie Grady’s address and telephone number was on it.

  In her office, which resembled a magnolia-painted shoebox with a table, some chairs, and a window that looked out on the squad room, she made a coffee and then rang the number given on the front of the report.

  ‘Hello?’ It was a child’s voice.

  ‘Dr Grady?’ she said.

  ‘One moment please… Mum?’ The girl was obviously in training as a secretary.

  There was a gap where she couldn’t hear anything. Then, ‘Sorry about that. Dr Marie Grady, how can I help?’

  ‘Doctor Grady, it’s DI Stone from Hammersmith…’

  ‘The Butcher Murders?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You want me to update my profile?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were a mind reader as well?’

  ‘One of my many talents, Inspector. Congratulations on the promotion.’

  ‘Thank you, I’m surprised you remember me?’

  ‘I remember you because you were Cole Randall’s partner. I told DI Miller that Randall wasn’t the killer, but he ignored me. That’s why I wasn’t called as an expert witness at his trial. If the evidence didn’t fit his theory, he ignored it.’

  ‘You know there’s been another murder?’

  ‘Yes. Are they releasing Randall?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Good. So you’re in charge of the investigation now?’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve only got seven days before I follow DCI Miller on the scrap heap.’

  ‘Seven days! So you’re in a rush then?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘I’ve taken a week’s holiday to spend with my daughter, but motherhood is not all it’s cracked up to be. I can spare some time.’

  ‘Thanks. We’re examining all four cases tomorrow morning, I’d be grateful if you could be there at say… eleven o’clock?’

  ‘I’ll see you then, Inspector.’

  The phone went dead. She remembered the blonde-haired Marie Grady that all the male detectives had drooled over. She could picture the mid-thirty year-old standing at the front of the incident room in a powder blue pencil skirt and jacket explaining the psychological profile she’d constructed. Her cleavage collecting eyeballs like a taxidermist, and a smile that could have been used on toothpaste whitening adverts. She remembered being jealous of her looks, her figure, her intelligence, her confidence… everything about Dr. Marie Grady made Molly jealous. Maybe she should have called in another criminal profiler, one that didn’t make her feel totally inadequate.

  She grabbed the Yellow Pages, but realised she had no idea what she was looking for. Where the hell would she find someone who knew about ancient languages? She logged on to her computer and typed in ‘Ancient Languages’. Forty-seven million hits came back. She realised she needed to be more focussed in her search. She typed ‘King’s College, London’ and looked at ‘Linguistics’ and ‘Modern Languages’, but found nothing useful. God, they don’t make it easy. She thought about Indiana Jones and guessed she might need someone handsome like Harrison Ford. She returned to the search engine and typed in ‘Archaeology Courses, London’. There were a number of choices, but she selected Birkbeck, University of London. There was a Helpdesk telephone number at the top of the page. She picked up the phone and dialled.

  ‘Archaeology, Birkbeck,’ said a friendly female voice. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘My name is Detective Inspector Stone of the Murder Investigation Team at Hammersmith Police Station, I’d like to talk to someone who knows something about ancient languages.’

  ‘Do you want to enrol on a course? It’s a bit late in the academi
c year, but…’

  ‘No, this is police business. Is there anyone I can talk to about ancient languages?’

  ‘You want Dr Hilary Mansell. Just one moment…’

  The phone went dead. Another female doctor, she thought. She took a swig of coffee. Maybe she should take a sabbatical. Three years off to do a PhD, she could be a female doctor as well. She realised then that since finding out she might be a schizophrenic, she had put her life on hold. Apart from her work, everything else had been terminated while she waited for the delusions and the hallucinations to begin. After this case, she had to go and see Dr Lytton, find out exactly what a ‘one-in-ten’ chance meant, and see if she could become normal again. She couldn’t keep living like this.

  ‘Hello?’ It was a man’s voice.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Dr Mansell, please?’

  ‘Speaking?’

  ‘Oh!’ She was expecting a woman’s voice.

  ‘You were expecting a woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Inspector. How can I help?’

