Forensick

Another body found on the banks of the River Severn. He could see the headlines in purple-grey uppercase across the back of his eyelids as surely as they'd be spread across the front of newspapers later that morning. Except the newspapers wouldn't have the pictures he'd seen, would they, and wouldn't be sharing his sense of failure.
'Nothing? Nothing at all?' Rod Johnson's Midlands twang still rang in his ears.
'No, Inspector. Just what I've told you. The victim didn't die here. He was killed somewhere else and then he was dumped here.'
'And the cigarette burns?'
'Post-mortem. A calling card?'
A shake of the head. 'Try harder, Randolph. Find me some clues.'
He washed his hands again, not sure if he'd cleaned them properly the previous time, and filled the kettle. Black coffee, he thought. It wouldn't help him sleep but nor had the mug of Jack Daniels twenty-seven hours earlier.
The fridge was whispering accusations under its breath as he took out the carton of milk, sniffed it and decided to use it anyway. He tipped a few bran flakes into a bowl and poured what was left of the milk over them. The telephone rang. He ignored it. It would be his mum. The last thing he needed right then was to have to listen to her.
#
'Randolph? Is that you?'
'Yes, Mum.'
'Have you locked the front door behind you?'
'No. I'll be going back out. Some of my friends...'
'No you won't.'
#
The trouble with time was that it was entwined with perception. Every hour was sixty minutes, three thousand six hundred seconds, the same as every other hour but they didn't all feel the same. And those spent awake when they should have been slept were the most torturous of all, tedious in their viciousness. They were full of creatures with fiery eyes; cadavers in sanguinous pools of torment. They beat his chest with knobbly fists and pulled his dreams through his ears; out of his head onto the rain-soaked pavement.
And if that wasn't enough punishment, there were so many of them; so many hours without sleep, called out to the scene every time there was an incident and, between those calls, wrangling over the impossible jigsaws that spilled themselves across the desktop of his consciousness.
'This is a young man's job,' his boss had said as he'd tasked him with the murders.
He'd been in bed for less than five hours but decided to get up. He was expecting his mother at around seven that evening and wasn't obliged to go into work after spending the night at yet another crime scene but there was much to do and he didn't want anyone else to do it.
He reached the laboratory at just after midday. He nodded his greetings to a few of his colleagues but no one spoke to him. One or two of them looked at him anxiously, he thought. Perhaps he should have shaved. Or changed from the clothes he'd been wearing for the last thirty hours.
As his computer booted up, he stared into the bulb of his desk lamp. It was harsh and penetrating. Like that above Doctor Warren's couch.
'Talk me through your experience step by step, Randolph. Starting with the moment you walked through the front door.'
#
'Randolph?'
'Mummy.'
'Come here.'
'No, Mummy.'
'You've been a naughty boy. Come here and take your punishment like a man.'
'No, Mummy. I'm fourteen. I'm not a man.'
'And you never will be if you don't face up to your responsibilities. Come here.'
'But, Mum, it wasn't my fault. I only... ow. That hurts, Mum. Ow.'
'For God's sake stop crying. It doesn't hurt that much.'
#
'Inspector? It's Randolph White. I've been looking at the measurements I made and putting them through some of my computer models. I'm pretty certain the assailant was male.'
'A man?'
'Mm. The strength of the thrusts... the angles are indicative of wider shoulders than hips... He's not particularly tall but I'm confident he...'
'So we're looking for a man who smokes?'
'Probably.'
'Unless you're telling me he had an accomplice, Randolph. Somebody stubbed their fags out on the bodies of those kids.'
'Mm.'
'Odd, though.'
'In what way?'
'Well, we've just had what feels like a breakthrough. A witness description of someone leaving the scene last night that matches a description we got the other night from the Toby Wilson murder.'
'Yes?'
'Only that was of a woman not a man. A woman in a red dress.'
#
He thought he'd better shave and change clothes before his mother arrived. She was such a stickler for appearance. It didn't matter how things were below the surface as long as they looked right.
It was misty. Everything was misty. A woman? He didn't think so. He was certain the murderer was a man. A woman in a red dress? No. Surely not. Not...
He sighed. Some facts were intractable. All the victims had been boys aged between thirteen and fifteen. Each had been found naked but none had been sexually assaulted. Each had had their throats cut from behind and had later been burned repeatedly with cigarettes stubbed into their skin.
That last detail was one that the police hadn't shared with the press but it had been that in particular that had eaten away at Randolph. Like insects chewing on a child locked in a cupboard under the stairs for not having eaten his vegetables.
'No, Mum. Please don't. That hurts, Mummy.'
