Pop Goes the Weasel - страница 9

They sped past the hospital, blue lights flashing, before cutting down a narrow side street and onto the Empress Road industrial estate. It wasn’t hard to see where they were headed. The entrance to the derelict house was taped off and already a gaggle of curious onlookers were idling by it. Helen hustled her way through, warrant card raised, Tony following behind her. A quick word with uniform, whilst they suited up, and then they were in.

Helen took the stairs two at a time. Whatever you’ve been through, you never get inured to violence. Helen didn’t like the look on the faces of the attending uniforms – as if their eyes had been brutally opened – and she wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.

The poky front bedroom was busy with the SOC team and Helen immediately asked them to take a break so she and Tony could get a clear view of the victim. You steel yourself on these occasions, swallowing down your disgust in advance, otherwise you’d never be able to take it in, to form valuable first impressions. The victim was male, white, probably in his late forties or early fifties. He was naked and there was no sign of any clothes or possessions. His arms and legs were tied tight to the iron bedstead with what looked like nylon climbing cord and he had some sort of hood over his head. It hadn’t been designed for the purpose – it looked like the kind of felt bag you get with expensive shoes or luxury gifts – but it was there for a reason. Was it to suffocate him? Or conceal his identity? Either way, it was devastatingly clear that this wasn’t what had killed him.

His upper torso had been split up the middle from his belly button to his throat, then forcibly peeled back to reveal his internal organs. Or what remained of them. Helen swallowed hard, as she realized that at least one of his organs had been removed. She turned to Tony – he was ashen and staring at the bloody pit that had once been this man’s chest. The victim had not just been killed, he had been destroyed. Helen fought to suppress a spike of panic. Taking a pen from her pocket, she crouched over the victim, gently lifting the rim of the hood to get a better look at the man’s face.

Mercifully it was untouched and looked oddly peaceful, despite the blank eyes that stared hopelessly at the interior of the bag. Helen didn’t recognize him, so removed her pen, letting the fabric fall back into position. Returning her attention to the body, her eyes took in the stained eiderdown, the congealing pool of blood on the floor, the path to the door. The man’s injuries looked recent – less than a day old – so if there were traces of the killer to be found here, they would be fresh. But there was nothing – nothing obvious at least.

Padding round the bed, she stepped over a dead pigeon and walked to the far side of the room. There was one window, which was boarded up. It had been for some time by the look of the rusty nails. An abandoned house in a forgotten part of Southampton, with no accessible windows – it was the perfect spot to kill someone. Was he tortured first? That was what was concerning Helen. The victim’s injuries were so unusual, so extensive, that someone was making a point here. Or worse, simply enjoying themselves. What had driven them to do this? What had possessed them?

That would have to wait. The most important thing now was to give the victim a name, to let him recover a modicum of his dignity. Helen called forensics back in. It was time to take the photos and set the investigation in motion.

It was time to find out who this poor man was.

It was business as usual in the Matthews household. The porridge bowls had been emptied and cleaned, school bags were lined up in the hall and the twins were putting on their school uniform. Their mother, Eileen, chided them as she always did – it was amazing how long these boys could spin out getting dressed. When they were little they’d loved the status that their smart school uniform bestowed upon them and they’d hurried to put it on, desperate to appear as grown up and important as their elder sisters. But now that the girls had left home and the twins were teenagers, they viewed the whole thing as an awful drag, delaying the inevitable for as long as possible. If their father was around, they’d have snapped to it, but when it was just Eileen they took the mickey – it was only by threatening to stop their pocket money that she got them to do anything these days.