  He probably got that all the time, she thought. ‘You know about the Butcher Murders?’

  ‘Yes. They’ve started again. The man convicted of the crime is being released.’

  ‘The killer leaves us symbols, I’m wondering if you can help us to decipher them?’

  ‘Symbols?’

  ‘It’s been suggested that they might be part of an ancient language.’

  ‘Ah, I see. You want me to look at them?’

  ‘If you would?’

  ‘Can you fax them over?’

  She thought about the implications, but on their own they would just be symbols with no connection to the case. There wasn’t time for niceties. ‘I’ll fax them, but what I’ve told you, and the symbols are…’

  ‘…confidential? Yes, I know. I’ve helped the police and MI5 before. If I tell anybody, you’ll lock me up and throw away they key.’

  She laughed. ‘Something like that. What’s your fax number?’

  He told her and she wrote it down.

  ‘I’ll have all my team together to discuss the murders tomorrow morning, can you come and tell us what you think about the symbols at say… eleven thirty?’

  ‘I’ll re-arrange my classes, but this is probably more important. Yes, I’ll be there.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

  Chapter Eight

  She strolled back to the incident room with her coffee and Dr Hilary Mansell’s fax number feeling reasonably pleased that both phone calls had achieved results. The reek of lavender rushed up her nose as she opened the door. All the tables were clear of rubbish. Boxes were stacked neatly under the windows against the wall on the left. Files and papers had all been squared off on the tables.

  ‘It smells like a fucking toilet in here,’ she said holding out the scrap of paper with the fax number on it towards DC Abby Manchester.

  The team beamed.

  Abby’s forehead furrowed as she took the paper and looked at the number. Abby was a dark-haired beauty, but with a bent nose and no breasts. Molly was convinced that if Abby underwent a nose job and acquired two 34B implants she could have been on the catwalk in Milan, or on the red carpet in Hollywood.

  Molly said, ‘Can you copy the four symbols on to a blank sheet of A4 paper, put: For the attention of Dr Hilary Mansell at the top, and fax it to this number.’

  ‘OK, Gov.’ Abby found a piece of paper, wrote the salutation at the top, and began drawing the symbols displayed on the four incident boards on to the paper:

  ‘There are two people joining us tomorrow morning,’ Molly said to everyone. ‘You already know Dr. Marie Grady – the criminal profiler – she’ll be updating us on the killer’s profile. Also, a Dr. Hilary Mansell from the Archaeology Department at Birkbeck – who’s a man by the way – will hopefully be telling us what the symbols mean.’

  ‘We should have done that a year ago,’ Frank said.

  ‘There’s probably a whole filing cabinet of things we should have done a year ago, Frank.’ She looked at all four incident boards and sighed. ‘As much as I appreciate their aesthetic beauty,’ she said, ‘I want to be able to compare one crime scene with another. Let’s have them all the same shall we.’

  There was considerable groaning as they began comparing what they had produced with what the others had done with their boards.

  ‘You could have said that earlier, Gov,’ Frank said above the noise.

  ‘I’m saying it now, Frank, but it should have been obvious to everyone. I have the feeling the boards have taken on lives of their own and you’ve forgotten why we’re here. We have four crime scenes by the same killer, which means we need to examine the similarities and differences between them, and try to find something that will help us catch the bastard. There are no prizes for artistic merit.’

  ‘You heard the Inspector,’ Frank tongue-lashed them. ‘Stop drooling over your fucking boards and make them comparable.’

  ‘Also,’ Molly had to raise her voice slightly as the mumbling began and they started to dismantle their boards. ‘We might have had a break. Doc Firestone found a blonde pubic hair on Mrs Turner from last night, but we won’t know if we’ve got a DNA match until tomorrow afternoon, or whether the person the DNA belongs to has anything to do with the killings.’

  ‘Shit,’ Frank said. ‘It could have been planted.’

  ‘Yes, I know, Frank, but we could say that about any evidence that was found. Start up a suspects board, we might be able to put a name to the pubic hair tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah, very good, Gov,’ Tony said smiling.

