Birdman

'Cause of death?'

'Uh, yes.' He scanned the report and gave a low whistle. 'Krishnamurthi, the man's an Einstein! Balls on accurate.' He looked at Caffery, excited. 'Heroin. Injected straight into the brain stem. Everything would've shut down instantly, heart, lungs, the lot. They wouldn't have known a thing.'

'See?' Jack said. 'Do you see what I'm getting at?'

'Yeah — the hospital thing.'

'The brain stem, for Christ's sake. Can you see some low-end dealer knowing where to find a brain stem? I mean, Jesus—'

'You're preaching to the converted,' Essex murmured, reading the report. 'You know that.' He held up the paper. 'You'll like this too, Jack. Birdman — can I call him that?'

'If you keep it in this room.'

'Birdman's a clean freak. That or he knows enough about forensics to get rid of his evidence.' He carried the report to the desk, folding it carefully along the perforated page dividers. 'Looks like they did have consensual sex, but Birdman uses a condom and Amedure says he makes the girl wash afterwards. That or he washes them post-mortem. They've all got traces of soap in the vagina. Look, each sample's got the same concentration sodium stearate to fat. Manufacturer: good old Wright's Coal Tar.'

'So if he's so careful how do you explain the semen on the abdomen?'

'He spills a little when he takes the condom off?' Essex shrugged. 'Or he withdraws, takes the condom off and finishes wanking — sorry, let's be technical, masturbating — on her stomach. Gets her to clean herself, or he cleans it off himself later, after he's done her. But' — he held up his hand — 'he's not quite as careful as he thinks, because he leaves a trace.' He finished his beer and crumpled the can. 'Now then — here's haematology, mass spectrometer analysis of the dust-bin liner, hairs. There wasn't a follicle on that black hair so no DNA, but it is head hair, it is Afro-Caribbean. And, hey, check this out.' He looked up. 'The target wears a wig.'

'A wig?'

'Yeah, look — the blond hairs Krishnamurthi took from the victims?'

'Yes?'

'Amedure says ''The hairs were dyed, of Asian origin, none of them had roots and both ends were bluntly cut. Not ripped, or torn. I'd expect to see this in hairs taken from a wig.'''

'They were long hairs,' Caffery said. 'A woman's wig.'

Essex raised his eyebrows. 'Michael Caine.'

'What?'

'Dressed to Kill. You never seen that?'

'Paul—' Caffery sighed.

'OK, OK.' He held up his hand. 'I keep forgetting: I'm the comedian in this partnership and you're the humourless git.'

'And proud of it.'

'Yeah, and sad.' He went back to the report, chewing his thumbnail. 'And friendless, don't forget that.' He paused. 'Uh, look, the precipitin test.'

'Precipitin test? That's to, what? Check for human blood?'

'Yup. Distinguish it from animal.'

'We're talking about the birds?'

'We are.' Essex scanned the sheet, his mouth working noiselessly. 'It says that tissue in the birds' air sacs was human.'

'What?' Caffery looked up.

'That's what I said. Human.'

'You know what that means?'

'No.'

'Well, how do you think it got into the lungs?'

'They breathed it in?'

'Yes. Meaning—'

'Meaning… oh—' Essex suddenly understood. 'Shit, yes.' He sat down on Kryotos's desk, his levity gone. 'You mean the birds were still alive? They died in there?'

Caffery nodded. 'Surprised?'

'Well, kind of. Yeah.'

They were silent for a moment, pondering this. The air in the room had shifted subtly, as if the temperature had dropped a degree or two. Caffery stood up, finished his beer, and pointed to the report. 'Go on. Go on.'

'Yeah, right.' Essex cleared his throat, picked up the report. 'OK. What d'you want?'

'How does he sedate them?'

'Uh—' He ran his fingers down the paper. 'Haematology says uh — oh—'

'What?'

'Says he didn't.'

'What?'

'He didn't sedate them.'

'Impossible.'

'That's what it says here. Nothing except for… except for alcohol, some cocaine but not enough to do any damage, no phenols, no benzos, no barbs except Wilcox and young Kayleigh. Um…' His eyes raced over the page. 'Nothing. Except for maybe our anonymous lady number one who is chock-full of scag. But heroin's always awkward; everyone's tolerance is different.'

'He must have used something.'

'No, Jack. He didn't. Bits and pieces of junk in all of them, but nothing that would have done the trick.'

'You sure?'

'Sure I'm sure. Jane Amedure says so. Must be true.'

Caffery was exasperated. 'So how did he keep them still enough to stick a sodding great needle in their necks?'

'They're not magicians, you know,' Essex said solemnly, looking up from the report. 'These guys who spirit our loved ones away from under our noses, they're not especially clever. Most cases I look back on and realize how very unclever they were.'

'Unclever?' Caffery echoed, absently looking at his black thumbnail. He wondered how unclever Birdman was. How unclever Penderecki was. How unclever you had to be.

'Accidentally lucky,' Essex said.

'No. Birdman's not lucky. He knows.' He stood and wandered over to the photos. 'Doesn't he?' He appealed to the dead women staring blankly from the walls. 'Well? How did he do it?'

'Jack,' Essex said from behind. 'Look at this.'

The women stared back at Caffery: Petra, thin arms, sparkling smile and leotard; poor, dull Michelle Wilcox clutching her wild-haired daughter—

'Jack.'

Big, toothy Shellene. Kayleigh in the pink party dress, holding up a glass to the camera. 'What if it's my baby in there, my baby, my little, little girl? What if it's her?'

'How's he doing it?'

'Jack!'

'What?' He turned. 'What is it?'

'Entomology.' Essex was shaking his head. 'I know why it looks like he's not raping them. Disgusting bastard.'

'Why?'

'You know what we've got on our hands, Jack?'

'No, what've we got on our hands?'

'We've got a necrophiliac. A full-blown necrophiliac.' He tapped the report and held it out to Caffery. 'It's all there. In black and white.'

17

Early 1980s. UMDS. Gross anatomy 1.1. B stream lab rotation.

Standing in a class of ten, dotted amongst the green-shrouded shapes on stainless-steel gurneys, the sweet tang of formaldehyde deep in his nostrils, 19 years old and Harteveld knew that something life-changing was happening.

He was paired with a young female student, and assigned to the corpse of a middle-aged woman. For the next year she would be stored at night, in a stainless-steel cadaver tank, and wheeled out in the daylight hours under her green cotton sheet, to be dissected, mulled over and rearranged by his trembling gloved fingers.

She was sharp-featured with small yellow pouches for breasts, thin pubic hair, razor-sharp hip bones jutting up under papery skin. Her dark blond hair was smoothed back over the scalp.

'Doris awake and ready?' the girl student would call cheerily to the technicians as she entered the lab, pulling on her gloves.

'She's overslept this morning, look at her, can't get a thing out of her.' They'd wheel her out. 'Hey, Doris, wake up. You're on.'

And she'd be delivered to Harteveld, who stood trembling and silent, not joining the joke, sweating at the thought of the inspired frigid stillness which waited under the green sheet. Sometimes he found himself shaking so much next to her supine body that the scalpel fell from his fingers.