Sacrifice (16 page)
‘What … put on a show? They’d do all this just to shock people?’
‘I reckon it’s a kind of artistic thing.’ Heck pondered. ‘A bunch of thickie criminals, the sort we normally deal with – there’s nothing in this for them. They nearly always want the obvious. Cash, drugs, sex. By contrast, these murders have been crafted, choreographed. It’s like there’s some kind of crazy aesthetic going on … that’s only my theory, of course. The bosses aren’t totally convinced.’
Before he could explain further, his mobile began bleeping. When he put it to his ear, Jen Weeks, Operation Festival’s Head of Civilian Admin Support, was on the line.
‘DS Heckenburg!’ she said urgently. ‘HGV reported on fire. Witness says it’s been dumped on wasteland and deliberately set alight.’
‘Where?’
‘Place called Ingley Nook. Six miles from the crucifixion site.’
Heck signalled to Gregson, who was about to climb into his Ford Galaxy.
‘I’ll take my own motor, sarge,’ Gregson replied.
‘Do you know this area?’
‘Well, yeah … my first beat was round here.’
‘In that case you’re riding with me.’
Ingley Nook turned out to be a row of terraced former pit-cottages sitting alongside an unmade road, which wound across yet more spoil-land covered with ash.
‘Bloody undercarriage!’ Heck swore, as they jolted and bounced on the pot-holes.
‘One drawback of bringing a decent motor,’ Gregson replied.
‘You might have warned me.’
‘It’s worse than I remember … but I’ve not been round here for a while.’
They travelled another two miles, all habitation falling out of sight into the smudged, dingy distance, before they finally sighted smoke and the flashing blue lights of two fire engines. When they got close, they saw that the lorry – which was articulated – had been driven off the track and down a shallow slope onto open ground, where it appeared to have crashed into the concrete foundations of a former colliery outbuilding.
Heck parked up and watched as jets of water arced over the wreck. The rear section was still partly in flames, clouds of black oily smoke pulsing across the landscape, driven by a strong westerly breeze. The make and model was not immediately recognisable, while the rear registration plate had already gone, but the fire-fighters had it under control and it wouldn’t be long before the cops were allowed to make an inspection. In fact, the local station-officer was already trudging back up the slope, lifting his visor, loosening his heavy, flame-retardant tunic.
Heck climbed from the car and flashed his ID. ‘Arson?’
‘No question.’
‘Accelerant?’
‘Probably petrol. Some genius chucked it all over the trailer section, inside and out, but not the cab. Good job. If the engine had caught there’d be nothing left.’
‘They made a mistake there,’ Gregson said.
‘We
think
,’ Heck replied. ‘Could this fire have been burning all last night?’
The station-officer nodded. ‘Possibly. It’s a long way out – wouldn’t have been noticed straight away. Could have taken quite a while so long as the petrol tank didn’t blow.’ He moved off, barking orders at his men.
Heck and Gregson started down the slope. The lorry was now a hissing, blackened skeleton. While the fire-fighters reeled in their hoses and gathered their equipment, Heck fished out his mobile and placed a call to Jen Weeks.
‘Jen, it’s me!’ he said. ‘This burning HGV … who reported it?’
‘Don’t know,’ came the reply. ‘Call came through St Helens central control.’
‘Try to get some details, yeah. And have a word with DCI Garrickson … we’ll need a house-to-house on Ingley Nook. That lot may have seen something.’
From the angle of the burnt lorry, not to mention the swerving tyre tracks left behind on the slope, it had been driven off the road at speed. They peered into its interior as they circled around to the front; it had been completely gutted – every inner surface charred to a crisp. If anyone nailed to a cross had been transported in there, there’d be no trace of it now – no matter how much blood had been shed. Even more frustrating, the wheels had also been torched, each tyre so melted that the treads were unrecognisable.
The lorry had struck the foundations full-on, as though driven at them deliberately. Its radiator grille was smashed, mechanical innards poking through, leaking steam, while its front two axles had been ripped away; it had come to a rest tilting downward, its front fender at ground level. The impact had crumpled the bodywork of the cab – its roof had buckled and split wide-open, and most of its windows had warped in their frames and shattered, though the fragments remained in place. As the station-officer had said, the fire had not consumed this frontal section, though the paintwork on the cab was scorched and blistered by heat. However, though the front offside wheel was again a smoking, crispy remnant, the nearside wheel was missing.