  Frank ran thin bony fingers through his brylcreemed hair. ‘Jesus, how the fuck does that work? The bastard’s playing us like the London Philharmonic.’

  ‘Let’s leave the serious thinking and discussion until tomorrow shall we, Frank? Finish off the boards and then we’ll call it a day.’

  ‘And I was looking forward to working through the night, Gov?’ DC Paul Morgan quipped. Paul was in his early forties with curly ginger hair, a plague of freckles, and an unhealthy-looking pallor. He was also overweight and a heavy smoker with a hacking smoker’s cough, but the worse thing about Paul were the garish ties he wore. Every day was ‘Loud Tie Day’. This morning a lime green tie with whirly fractal designs hung around his neck.

  There was a ripple of laughter.

  ‘We can if you want to, Paul?’

  ‘I’m tempted, Gov, but I’d like to see my wife and baby before they grow old and I can’t recognise them.’ Molly forced a smile back inside. She had met Paul’s wife once and she looked just like him. The baby probably didn’t stand a chance of escaping the ginger gene. A short-sighted bag lady would have recognised his wife and child amongst a billion people. Some married couples shouldn’t have children, she thought, especially those with schizophrenia.

  The second-hand in the government-issue clock on the wall ticked round to four fifty-five. She was sitting at the table where Tony had spread out the photographs of the Turner crime scene, and suddenly felt a million years old.

  Like an artist painting a landscape, Tony was busy comparing the board he was constructing with the other three boards. At the top he had written ‘Turner’, then today’s date. Underneath were normal photographs of a happy family, Steven and Fiona Turner, and their two children, ten-year-old Ben, and Patty, whose eighth birthday had been yesterday – the 4th November. To the right was a photograph of the bloody character carved into Patty’s forehead with a line between that and the smiling girl in a school photograph. Beneath these, Tony was recreating a guided tour of the crime scene in colour from the photographs forensics officers had taken in the early hours. The blood-drenched tour began in the hall, moved to the living room where there were body parts of Steven Turner and his son, Ben. In the kitchen, Fiona Turner’s torso lay on the kitchen table, and a leg and an arm were found in the back room. On the stairs lay Patty with the butcher’s axe lodged in her spine.
More body parts were discovered in the bedrooms, and the heads of the parents and son stared back at her from the windowsill in the bathroom.

  ‘You look tired, Gov,’ Tony said. ‘I can finish this off if you want to go?’

  Tired didn’t even come close. Inside, she was dead. Feelings and emotions were for people who could afford them. She had exceeded her emotional overdraft limit at the bank a long time ago. Now, she resembled a zombie, one of the living dead.

  ‘Thanks, Tony, but I’ve just remembered I need to brief the new Chief at five-thirty.’

  ‘You mean in five minutes, Gov?’

  She looked at her watch, checked it with the clock on the wall, and with her heart racing stood up. This must be what it feels like to have a heart attack, she thought.

  ‘Crap! I’d have missed that if you hadn’t said something. Right, I’ll see you lot in the morning. Make sure you’re ready to go at nine-thirty, and Frank… look after Dr Grady when she arrives.’

  They called goodnight to her as she disappeared through the door and ran down the corridor to the Chief’s office. She would like to have gone via the toilet, but there was no time.

  ***

  ‘Come?’

  Molly opened the door to the Chief’s office and was struck again by how ugly Avril Smart was. No wonder she wants me to do the press briefings.

  ‘DI Stone, come in. I like people who are on time. One of my pet hates is waiting for subordinates to arrive. Those people don’t last long working for me.’

  She wasn’t going to say she was nearly late. In fact, if Tony hadn’t said something, she probably would have forgotten altogether.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yes please, Ma’am.’

  ‘Productive day?’

  ‘I think so, Ma’am.’ Molly informed her about what the team had been doing. She told her about Dr Marie Grady and Dr Hilary Mansell, about her trip to Hammersmith Hospital and the pubic hair, and about her visit to see Cole Randall.

  ‘He’s not going to the papers?’

  ‘No, Ma’am.’