The Sixth Soul (13 page)

‘Perhaps you could phone him in the morning.’

‘Perhaps, or perhaps I could go and see him in person, as he did with me.’

‘What is it you’ve remembered?’

‘A memory. I’ve recalled something, Aidan. Are you listening to me?’

‘I’m late for prayers.’

‘This is important, Aidan.’

‘You’ve never asked to leave before . . .’

‘I’ll get the seven-thirty-seven to Charing Cross. I’ll return on the five-fifteen.’

‘Maybe you’ll arrive in London and it’s Detective Rosen’s day off, or he’s otherwise occupied?’

‘Is this my prison?’ asked Sebastian.

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘I haven’t been found guilty of a crime. Can you say the same?’

‘No.’

‘Dizzy days, weren’t they, on the London Stock Exchange?’

Aidan looked away.

‘All that money. Exhilarating, risky business, and then Pentonville. The place where you rediscovered the God of your childhood, and that’s how you came to know me. The Lord surely
moves in mysterious ways. I’ll ask again. Is this my prison? Are you my gaoler? I need an answer now.’

‘I’ll open the safe in the morning. You’ll need money for your rail fare, to travel on the tube, to eat.’

Aidan moved to go into the chapel for prayer but was held back when Sebastian said, ‘Don’t wait until the morning. I know, tell me the safe’s combination number now and I can
be on the seven-thirty-seven to Charing Cross and no further trouble to you.’

‘Please stay, Father.’

‘You should go and pray, Aidan.’ Sebastian moved his face a little closer to Aidan, pinning his eyes with a look. ‘You’re trembling, Aidan. Are you cold?’ Sebastian
smiled. ‘Don’t be scared, Aidan, just give me the combination and you can go and pray.’

Aidan remained still.

‘You’re keeping God waiting, Aidan. Tell me the combination.’

‘One-two-three-four . . .’

‘Thank you, Aidan. Now, go on,’ said Father Sebastian. ‘Go, go worship God.’

A
t eight-forty-five in the morning, Bella Dunne, a practice nurse in the Rosens’ GP’s surgery, turned away from Sarah’s onscreen
notes and said, ‘These things happen.’ Bella looked from Rosen to Sarah, focussed on her and smiled. ‘You’re definitely pregnant.’

Sarah’s fingers squeezed Rosen’s tightly. She glanced at her husband, knowing that the nurse’s confirmation hadn’t prompted in him the same unequivocal surge of joy that
it had in her.

‘There could be complications. Your age, of course, is an issue, but with your medical history this could well be an ectopic pregnancy and, as you know – and I don’t want to
alarm you – ectopic pregnancies don’t succeed to full term. They’re dangerous. I have to be totally honest with you, as I appreciate all you’ve been through . . . When was
your last period?’

‘I’ve missed two, I think.’

‘So at least eight weeks – perhaps more?’

‘Does that add up?’

They’d had a few days away in the Cotswolds, a Christmas break to escape the pressure of the case. Away from London and home, and given the terrible weather, in that short time
they’d had more sex than in the previous few months put together. It was one of the few recent memories that automatically made Sarah smile to herself.

‘Yes, yes, that sounds right.’

‘And do you want—?’

‘Yes!’ Sarah almost shouted.

‘In which case we have to get a move on,’ said the nurse. She picked up a phone. ‘Given the circumstances,’ she said as she dialled, ‘I’m going to pull
strings.’ She spoke to three people in the course of two calls before reaching her ultimate target. She turned to Sarah and David Rosen.

‘OK, you’re booked in for an ultrasound, this afternoon, three o’clock at St Thomas’s Hospital.’

‘Three o’clock, thank you,’ said Sarah.

‘Mrs Rosen? I’m aware of your medical history. Your notes indicate the gynaecological complications you’ve been through, the death of your daughter, your depression. Please be
careful with how you approach this . . . unforeseen development.’

‘Be careful?’ Sarah almost whispered. The nurse nodded.

Sarah turned to her husband, who spoke so low as to be almost inaudible. ‘Hope can be a terrible thing.’

As they headed out of the surgery, Rosen felt the vibration of his phone inside his jacket. He closed the door and answered the call. It was Bellwood, and she was driving at speed.

‘David, Julia Caton’s body has turned up.’

‘Same MO?’

