Not his favourite genre; he was more a loud guitar and sneering, disenchanted vocals man, but there were a few disco tunes he'd admit to liking. What was this one, though? It was bugging him so much he felt like climbing out of his car, jumping in the lift and asking whoever was playing it to death.
Each time the rhythm changed to indicate the chorus, he started to whistle the hook. The singers were a group of women, though a hazy recollection suggested there might have been a bloke with them.
It rhymed with 'boots', the only word of the chorus he remembered. Then it came: 'Going Back To My Roots', by Odyssey. Got it, he thought, content to have scratched that itch.
Then he stopped, sitting forwards, as if an ice cube had been put down his back.
He sprang from the car, jogged to the tower-block entrance, through the doors and punched the lift button. It clanked into action, but he couldn't stand the wait. He took the stairs, striding up two at a time, adrenalin overriding fatigue. By the time he reached the tenth floor he could feel his heart pumping in his ears. Through a door he reached a dim corridor, lit only by grubby windows at each end. There was no need for him to follow the numbers on the door; he could follow the noise. As he strode down the corridor it got louder and louder, more and more distorted.
A straw-haired woman in a worn red dressing gown over jeans and a T-shirt, her face creased by smoking, stepped out of her door into the corridor.
She saw Foster, clocking his suit.
'Are you here about whoever's making that bloody noise?'
'Who lives there?'
She shrugged. 'Bert died six weeks ago. I thought it had been empty since. Council's probably given it to some fucking kids who're gonna make my life a misery.'
'Go back inside,' Foster said. 'I'll sort it out.'
'You better,' she said and disappeared, though Foster noticed she left the door slightly ajar.
He stopped at number 65; the bass was making the door hinges rattle, as if they might blow. He knocked loudly. No response. He tried once more.
No answer again.
He took a step back, lifted his foot and crashed his heel against the door. It failed to budge, but he sensed another attempt might break the lock. It didn't, but on his third kick he heard a splinter, and with his fourth attempt it flew open.
He walked in to be faced with three doors. The noise was coming from the one in front of him. He opened it and was almost floored by the wall of sound. In the middle of the room on the floor was a small, round chrome CD clock radio. The LCD
display showed 12.15. Save for the clock, the room was unadorned. A grubby net curtain barely covered the window, through which he could see the outline of central London. He made for the stereo and, covering his hand with the sleeve of his shirt, he bumped the off switch. At last, silence.
Now that one of his senses had been restored, he looked around. The place stank. The flocked white wallpaper was stained and grey, bearing the shadows of old furniture. To one side was a kitchen. He walked in; nothing except a few battered, obsolescent white goods.
He returned to the small entrance hall. Opened one door and was hit by the smell of pervasive damp.
The bathroom. Nothing except the drip from a scaled bath tap. Closed the door, tried the next one.
The smell hit him first. One he knew well. It emanated from the only thing in the room. The body of a woman. From the stench, he knew she had been here longer than twenty-four hours. She was on her back in the middle of the floor, dressed in a pair of jeans and a brown sweater. A few flies buzzed around her. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and put it over his nose, then leaned down for a closer look. It was the hair he noticed. There was none.
From the brow to beyond the crown was only a fleshy mass and the white dome of her skull.
She had been scalped.
16
Edward Carlisle shook his head.
'This is like something from the Wild West,' he said, peering at the exposed scalp. 'I think what he's done is lifted up the hair -- from what's left at the back it was brown, about shoulder-length. Then twisted, used the point of the knife to slice around the parting, and then pulled the whole thing off.
Must have taken some doing. I'll tell you one thing, though.' He looked up grimly. 'From what I see here, I believe she was alive when he scalped her.'
Foster couldn't imagine what that was like. Didn't want to. 'How long she been dead?' he asked.
'Around sixty hours or so.'
Monday, he thought.
'And from the lividity on her back I'd guess she's been lying here all that time, maybe a few hours less,'
Carlisle added. 'Again, she did not die here, she was moved postmortem. Again, there's a single stab wound to the heart that probably killed her. You can survive being scalped, particularly when as much care has been taken as this.'
The killer knew they might be hanging around, Foster thought. So he got her up here before the place was surrounded. One step ahead again.
Detective Superintendent Harris walked into the room, his long face leached of colour and rigid with concern. 'What's the preliminary verdict?' he said, hands on hips.
'She was stabbed and scalped,' Foster said.
'Scalped? Jesus Christ.'
'She's been here since Monday night. She was probably killed then.'
Harris stared down at the floor. "You sure about those timings?' he said to Carlisle.
'About as sure as I can be.'
'Cable's innocent, Brian,' Foster said. 'You pulled him in Monday afternoon. He couldn't have done this.'
Harris nodded slowly. Foster knew he would be playing this out in his mind, how it would go down with the press and the upper echelons of the Yard.
'Of course, you've got the knife,' Foster added.
Harris rubbed his chin ruefully. 'Not the knife involved in the killings. Forensics confirmed that this morning.' He let out an enormous sigh. 'OK, he's still out there. I accept that. I should have given you more cover here. I accept that, too.'
Foster held his hands up. 'Would have been too late, Brian. He was ahead of us. We may have found the body sooner, that's all. But the fact remains that we have one person to try and save, one last chance.
The fifth victim will be killed before one a.m. Sunday morning.' It passed through his mind that they might already be dead. 'The body will be found in Powis Square. We have two days, perhaps less.'
'How do you want to play it, Grant?'
He was back in favour. Back in charge.
'I'm waiting on a phone call that will help me decide,' he said.
Carlisle interrupted. 'There appears to be no identification on her, but the killer missed this in her back pocket.'
He held a tightly balled piece of paper in between forefinger and thumb. Foster took it and peeled it open carefully. It was a receipt.
'Supermarket. Monday morning. She paid by credit card.'
Harris summoned a detective and asked him to get an ID as soon as possible. Heather entered the bedroom, her hair still wet from a shower. Through the open door, Foster could see forensics working the clock radio. She glanced at the victim, then looked at him.
'Nigel's been on the phone. He's been at it since first thing this morning. He's already traced a number of Fairbairn's living descendants and hopes to have them all by the end of the day.'
'Someone going to fill me in?' Harris asked impatiently.
'In 1879 me police arrested a man in connection with the murders in Notting Dale and North Kensington.
He was charged with two of them, tried at the Old Bailey, found guilty and hanged.'
'I see.'
'Except for one thing: he almost certainly didn't do it. He was convicted on the evidence of a single witness, who claimed to have seen him following one of the victims.' He wasn't sure how Harris would react to the next detail. 'But the police also conveniently found a knife at his lodging house, although the suspicion was that it was planted.'