The Art of Murder (5 page)

‘And?’

‘I was surprised to find it was hydrofluoric acid.’

‘That’s incredibly corrosive, isn’t it?’

‘You can say that again, Pendragon. But it makes sense.’

‘Why. How was it used?’

‘I’m not sure, of course, but the best scenario I can draw is that the killer placed a metal cylinder over Berrick’s dead face and poured in the acid.’ Jones placed his hands in a circle over the dead man’s facial area to illustrate. ‘This softened up the tissue, and, more importantly, made the bones of the face and skull malleable. This then enabled them to smash the hole through without shattering all the bones around the face. The hydrofluoric acid I found had leached out of the skin where the cauterising had not caught the flesh properly.’

‘Good Lord!’ Pendragon exclaimed, shaking his head.

‘After making a crude hole, the killer would have tidied it up. There are a few marks … here and here.’ Jones tapped the scalpel on the inside of the hole. Marks from a blade. The final task was to cauterise the opening.’

Pendragon felt a shiver of disgust pass through him.

‘One very dispassionate murderer,’ Jones added unnecessarily.

The DCI simply nodded. ‘I can barely imagine what
sort of person we’re dealing with here.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Any more accurate estimate for time of death?’

‘Can’t be precise, of course, but I would say most likely between one and two this morning. It’s impossible to be sure how soon after death the mutilation was performed.’

Pendragon was about to ask another question when his mobile rang. He pulled it from his pocket, recognised the number on the screen. ‘Dr Newman,’ he answered cheerfully.

‘Chief Inspector. We’re just finishing up at the gallery. Can you spare ten minutes?’

‘Certainly. Have you turned up anything?’

‘Best if I go through it with you here.’

‘Okay.’ He paused to think for a moment. ‘Give me fifteen minutes.’

‘See you then.’

The crime-scene tape was still stretched across the entrance to Durrell Place and a constable in an overcoat stood in front of it, stamping his feet. Pendragon gave him a sympathetic smile as he passed under the barrier. Dr Newman was alone in the gallery, slipping out of her green plastic overalls as Pendragon walked in. Beneath them she was wearing a black knee-length skirt and a white blouse. Beside her on the floor was her case, opened out. Next to that lay a sheet of plastic with clear bags and a line of specimen bottles arranged upon it in two neat rows.

‘You’re on your own,’ Pendragon observed.

‘My team just left. They’ll be back in the morning to finish up. It’s been a long day.’

‘Certainly has. So, what have you found?’

Dr Newman lifted one of the bags from the floor. The apple lay inside it.

‘Ah, the Granny Smith,’ Pendragon said, without expression.

Colette Newman tilted her head to one side and gave him a questioning look.

‘Our friend Dr Jones. One of his little jokes. He made a point of identifying the apple before telling me anything else about the corpse.’

Dr Newman produced a half smile. ‘We have a few prints on it, but I can guarantee they’re from a local greengrocer. Anyone who could kill someone and set them up the way they did with Berrick wouldn’t make such an elementary mistake.’

Pendragon nodded.

‘That’s confirmed by the fact that there are no prints on the chair and there was nothing on the body either. We managed to give it a thorough going over before it was moved over to Jones’s lab. Has he turned up anything, by the way?’

‘Berrick was killed by a long needle plunged into his brain. But Jones believes the victim’s head was mutilated later, possibly using some kind of press.’

‘Yes, I noticed the mark on the neck before the body was removed.’ She lifted a bottle from the plastic sheet. In the bottom of it lay a tiny fleck of grey. ‘The press idea makes sense. We found this, a sliver of steel. It’s either from a knife used to tidy the hole or a punch of some sort. Before you ask, it’s too small to help much, but we’ll put it under the ’scope at the lab.’

‘I don’t suppose our killer left anything of themself behind?’ Pendragon asked, without much hope.

‘Sadly, no. I think they must have been wearing some sort of plastic suit.’ She bent down to return the sample bottle to the sheet. ‘But I’ve got at least one thing to show for eight hours’ work.’ Newman turned and walked towards the archway leading to the reception area. Pendragon noticed for the first time that a series of marker flags had been placed seemingly at random close to the centre of the room. He followed the Head of Forensics over to the first flag. Crouching down beside her, he could just make out some black marks on the wooden floor.