He felt sick. He finished shaving and washed his hands several times until the flesh on them was raw. He closed his eyes. His head was spinning. He vomited into the washbasin, rinsed it thoroughly and washed his hands and face several more times.
His mother was late. That wasn't like her.
#
She squeezed into the shadows. However bright the city, it was full of dark places -- doorways, alleys, the musty corners that commercial enterprise forgot... 'Any minute now,' she thought, squashing herself into as small a space as possible. 'The Grammar School boys will finish their rowing practice and one of them will be walking this way.'
In her head, she saw rats on the street chewing grassy patches with teeth bigger than their heads. And the grass was screaming, trying to fight back with its swiping blades. Even the rain was slashing; cutting slivers of surety from an uncertain mist.
The purple moon rang like a doorbell.
'Mum?'
She heard footsteps - just one person she was certain but she needed to see who it was. It needed to be a fourteen-year-old boy. Anyone else would live. But how do you guess ages? Two thirteens and a fifteen had been wasted efforts, she grimaced. Of the four of them, she'd only got it right once.
She wouldn't have let Randoph get away with a twenty-five percent success rate.
#
'Take me through your experience step by step, Randolph.'
'No, no, no. You're not going out and leaving me on my own.'
'But, Mum...'
'I'd been out. With some mates for a drink. It was late when I got home.'
'You've spilled gravy on the tablecloth.'
'I wasn't drunk or anything but it took me a while to work out why I couldn't open the front door. I eventually realised it must be bolted on the inside.'
'Have you seen the state of your bedroom? All those clothes lying on the floor?'
'So I went around the back, not really expecting that to be any different. Mum was fastidious about locking up.'
'Have you locked the front door behind you?'
'No. Some of my friends...'
'"She must've gone to bed and forgotten I was out," I thought. But the back door wasn't locked.'
'Look at the state of your fingernails. They're disgusting.'
'Everywhere was dark. I assumed she'd gone to bed. But when I switched on the living room light...'
'You need to be punished.'
'No, Mum. I didn't do anything. I...'
'Come here and take it like a man.'
'But I'm not a man. I'm a fourteen-year-old boy.'
'Get those bloody clothes off.'
'No, Mum. No. Please. That hurts, Mum.'
'I'll give you hurts. Do you know how much you hurt me? After I've given you the best years of my life?'
'She was slouched in her armchair. I thought she was asleep. I didn't know whether to carry her to bed or...'
'I've poured your glass of port for bed in case I'm late. And everything's out for your supper.'
'Don't you dare go out, Randolph White. Don't you dare go out and leave me on my own.'
'And then I saw the tablets lying all around her and realised she wasn't breathing.'
#
Rod Johnson had slept well between incidents. A series of murders was real policing and he was a real policeman. He wanted to catch the bad guy bang to rights; simple as that. And the chase was invigorating, pumping the adrenalin through veins hardened by decades of seeing victims of crimes and road collisions, rapes and robberies. He was energised at work and therefore slept well at home.
He was sleeping well when he received the call about another body found by the banks of the Severn, this time near Stourport.
'Where's Randolph White?' he called out to his sergeant as he plodded around the muddy murder scene and searched for visual clues.
'We don't know, sir. We've been calling both his mobile and landline but...'
'What?' whispered the inspector, his voice trailing as his torch beam halted on what looked like footprints in the soft ground around ten metres from where the body lay. Not obvious footprints and not even full prints, just a succession of small holes. But shaped like stiletto heels.
His sergeant was muttering about something but Rod ignored him and followed what seemed like a trail. It didn't extend far - only another five or six metres - but it led him in a direction.
#
It wasn't like her to be late. 'I'll be there by the Severn,' she'd said.
'What?' he said, shaking his head.
'I'll be there by seven.'
His pulse throbbed. It couldn't be. His mother had always worn a red dress. A cotton dress with a belt around its middle. Either she'd never washed it or she'd had more than one of them, he contemplated. Probably the latter, he supposed, because she was so obsessive about cleanliness.
'Look at the state of your fingernails.'
But that was years ago. And now...
'My God, Randolph, you're such a dirty little bugger.'
'No, Mum, that hurts.'
... surely she wouldn't still...
He felt ill. He slumped his head forwards and slid down into the seat of the park bench. 'It can't be,' he thought. A woman in a red dress? Maybe that's why she'd been late. She'd always worn a red dress. It wasn't like her to be late.
'Randolph?' said a voice.
He looked up, his eyes squinting through the torch beam. 'Inspector,' he said.
Rod's face was grim, his eyes shadowed by his frown. 'A red dress, Randolph?'
Randolph grinned ruefully. 'That's right, Inspector,' he said. 'It doesn't show the bloodstains.'

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