Heck searched around for it, and located it several yards away, lying alongside the vehicle’s registration plate, which had broken into several pieces. He put the number through for a PNC check, and while he waited, crouched to examine the wheel. Unfortunately, this one had also suffered fire damage, though not as extensively as the others. It wasn’t possible to say for sure that its tread pattern was a match for the marks at the slagheap – again the rubber was melted and distorted, but there were some similarities.
‘
PNC to DS Heckenburg
,’ came a tinny voice.
‘Go ahead.’
‘
Checks out as a Scania R470 heavy goods vehicle, sarge. Reported stolen from a lorry park in Longsight, Manchester, on January 18 this year
.’
‘Thanks for that.’ As Heck shoved the radio back into his pocket, his phone rang. The caller’s number indicated that it was Gemma. ‘Ma’am?’ he said.
‘What’s the story with this truck?’ she asked.
‘It could be ours, but there’s no obvious link yet. The tread patterns are damaged, so it’s hard to say for sure … but they’re not a world away from the ones we found at the scene.’
‘How much did the fire leave?’
‘Enough for us to go at. It needs covering up ASAP – we’ll probably want another of those wedding tents.’
‘Okay.’ She paused before asking: ‘Any gut feelings?’
He glanced overhead. The sky was largely blue, but streamers of cloud were blowing in from the west. ‘The only real one is we’d better get the lab rats down here quickly. The scene’s already deteriorated badly, and we could get rain before the end of today.’
‘No problem.’ She rang off.
‘Have a look round,’ Heck told Gregson. ‘Search for any containers that might have been used to carry petrol. Also any suspect footprints. Bear in mind the fire brigade wear hobnailed boots, so we’re looking for trainer patterns, leather-soled shoes and the like.’
Gregson moved away and Heck climbed onto the running-board to glance through the Scania’s driver door, though it was difficult seeing anything through the cracked, smoke-blackened glass. He took a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, pulling them on and snapping them into place around his wrists. Making the minimum possible contact, he depressed the button on the door handle. With a
clunk
, it opened; thanks to the cab’s tilted angle, the door swung outwards and he was able to peer inside.
It was a typical motorised hovel. Maps and dog-eared vehicle documents were crammed into an open glove-compartment. Empty crisp packets and coffee-stained paper cups had been crushed into a side-pocket. A tatty little teddy bear and a set of rosary beads hung in front of the windshield. In sharp contrast, girlie posters – lithe, golden-tanned models in high heels and string bikinis – adorned the rear wall. But one thing in particular caught Heck’s eye – a book of matches, half used, lay in the middle of the passenger foot-well. He regarded it thoughtfully, before glancing up at the broken ceiling.
He didn’t want to interfere with this crime scene so soon, but the elements weren’t on their side. If it rained, the interior of the cab could be washed out. Deciding he had no choice, he reached down and, taking a pair of tweezers from his pocket, gripped the book by one edge, and lifted it up to take a closer look.
‘Bingo,’ he whispered.
Right in the middle of the matchbook’s shiny cover sat a large, oily thumbprint.
Claire’s phone hadn’t stopped ringing all day. If it wasn’t journalists from the dailies it was the Press Association, if it wasn’t the Press Association it was Reuters. Her jaw was stiff and her throat dry from trotting out the party line, and no amount of coffee seemed able to put that right, though it did its bit to scramble her nerves.
At length, she decided enough was enough, put all calls on hold and went out into the main area of the MIR, to stretch her legs. A few minutes earlier, she’d seen Gemma, Garrickson and several others coating up as they left the building. Hopefully that meant ground was being gained somewhere, but she knew she shouldn’t count on it. Herds of detectives came and went in this office like shoppers on a sales day. The atmosphere wasn’t exactly frantic, but it wasn’t relaxed either: everyone else’s phone seemed to ring as often as her own did; keyboards were relentlessly hammered.
