A Liverpool Lullaby

Chapter 4-1

Chapter 4At the Beach

As they drove the seventeen miles to Ainsdale, Southport, Derek McLennan, driving the car containing himself, Ross, and Fenella Church, had an observation to make.

“This is a bad one, isn't it, sir?” he asked,

Ross, in the front seat, replied, “What makes you say that, Derek?”

“Well, for one thing, we don't usually get called in within hours of the discovery of a body, unless there are indications that it's our kind of case, and second, the way you said, He did what? to the chief when he called, told me there was some unusual feature about the case, and for us, unusual always means bad.”

“Very good, Derek. You should have been a detective,” Ross allowed himself a quiet laugh. “But yes, you're right of course. I'm telling you two now,” he said, turning to look at Church in the back seat, “we've got a dead woman laid out in the sand dunes, complete with various items which point to a ritualistic or possibly, psychopathic killer, and the clincher, which the first responders discovered, is the fact that the poor woman has got no heart.”

“You mean he removed it?” Church asked, merely for clarification.

“Exactly, Fenella. He not only removed it, but from what Oscar Agostini told me, he's bloody well still got it.”

“s**t, we've got a trophy hunter,” McLennan said, without hesitation.

“Quite possibly,” Ross agreed, “but let's not make any assumptions until we see what we're dealing with.”

On arrival at the Nature Reserve, or to give it its full title, The Ainsdale and Birkdale Sandhills Nature Reserve, Derek McLennan couldn't help displaying some of his almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the local area.

“Did you know this is one of the largest areas of wild dunes left in Britain, and that it's home to some rare species, like the Natterjack Toad, the Great Crested Newt, and the Sand Lizard?”

“That's interesting, Derek,” said Fenella Church, with genuine interest, while Ross kept quiet. Once Derek got started it was sometimes hard to shut him up.

“Yes, and there's quite a few rare wildflowers grow here too,” he added.

“You must tell me about them another time,” Fenella replied, knowing they needed to concentrate on the case, as he pulled up and they exited the car. As they stood and looked around, seeing two uniformed officers standing in front of a long length of blue and white police tape, hopefully strung out across the trail leading to the dunes, the second car pulled up, Tony Curtis at the wheel, with Nick Dodds and Ishaan Singh his passengers, closely followed by Sam Gable, driving the third car, also containing Gary (Ginger) Devenish.

There were half a dozen cars in the car park, not including the unmarked police vehicles and one car Ross recognised as belonging to Doctor William Nugent and of course, Miles Booker's Mondeo parked side by side with the van belonging to his scenes of crime team. It seemed the forces of law and order well outnumbered the public in visiting the dunes that day, although none of the owners of the civilian cars were in sight. Ross called on of the uniformed officers to him, showed his warrant card and ordered him to detain the owners of any of the civilian vehicles for questioning if and when they returned to their cars. P.C. Bevan was further instructed to notify D.C. Gable when he'd detained any such returnees and quickly made Sam responsible for organising any necessary interviews.

That done, he gathered his team around him, for a fast briefing.

“Listen up, everyone. I apologise for rushing you all out of the office like that, but the DCI made it clear to me that we need to lock this area down tight asap. What we're about to see, apparently, is pretty gruesome, so be prepared for a shock or two. I can tell you that we have a female victim, late twenties, found by a dog walker…”

“Dodgy pastime, dog walking,” Tony Curtis jibed. “How many bodies have we investigated after they were found by bloody dog walkers?”

“Yes, quite, Tony. Thank you for that piece of priceless intel, though I doubt it will have much bearing on the long-term disposition of the case.”

Ross paused for a moment, looking round, before speaking again.

“Where is the bloody dog walker, anyway? Bevan…” he called out to the harassed young constable. “I was told the body was found by a dog walker. Don't tell me someone let him go home.”

“She, sir,” Bevan corrected him, “it was a lady dog walker, and Sergeant Wainwright has taken her to the nearby tearoom to take a statement from her.” Bevan pointed in the direction of the tearoom. “It's over there sir, along that path.”

Thankful that someone had shown some initiative, that might prove useful, he turned to D.C Curtis and sent him to find the sergeant in charge of the uniformed officers and to sit in on any statement taken.

“Okay people let's go see what's waiting for us,” Ross said, as he led the team along the path in the direction indicated by P.C. Bevan. As the path opened up to reveal a wider area, surrounded by dunes and grassland, they saw that Miles Booker's Scenes of Crimes people had already erected a tall canvas screen around the site where Ross presumed the body was located. Another P.C. was on duty outside the screened-off area, a clipboard in his hand and the man judiciously entered the names of each member of Ross's team on it, after checking their identities. Frustrating, but Ross knew the lad was simply doing his duty and he couldn't criticise him for that.

Pulling back the flap, Ross, McLennan and Church entered the closed-off area. The others had been instructed to wait outside until the facts were established.