‘Rubber,’ she said without looking up. ‘There’s a line of these marks across the floor all the way from reception. They stop here.’

‘From a tyre?’

‘Correct. Or, more precisely, the tyre of a wheelchair.’

Stepney, Thursday 22 January

Sally Burnside was an early-to-bed-early-to-rise type and she had a set routine. Up at 6.30 on the dot, out of the door by 6.40 and on her route around the Stepney streets. She rarely changed the course she followed: down Stepney Green, along the High Street, cut through the patch of lawn around St Dunstan’s Church, and then west along Stepney Way before heading back east along Mile End Road.

This morning was no different, though she was annoyed with herself for leaving the flat five minutes later than usual, which meant she would either have to cut short the run or be late for the tube. The pavement along Stepney Green was completely clear of snow this morning. Rain in the night had washed away most of it and there had been no fresh falls. The roads were clear too, the traffic already building up.

St Dunstan’s had looked unusually pretty twenty-four hours earlier, a patina of snow adding to the weathered beauty of its ancient stone. Now, the walls were rain-soaked, and puddles lay along the path from the gate. Sally sidestepped them; she was used to running whatever the weather.

She speeded up as she took the path around the side of the church. Ahead lay a short avenue of trees, set ten yards back from the road. She ran towards them, past a row of old gravestones. She had her head down for the first ten paces, but looked up as she approached a bend in the path. That was when she first saw something odd.

She kept up a steady pace but felt distracted, finding it hard to stay focused. What was that in the nearest tree? Five more strides and she was forced to pull up. She was not looking where she was going, it was getting dangerous. She slowed to a walk, hands on hips, trying to steady her breathing. She was ten metres from the tree now and the shape and size of the object were clearer.

A few moments later she was directly under the branches. She had stopped moving and was standing looking up at the thing above her head. It was an amorphous, flat object. For several seconds it looked something like a grey tarpaulin hanging over the lowest branch of the tree, about three metres above her head. Then Sally decided it looked like a giant pizza draped over the branch. It was largely grey, but there were streaks of red and white and random patches of black. She walked directly under the weird shape, looked up and moved her head to follow the leading edge of the thing to the point where it hung closest to the ground, a spot a couple of feet above the grass. Then she saw it, a thing so unexpected, she felt a sudden jolt in the pit of her stomach, a spasm that made her whole body tense for a second. Close to the edge of the object, embedded in the grey and red, was an eye staring straight at her.

To Mrs Sonia Thomson
12 October 1888

Was I ever without malice? You may be surprised to learn that, until recent times, this was not a question to which I gave any thought. But now, as I write this account for you, dear lady, I feel compelled to ask it of myself. And I think the answer would have to be ‘no’. I have always been wicked.

That is the honest truth and I never lie. Well, let me quickly qualify that. In this account of my experiences, I will tell the complete truth. I will not fabricate. All I write here is reality as I perceived it. I can promise nothing more.

But first we have to accept that there are many types of wickedness, do we not? There is the wickedness of those prosaic characters who stalk the nightmares of the innocent: the lumpen men, damaged or dull-witted individuals without finesse, devoid of any higher agenda. I would never put myself into that category, for I constitute a blend of wickedness with talent … great talent. It was only when I fully realised the extent and depth of that
talent that I was able to channel my wickedness, and through this combination achieve greatness. But more of this later. Let me instead tell you the story of how I came to my great revelations, and how they secured for me my place in history.

Hemel Hempstead where I was born, William Sandler, on 10 August 1867, is a modest market town, genteel and pretty, and my parents’ house, set among cornfields just beyond the jurisdiction of the town council, was a comfortable place in which to be raised.

It would be churlish of me to complain about the situation of my home, though everything else about it was bad.