‘Herod.’

‘Where?’

‘Bank of the Thames, just beyond Albert Bridge Road.’

‘If you’re there before me, take charge of the scene, Carol.’

As he ended the call, Sarah said, ‘Go on, David, go now.’

W
hen DCI David Rosen arrived, a small crowd had already formed at the scene-of-crime tape at the junction of Albert Bridge Road and Oakley Gardens.
The white tent erected over Julia Caton’s body by Parker and Willis was more to do with salvaging what was left of her dignity than protecting forensic evidence: given the action of the
Thames and the length of time she’d been there, it was unlikely there would be much left in the way of it.

When Rosen arrived at the tent, the first face he saw was Harrison’s, white protective suit, muddy overshoes, eyes fixed on the middle distance.

Rosen pulled a white suit from the back of the van and started hauling himself into it.

‘It was a jogger who found her,’ said Harrison. ‘She thought it was a sheet of plastic embedded in the mud at first but when she took a closer look—’

‘Is it definitely Julia?’

‘It’s definitely the Caton woman, sir.’

‘She had a name.’

‘I’m trying to remain detached.’

‘Got your digital camera with you?’

Harrison nodded.

‘Then go and take pictures of the ghouls at the SOC tape.’

Inside the white tent, Julia lay on her back, arms at her side, eyes shut as if she were in a deep sleep.

And Rosen found he just couldn’t look.

‘Water’s washed away anything that may have been here.’ Parker sounded the way Rosen felt: picked on by the universal engine, bullied by the stars. Rosen’s gaze dropped
to the mud and he reminded himself of the true victim. Sixty years hence, she should have been passing away peacefully, medicated to ease the journey, her children and grandchildren in
attendance.

Parker shone his hand-held torch below Julia’s collarbone and slowly tracked the light to the point between her ribs where an almost imperceptible red dot nestled.

‘Cause of death, same as the other ladies,’ said Parker.

‘Cardiac tamponade. I wonder where he got the idea from?’

‘Could be the killer’s a Kenyan,’ suggested Bellwood, at her first body recovery.

Willis stopped taking pictures. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but, yeah!’ Willis turned her attention to Bellwood and Rosen suddenly felt as if he were tuning in to a foreign
language

‘What do you mean, Carol?’ asked Rosen.

‘It was a popular murder method in the gang wars in Nairobi back in the nineties. The hoodies would pull a spoke off a bicycle wheel, sharpen it and puncture the heart of their opposite
number in the other gang. Look at the size of the hole. It’s minute. On black skins, the puncture was usually overlooked at first and the doctors in casualty were at a loss to know how come
this fit young kid’s had a massive cardiac arrest.’

A moment of quiet passed, then Eleanor Willis said, ‘It’s how that Australian guy, Steve Irwin, died. The stingray penetrated the pericardium, into the heart; blood from the heart
floods the pericardial space, stops the heart pumping; he was dead in seconds flat.’

‘Cheaper and easier to find than a gun,’ concluded Bellwood.

‘Murder weapon easy to dispose of,’ added Willis.

Parker flicked the light onto Julia’s hands. There were no apparent signs of damage to the fingers or nails, as there had been with the first four victims.

‘Maybe he didn’t lock Julia up in the same box, like the others. Maybe she was killed before she had a chance to—’

The mental image left a foul taste in Rosen’s mouth and he wondered if he was merely making noise to fend off the moment when he had to follow Parker’s light to the extensive wounds
around Julia’s abdomen. He forced himself to look.

The sight of the stone in her womb, the deadness of the rock in the seat of life, dried Rosen’s mouth and throat. He’d considered in depth the ritual significance of the stone in
place of the carved-out womb; he had taken the advice of anthropological experts and found no precedent for it. It was, it seemed, a practical device, a deadweight to anchor the body to the
spot.

The idea made Rosen want to scream out loud, long and hard at the top of his range. He left the tent.

‘Can I have the map?’ Rosen called to Bellwood. ‘The map, please.’

Bellwood came outside and handed him a clear plastic wallet with a map of London. He unfolded it and marked the location of Chelsea Embankment and Albert Bridge Road with a blue cross and a
circled number five. The blue crosses for the first body in the lake at St James’s Park, and the third body at the corner of Victoria Street and Vauxhall Bridge Road, connected with
Julia’s site to form a crooked diagonal trajectory.

