Imperfection (DI Gardener 2)

“Everything all right, Trevor?” asked Briggs.

“Er, yes, may I have a drink of water, please? I, er, need to take a tablet.”

Briggs asked Patrick Edwards to do the honours. After the tablet, Thorpe continued. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, most of them live, er, outwardly normal lives and have a very high IQ. We can see that by the games he’s playing, and the puzzles he’s leaving.”

“Why does he drain the blood?” asked Reilly.

Thorpe took to his feet again. “Well, you see, there’s another interesting point. Blood may be very sacred to him. Have you checked to see if either of these people who have been killed have any blood-related diseases? Particularly in the case of the girl. Was she promiscuous? Was she HIV positive? Maybe he thinks that blood is very precious, and these people...” – Thorpe turned and reached out with his arms – “...are not treating their bodies like a temple, as he does.”

“What makes you say that?” asked Gardener.

“Everything we’ve seen so far. The man is articulate. He’s careful, precise. You have no leads because he leaves you no clues with which to catch him. Here is a man who takes life very seriously.”

Gardener’s mobile interrupted their meeting. After a concerned conversation, he flipped it off and glanced at Briggs. “It’s Fitz. He wants us over at the morgue straight away.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” asked Briggs.

“He wouldn’t tell us over the phone,” replied Gardener, “but he said we’re not going to like it.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

The three of them made it to the morgue in record time. Fitz was in his office. The desk was impeccably tidy, as if all the paperwork had been positioned using a set square. The files on the shelf behind him were arranged neatly in alphabetical order, with the writing facing the same way. Gardener couldn’t identify the piece of classical music that Fitz was listening to, but assumed it to be an opera.

“You didn’t waste much time,” said Fitz, glancing at Gardener.

“It sounded urgent.”

Fitz rose from his chair, adjusted his glasses. “There’s never an urgency when you’re dealing with the dead.”

“Well, there is in our case,” said Briggs.

“Follow me.” Fitz left the office, collecting a green gown and a fresh pair of gloves from a cupboard. He walked over to Janine Harper’s corpse and removed the cover. Her fragile body lacked colour, emphasising the severity of the bruising on her face. Only now, she had a Y-shaped incision where Fitz had done his job.

“What have you found?” asked Briggs.

“Something that needs further investigation,” replied Fitz. “There are traces of a drug called ephedrine in her bloodstream.”

“What’s that?” asked Gardener.

“It’s an alkaloid drug normally used to relieve the symptoms of asthma.”

“Did she have a history of asthma?” asked Briggs.

“Yes, according to her records. I also found alcohol in her system, sherry to be precise, along with traces of nuts.”

“What type of nuts?”

“Nothing specific, a bit of a mixture.”

“Which leads us where?” asked Gardener.

“I think, and I stress think, that what he’s done is ground the nuts into a fine powder and mixed them with the sherry, which, when using the correct quantities, creates a venomous cocktail with the drug ephedrine. I’ll come back to that in a second, but just take a look at this.” Fitz lifted the head. “De-epithelialisation.”

“What the hell is that?” asked Reilly.

Fitz drew out Janine’s tongue. It was red raw, inflamed. “He’s very carefully removed the top layer of skin from her tongue.”

Briggs stared at the ceiling and sighed. “Did he do that when she was alive?”