The house was called Fellwick Manor. Built by my grandfather in the 1820s, it was a vast, boxy affair with too many windows, each a different shape and size from the rest. The architect appeared deliberately to have forsaken any of the Georgian taste for symmetry and proportion. It had ungainly, overbearing gables and a broad, squat porch. The bricks were too dark, the woodwork too light, and, to top it all off, a huge phallus of a chimney reared up from the back of the property above the kitchen. The house was set in three acres of prime Home Counties countryside, which was really its one saving grace. Otherwise, it was a typical monstrosity, built to impress, the thoroughly vainglorious trophy of a successful member of the mercantile class.

And my grandfather was certainly successful. He had been spat out of his mother’s womb, the tenth of
eleven children. All the others had wallowed in poverty, died young and vanished utterly from history. My father would never talk about any of his paternal relatives. He disowned them, just as my grandfather had done.

My father, Gordon Sandler, was a textbook example of the spoiled son of new money. Grandfather did all the work, made the fortune, and then his only son, my dear father, lived off it his entire life. Father was a husk of a man, tall and bone-thin, his face almost skeletal. He looked terrifying, even to me, his only son. I had only ever known him to be completely bald. He had black, piercing eyes, set too far back in his bony skull, and a black handlebar moustache. That was probably his only nod to fashion, yet it was an affectation to which he was entirely unsuited. My mother, Mary, was buxom, her hair perpetually scraped up in a tight bun. As a young woman she might have achieved an average prettiness, but the image I retain of her in my mind is all fleshy jowls and billowing black dresses. She scared me more than my father did.

Ours was an extremely religious household, though I myself could never understand what my parents saw to admire in God. My father was a lay preacher. With the fortune inherited from his father he had no need to make an honest crust: a full loaf was already provided. Instead, he gave himself over to the service of the Lord. Mother was equally pious, throwing herself into good works, helping the
poorest of the local community – you can imagine the sort of thing.

There was no form of religious imagery displayed in our house. My parents were Calvinistic Methodists, a relatively new sect at that time. The only artistic expression of their religious fervour that they sanctioned was a tiny painting of Christ which hung in the parlour. In the hall, close to the front door, they displayed a framed letter from Reverend Griffith Jones, founder of the Order. According to family legend, my great-great-grand-father was Jones’s right-hand man. Jones, I believe, had a lot to answer for.

My parents recognised quite early on that I was not inspired by the Holy Spirit in the way that they were. Indeed, I was a difficult child in almost every respect, and grew worse as each year passed. This was partly because of my own peculiar nature, but exacerbated by the fact that my parents responded to my stubborn, uncompromising personality in only one, rather unimaginative way – they regularly beat me to within an inch of my life.

It became something of a ritual. After committing an offence, no matter how minor, I would be summoned to my father’s study. This was a very dark room on the ground floor, leading off the hall and facing south across the front garden, with a view of the road to Hemel Hempstead. However, I only knew this last couple of facts from my understanding of the geography of the house, for the curtains were always kept drawn in my father’s study.

The walls were panelled with oak and the only illumination in the entire room came from a couple of gas mantles: one close to the door, and another, larger one, above Father’s desk. The room was boiling hot in summer and freezing cold in winter. I often wondered how the bastard could ever do anything in his ‘study’, and then I would wonder what he needed a study for. He was not learning anything, he did not seem to work. All he ever did was read that damn book – you know the one I mean – in two parts, ‘Old’ and ‘New’.

So, to the study I would be marched. Once I was inside, Mother would stand back against the door while Father questioned me. When I was very young, four or five, I would put up arguments in that infantile way. I would protest my innocence, try to offer mitigating circumstances. But after a time I grew to realise this was utterly futile because, no matter what I said, the outcome was always the same. Mother would lead me to the desk and I would be forced to bend over it with my trousers pulled down. She would pin my head to the desk top with her left hand and hold down my shoulders with the other. She always kept a crimson handkerchief tucked up her sleeve – the only concession to colour in her entire wardrobe. She wore black from head to toe, but that square of crimson cloth was concealed up her left sleeve. As she pinned me to the desk top, I could always see that handkerchief, clearly and close to. Then my father would take his cane from the cupboard next
to the door. I would hear it ‘whoosh’ through the air as he got the measure of it, and then the pain would slam into me like a steam engine. Afterwards we would pray together and I would be embraced and finally led from the room. ‘There,’ my mother would say as we crossed the hall, ‘your soul will feel better now, William.’