“Suit up, Andy,” Miles Booker called out on seeing Ross and his people entering 'his' crime scene. Obediently, Ross, McLennan and Church each pulled on white forensic suits and boots. They could see the Medical Examiner bending over the body, Nugent's bulk being enough to prevent any view of the victim from where they stood. His cadaverous assistant, Francis Lees, who had a habit of looking more dead than some of the bodies he dealt with, hovered close by, his camera taking shots of the body from all angles. Fenella Church thought, but didn't say, that he resembled a Praying Mantis with St. Vitus's dance. Lees spoke to his boss, who looked up from his task, saw the detectives and called out,

“Inspector Ross, ye may draw near. Just dinna come too close until I've finished.”

His broad Glaswegian accent belayed the fact he'd lived and worked in Liverpool for almost thirty years, and only really showed itself markedly when the man was angry, irritated or frustrated. Ross wondered which of those it was, this time. He also knew that it had been many years since Nugent had last paid a visit to Glasgow. Something about his past seemed to haunt the pathologist, but whatever it was, he'd never confided in Ross. When asked one time about why he never visited the city of his birth, he'd simply replied, “Bad memories, D.I. Ross, bad memories,” and Ross had never pushed him on the subject. Izzie Drake, married to the Administration Manager of Mortuary Services. Paul Foster, (she kept her maiden name for work purposes), had even tried to find out from her husband what made Nugent stay away from Glasgow. Paul was forced to admit he'd no idea, and the only person who might know was Francis Lees, who'd worked with the Doctor for many years, and he definitely wouldn't tell.

With Church and McLennan standing on either side of him, Ross approached the scene, as Nugent rose to his full height, and stepped aside.

“Bloody hell, Doc!” he exclaimed.

“Sweet Jesus,” was Church's initial reaction.

“The bastard,” McLennan almost spat the words out at seeing the work of the killer.

There, before them on the ground, lay the naked body of a woman, displayed for all the world to see, with her arms and legs splayed wide. Her face was beautifully made up, as if she was ready to go out on the town and her hair had been brushed neatly to fall over her shoulders. By her side, a vase of red roses had been placed, and what looked like a small wooden chest, about twelve inches long and ten wide, stood unopened beside it.

The woman might have been sleeping except for one grotesque fact, the thing that had brought the initial reaction from the three of them. Her killer had, it appeared to the detectives, expertly opened her chest cavity, and removed her heart, leaving the chest open to the elements, raw and bloody.

Fenella Church actually found herself fighting off the urge to be sick, and Derek McLennan subconsciously placed a steadying hand on her right arm. Sensing his gesture more than feeling it, she looked up at him and nodded. At six feet two, Derek stood a full foot taller than Fenella's five feet two.

“The heart, Doc?” Ross asked.

“No sign of it, I'm afraid,” the pathologist replied. “Your perpetrator has kept himself a wee trophy, if ye ask me, the bloody evil swine.”

That answered Ross's question about the doctor's mood. He was actually angry, at the killer, an unusual emotion for Nugent to show at the site of a murder.

“How long has she been here, Doc, do you know?”

“Not long, that's for sure, hours maybe. If she'd been here any length of time there'd be greater natural predation and insect activity, out here in the open. There are plenty of wee beasties around here that would have feasted on an open wound like this. I'll know more when I get the poor girl back to the lab.”

“What's with the box and the flowers, boss?” Derek asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Ross replied, and called to Miles Booker.

“Miles, your boys looked at the box yet?”

“All done and dusted, Andy. Go ahead and open it. I thought it important you saw it as he left it, in relation to the body. Also got the lady's purse. He'd placed it under her body, for some reason. Her name's Frances Daley, age 29 according to her driving licence.”

Ross looked at the purse, already enclosed in an evidence bag, studied the picture on the driving licence then bent down, and carefully picked up the box in his gloved hands. It had no lock or other fastening, and the lid lifted easily to reveal, an old-fashioned cassette player.

“D'you think he's left us a message?” Church ventured the thought.

“Let's find out, shall we?” Ross replied, as he extricated the tape machine from the box. Pressing 'play', he waited with the others as the fuzzy sound of the beginning of the tape issued forth from the machine, to be suddenly replaced by the sound of music.

“It's a lullaby, Golden Slumbers, McLennan said, after hearing the first few bars.

If anyone would know, Ross thought, it was Derek McLennan.

“But, what does it mean?” Church asked.

“I've no idea, but it means something to her killer,” Ross said, anger in his voice. I want this bastard found, and fast, before he does this to anyone else.”

“You think he'll strike again, Boss?” McLennan wondered.

“I don't know for sure, but he seems to have gone to a lot of trouble to set this up. I just have a gut feeling about it.”

“Doctor Nugent?” Church said.

“Aye lass, ye have a question?”

“Was she…that is, is there any evidence of…sexual assault?”

“I expected one of you would ask that. Like I always say, I'd rather save my findings until I have her in the lab, but off the cuff, let's say I wouldn't be surprised.”

“And the removal of her heart, Doc, was it done professionally, would you say?” This came from Ross.

“If you're asking me if a doctor did this, Inspector, I cannae say. At first glance, it's a neat job and certainly looks to have been carried out with surgical precision, but ye dinna have to be a doctor to learn how to cut a heart from a human body.”

“Doesn't look like we're going to learn much more from you, not here anyway, better let you get her back to the lab and get to work on her there.”