However, none of this caught Claire’s attention now as much as the three large display boards that Eric Fisher was working on. She already knew about the middle one, which documented the various crime scenes, while the one on the left was covered with more mundane imagery: rural life in old England, by the looks of it; trees and bushes woven with ribbons, village fetes, hordes of people in fancy dress. But Fisher was now in the process of adorning the board on the right, and in this case with material of a very different nature. They were mainly sketches or drawings, even a painting or two; thankfully there were no photographs.
The first depicted a naked man bound face-first to a wooden frame. Two figures stood one to either side; both were hairy and brutish, clad in chain-mail and helmets. One was armed with a dagger, the other with a hammer and chisel. The victim’s back had been split open lengthways, and his spinal column was exposed; the ribs on one side had been chopped away from it like sticks of celery.
‘The Viking Blood-Eagle,’ Fisher said, when he saw what she was looking at. ‘A sacrifice to Odin designed to win his favour in war. The prisoner’s back was carved open, his ribs cut apart and the lungs pulled out to resemble the wings of an eagle. It was practised by conquering Viking armies, but not widely – the only captives deemed worthy of this death were kings or great war-leaders. Believe it or not, it was an honour.’
‘An honour,’ Claire said in disbelief.
‘Amazing, eh?’ Detective Sergeant Eric Fisher was a bit like a Viking, himself. He was in his late fifties and a huge, heavyweight chap, his monumental gut hanging down past the front of his waistband. He had beetle brows and half his craggy face was buried under a dense, red-grey beard. So out of shape was he that, no matter what he wore – and it was usually the required shirt and tie – it seemed scruffy on him. He wheezed when he walked and smelled constantly of sweat and cigarette smoke, but Claire knew that in SCU’s experience, as a researcher and analyst, Eric Fisher was unsurpassed.
She glanced at the next image along. This one was a painting, probably from the classical era; it portrayed two men being burned at the stake. However, wood hadn’t been piled around them. Instead, they stood on a heap of red-hot coals. The implication was obvious – the fire would burn torturously slowly. Though the victims were still alive, their eyes raised to heaven, their legs and feet had been reduced to naked bones.
‘The executions of Jacques Molay and Geoffrey de Charney in 1314,’ Fisher explained. ‘Two Templar knights burned for heresy. The idea was to drag out the immolation for as long as possible, so that all debts would be paid before they met their maker – gave them a better chance of avoiding hell.’
‘What are all these?’ Claire asked.
‘Religious killings,’ he replied. ‘Rituals, sacrifices … the purpose to achieve redemption through pain.’
Religious
…
redemption
…
‘Or to impose one’s belief system over another,’ Fisher added chattily. ‘What better way to show your god is top dog than by offering him the next god’s biggest supporters? And what better time to do it on than some special occasion that’s sacred to your faith – a feast day or what-not! How chuffed would your deity be?’
Claire tried to look away, but even glimpsing some of the other imagery was enough to turn her stomach: blood streaming down the steps of a sunbaked ziggurat, at the apex of which a feather-wearing priest had just used a clawlike metal tool to tear the heart from the breast of a body spread on a slab; a huge idol smeared with gore, a mound of flayed corpses draped in its extended grasp, while around it priests and acolytes danced nude, except that, no … they weren’t nude, they were wearing the skins of the sacrificial victims. Claire swore she could hear a demonic drumbeat accompanying that last one.
What a stupid child you are,
she thought as she walked stiffly back to her office
. Disturbed by a few drawings
. But then it wasn’t the drawings so much as what they imparted. People had done these terrible things everywhere and since time immemorial. Compared to that appalling truth, what a cosseted world
she
had grown up in – where the most shocking thing that would happen during the average week was her father murmuring ‘shit’ after snipping his finger while pruning the prize roses in the garden of their middle-class Bournemouth home. How far removed she’d been from all this, and yet now, in the blink of an eye, she was right in the belly of the beast.
It was difficult to believe, but yesterday –
only yesterday
! – she had witnessed a live crucifixion. She’d tried not to show it at the time, but that had knocked her for six. Heck had expressed similar revulsion – of course he had, but he was back out there, working, unaffected; in the rest of the office, people gabbled as they got on with stuff, ribbed each other, sniggered at idle jokes. Only now did it really strike Claire just how brave she was going to have to be – braver than she’d ever been in her life – to remain part of this team.