3
All promise had bled from the day. It was just after three p.m. when the investigating team gathered for their first briefing, and already the lights were on at West London Murder Command - officially known as Homicide West - an anonymous building next door to Kensington police station. Inside, the mood was grim but determined. Foster was standing at the front, beside the whiteboard. The victim's name was written on it; beneath that were pictures of his body.
The top of Foster's giant, close-shaven pate shone in the strip light.
The team had been speaking to friends and family of the deceased. Some were still out, though not Heather. At least, as far as he knew. He couldn't explain her absence.
A few more details had emerged. Darbyshire was a trader who worked at a bank in the Square Mile.
He lived out in Leytonstone, the city commuter belt, with his wife and two kids.
'This is what we know,' Foster declared slowly and deliberately in his rich molten croon that demanded, and always got, attention. 'Darbyshire goes to the pub with three men at five thirty. An hour earlier, he called his wife and said he was going out with clients, but that was probably a white lie because all three were colleagues. They have four pints. One of them goes to buy a fifth. Darbyshire says he feels hot, faint. The pub is packed, cheek to jowl, so perhaps no surprise there. But he's only thirty-one and, apart from being a smoker, he's fit; he plays football every Sunday. Doc Carlisle tells me the heart looked healthy.
'We've interviewed his mates and he seems like a happy family man. His life revolved around his job, his friends, his family and West Ham United. He was liked at work, and he had no particular worries, financial or otherwise, as far as we can tell, so not much stress.'
Looking at Drinkwater, 'Andy, chase up toxicology and tell them to get their arses in gear. I want to know what was in his bloodstream as quickly as they can. Any medication, anything at all.'
Turning back to face the others, 'He told one of his mates he was going outside for a fag - which, if he was feeling hot and claustrophobic, is fair enough. He leaves. Then he disappears. It's almost seven p.m. The next time anyone sees him, he's dead and mutilated in a churchyard across the other side of London.'
Foster let his words sink in before continuing, 'At some point after leaving that pub, he comes into contact with his killer. The killer then either persuades him or forces him into a vehicle or a building, removes his hands and stabs him. Our killer is very strong, has help, or Mr Darbyshire is so incapacitated that our killer can sever his hands without too much of a struggle. He then does one other thing.' From the desk in front of him Foster held up a picture showing what had been carved on Darbyshire's chest.
'He shaves his chest and then carves a series of letters and numbers. Look closely and you'll see it says 1 A 1 3 7.
Now the obvious question is: what does this mean?'
The question was met by silence.
'A reference,' someone suggested at last.
'A crossword clue,' came another.
This loosened them up, and a few ideas were floated.
'A chess move,' said one; 'a map reference,' said another.
'Hang on,' said DC Majid Khan, a young detective who fancied himself as a comedian. 'I think that's the order for a vegetable pakora and a chicken dhansak at the Taste of the Raj in Thames Ditton.'
The rest laughed.
'We need to investigate all of those,' Foster went on, ignoring Khan's attempt at levity. 'Our killer is trying to tell us something. When we work out what, we move a damn sight closer to catching him or her.'
He cleared his throat. For the first time that day he was hit by a sudden feeling of exhaustion, but he repelled it. 'The kids who found the body say there's a tramp who lives in the churchyard. Ciderwoman, or whatever. Have we managed to find her?'
The answer was negative. They knew her real name was Sheena but she had not been seen around her usual patch lately.
'She's got to be somewhere. Probably on an alcoholiday, swigging Strongbow outside Camden Town tube. Let's keep on it. Any news on witnesses in or around the church?'
Again he got a shake of the head. That surprised him in one sense: the churchyard was by no means secluded. It was on the top of a hill on a busy thoroughfare, enclosed by tall residential buildings.
On paper, a terrible spot to dump a body.
So why choose it?
'I want us to go through every single piece of CCTV footage from every camera in Liverpool Street from seven p.m. last night. That's where he usually got the tube home. Who knows, maybe he made it on to one. And let's go through all the footage from Ladbroke Grove, too.'
Suddenly Heather burst through the door, breathless.
Foster looked for some sign of contrition, yet saw none.
'Sorry, sir,' she said. 'Tying up the loose ends on the suicidal tramp.'
The fate of the tramp found dangling from the frame of a park swing the previous Sunday morning had long since been superseded in Foster's mind by the Darbyshire murder. He felt a wave of anger.
'Give that bleeding heart of yours a rest. Put the tramp to one side and concentrate on this, please.'
'The least we can do is find out who he is, and who his family are. He has every right to . . .'
'Yes, he's got every right to equal consideration.
But that doesn't mean he's going to get it. I wish I could find the fool who invented the concept of rights, and deprive him of them. Violently.'
Heather's eyes, never docile, blazed bright with anger. Her face was always quick to express emotion, but Foster knew she would soon calm down. Having a go at her in front of the others was not the most politic thing to do, but her mission to turn detective work into another arm of the care services occasionally grated with him.
The discussion moved on to the missing hands. A search of the scene had failed to find them, or a murder weapon. The team split into camps: those who thought they might be trophies; those who thought it was a way of avoiding detection; and a third camp who thought it was neither, that there was perhaps more to it than the obvious explanations.
'What forensics do we have?' Foster asked.
'Initially, nothing really,' said Drinkwater. 'So far, the scene tells us nothing.'
The room fell silent. It was rare for forensics to fail to provide them with a few leads. Foster nodded slowly. It was as if the body had fallen from the sky.
But the lack of evidence or clues wasn't insignificant.
'What the crime scene tells us is that our killer worked very carefully, thought it through beforehand.
And it confirms that our victim was killed elsewhere.'
'Do we have any idea about motive?' someone asked.
Foster spread his hands wide; he had been giving this some thought. 'We can rule out mugging because there was still a fair bit of money on his body. And his mobile phone, too. Of course, we don't know the full story of his private life so there could be something there . . .' His voice tailed off. Foster already knew that the motive for this was one his mind had not yet considered. Something told him it was beyond the usual mundane language of murder: drugs, money, rage and envy. 'Have we got mobile phone records?' he said, changing tack.
Drinkwater told him they had retrieved the last ten calls dialled, received and missed from Darbyshire's mobile phone. Most of them had been identified as friends, family or work-related. The only call made or received after seven p.m., when Darbyshire was last seen in the pub, was to a number: 1879. The time dialled was 23.45.
'Have you spoken to pathology?' Foster asked.
'Carlisle reckons that Darbyshire was dead by then.'
'Any theories about that number?' It sounded to him like it could be for message retrieval, or the number for the network.