It was as near as possible a carbon copy of the way Katie Bishop had been found.
Except that Katie did not appear to have put up a fight. The camera now started to show that this young woman certainly had. There was a smashed plate on the floor, with a mark gouged out of the wall above it. A shattered dressing-table mirror, bottles of perfume and jars of make-up lying all over the place, along with a smear of blood on the wall, just above the white headboard. Then a lingering shot of a framed, abstract print of a row of deckchairs, lying on the floor, the glass shattered.
Brighton had had its share of murders over the years, but one thing, mercifully, it had never been clouded by before was the spectre of a serial killer. It wasn’t even an area Grace had needed to know much about – before now.
Nearby, a car alarm beep-beep-beeped loudly. He blanked it out as he stared at the freeze-frame of the dead young woman. He had regularly attended lectures given by SIOs on serial-killer cases at the International Homicide Investigators Association annual symposium, which was mostly held in the USA. He was trying to recall the common features. So far, Spinella had kept his word and there had been no mention in the press about the gas mask, so a copycat killing was unlikely.
One thing he did remember clearly from a lecture was a discussion of the fear that could be created in a community when it was announced that a serial killer was out there. But equally, the community had a right to know, a need to know.
Grace then turned to DCI Duigan. ‘What do we have so far?’ he asked.
‘Nadiuska’s best guess is the young woman has been dead for about two days, give or take.
‘Any idea of how she died?’
‘Yes.’ Kim Murphy started the camera running and zoomed in, pointing to the young woman’s throat. A dark red ligature mark was visible, then even more clearly for an instant as the burst of flash from a police photographer’s camera strobed across it.
And Grace’s own leaden innards sank before Kim confirmed it.
‘Identical to Katie Bishop,’ she said.
‘We’re looking at a serial killer – whatever that description actually means?’ Grace queried.
‘On what I’ve seen so far, Roy, it’s too early to be able to say anything,’ Duigan replied. ‘And I’m not exactly an expert on serial killers. Luckily, I’ve never experienced one.’
‘That makes two of us.’
Grace was thinking hard. Two attractive women killed, apparently, in the same manner, twenty-four hours apart. ‘What do we know about her?’
‘We believe her name is Sophie Harrington,’ Murphy said. ‘She’s twenty-seven and employed by a film production company in London. I answered a phone call a little earlier, from a young woman called Holly Richardson, who claims to be her best friend. She had been trying to contact her all yesterday – they were meant to be going to a party together last night. Holly last spoke to her about five on Friday afternoon.’
‘That helps us,’ Grace said. ‘At least we know she was alive then. Has anyone interviewed Holly Richardson?’
‘Nick’s gone to find her now.’
‘And Ms Harrington clearly put up one hell of a fight,’ Duigan added.
‘The place looks smashed up,’ Grace said.
‘Nadiuska’s found something under the nail of one of her big toes. A tiny bit of flesh.’
Grace felt a sudden surge of adrenaline. ‘Human flesh?’
‘That’s what she thinks.’
‘Could it have been gouged out of her assailant in the struggle?’
‘Possibly.’
And suddenly, his memory pin-sharp now, Roy Grace remembered the injury on Brian Bishop’s hand. And that he had gone AWOL for several hours on Friday evening. ‘I want a DNA test on that,’ he said. ‘Fast-tracked.’
As he spoke, he was already using his mobile phone.
Linda Buckley, the family liaison officer, answered on the second ring.
‘Where’s Bishop?’ he asked.
‘Having supper with his in-laws. They are back from Alicante,’ she replied.
He asked for the address, then he called Branson’s mobile.
‘Yo, old-timer – wassup?’
‘What are you doing right now?’
‘I’m eating some unpleasantly healthy vegetarian cannelloni from your freezer, listening to your rubbish music and watching your antique television. Man, how come you don’t have widescreen, like the rest of the planet?’
‘Put all your problems behind you. You’re going out to work.’ Grace gave him the address.
66
The silence was fleetingly broken by the tinkle of the teaspoon, as Moira Denton stirred the tea in her delicate, bone china teacup. Brian Bishop had never found his in-laws easy to get along with. Part of the reason, he knew, was that the couple didn’t really get along with each other. He remembered a quote he had once come across, which talked about people leading lives of quiet desperation. Nothing, it seemed to him, sadly, could be a truer description of the relationship between Frank and Moira Denton.
Frank was a serial entrepreneur – and a serial failure. Brian had made a small investment in his last venture, a factory in Poland converting wheat into bio-diesel fuel, more as a token of family solidarity than from any real expectation of returns, which was just as well, as it had gone bust, like everything else Frank had touched before it. A tall man just shy of seventy, who had only just recently starting looking his age, Frank Denton was also a serial shagger. He wore his hair stylishly long, although it was now tinged a rather dirty-looking orange, from the use of some dyeing product, and his left eye had a lazy lid, making it look permanently half-closed. In the past he had reminded Brian of an amiable, raffish pirate, although at this moment, sitting silent, hunched forward in his armchair in the tiny, boiling-hot flat, unshaven, his hair unbrushed, dressed in a creased white shirt, he just looked like a sad, shabby, broken old man. His brandy snifter stood untouched with a stubby bottle of Torres 10 Gran Reserva beside it.
Moira sat opposite him on the other side of a carved-wood coffee table, on the top of which was yesterday’s Argus with its grim headline. In contrast to her husband, she had made an effort with her appearance. In her mid-sixties, she was a handsome-looking woman, and would have looked even better if she had not allowed bitterness to so line her face. Her dyed black hair, coiled abundantly above her head, was neatly coiffed, she was wearing a plain, loose grey top, a pleated navy blue skirt and flat, black shoes, and she had put make-up on.
On the television, with the sound turned down low, a moose was running across open grassland. Because the Dentons now lived most of the time in their flat in Spain, they found England, even at the height of summer, unbearably cold. So they kept the central heating in their flat, close to Hove seafront, several degrees north of eighty. And the windows shut.
Seated in a green-velour armchair, Brian was perspiring. He sipped his third San Miguel beer, his stomach rumbling, even though Moira had just served them a meal. He’d barely touched his cold chicken and salad, nor the tinned peach slices afterwards. He just had no appetite at all. And was not up to much conversation either. The three of them had been sitting in silence for much of the time since he’d come round a couple of hours earlier. They had discussed whether Katie should be buried or cremated. It was not a conversation Brian had ever had with his wife, but Moira was adamant that Katie would have wanted to be cremated.