‘The odds form one line,’ said Rosen, tracing it with his finger down to St James’s Park. ‘The evens form another line, coming down. Second body drop-off, Alison Todd,
just under Lambeth Bridge; fourth body, Sylvia Green, outside the Oval cricket ground. Carol, can you see? Can you see what this is?’

‘A crooked triangle without a base.’

‘No, not a crooked triangle; in fact, not a triangle at all. This is a letter, the letter A. A for Alessio.’ His voice dropped both in volume and octave. A dark and private thought
crept out into the morning light. ‘I need to speak to Father Sebastian. A for Alessio. He’s marking the earth with the initial letter of the name that mankind tried to
obliterate.’

Rosen placed his finger on the centre of Vauxhall Bridge Road, the space at the heart of the A where the dash would go to link the two diagonal sides, and felt a frisson of certainty about the
future. Father Sebastian was right – Herod would kill again, and soon.

——

A
T THE JUNCTION
of Oakley Gardens and Albert Bridge Road, a thickening band of pedestrians gathered at the SOC tape. A sergeant refused to answer their
questions while, a little further up the road, a constable made sure the traffic followed the diversion sign.

Two police cars, one marked, one unmarked, parked at the tape but Harrison didn’t notice who got out because his attention was drawn to a single figure at the back of the gathering
crowd.

Black suit, black coat, face turned to the sky, he appeared to be gazing in accusation at the clouds. One of many unhinged wanderers on the streets of London, albeit well-dressed and physically
fit-looking, head tilted upwards, his features not visible for a separate shot on the digital camera.

Harrison took pictures of individuals and groups, couples, people arriving and departing, forced to leave by other commitments. The black suit was still looking skywards, but his head was slowly
sinking, his face clearly visible now. Harrison took a snap of the man. He checked the picture. The glare was horrible and all he could see was a blurred shape. Delete? Harrison pressed OK. Image
gone.

He noticed that all eyes were fixed on the white tent on the banks of the Thames. All except for one pair.

The man in the black suit was looking directly at him. Or was the man staring into the space that he just happened to occupy? The man’s gaze hardened and Harrison knew the man was watching
him. The man smiled but the smile faded almost at once. He half held up a hand in salutation, pointed at Harrison and then at himself, making a connection between them. Then, he pointed to an area
a little way from the crowd and walked to it. Harrison followed.

‘Yeah?’ said Harrison.

‘Why are you here?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘DCI Rosen, your boss, is an idiot. That’s why you’re here, taking photographs, when you should be down there analysing the evidence.’

‘Who are you?’ asked Harrison.

‘I’ll show you my warrant card if you show me yours.’

A voice, passing in the middle distance, called, ‘Harrison!’ Harrison turned in its direction. It was Feldman. ‘Boss wants us all together in five!’

‘Who are you?’ Harrison repeated, facing the man once more.

‘Who am I? I’m very angry with Rosen, that’s who I am. See you soon.’

The man turned and walked away. Harrison resisted the urge to call him back and instead watched him as he receded, blending into the milling horde in the busy London street for whom ordinary
life rolled on.

Harrison raised his camera to take more shots of the faces in the growing crowd at the SOC tape and, behind the lens, he smiled.

——

T
HE WATER LAPPED
at Rosen’s feet, the points of a crooked letter A etched on his mind’s eye. He glanced over his shoulder to where Bellwood
and Corrigan were talking over the map, discussing some permutation or other.

Rosen felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

The display registered an inner London landline number.

‘David Rosen?’

He knew the voice immediately.

‘Father Sebastian. I was just thinking about you.’

‘I’m flattered. And I’m happy to say I can repay the compliment, with sincerity. I’ve been thinking about you, too.’

‘You’re – where are you?’

‘I’m in London today. I’m calling from a phone box. Can I see you sometime?’

‘Yes. Where are you exactly?’

‘Are you busy?’

‘Yes, I am busy but I can—’

‘That sounds like bad news. Is that water I can hear?’

‘Why are you in London, Father?’

‘Something that came out of our little chat. I’ve never been to London before. I’m curious. You know, not to see the sights. I want to go and check something, at the British
Library.’

‘What would that be?’ Silence. ‘What are you checking at the British Library?’