Detective Sergeant Carter’s heart sank when Chief Inspector Burrows pointed the man out to him.
“That’s him?”
“I know.” said Burrows, sympathetically. “He’s a bit weird but he’s got a fine mind. Only reason he’s not doing my job by now is he doesn’t want it. And because—well, we’ll not go into that. Anyway, have fun.”
Burrows walked off back to his office.
Detective Inspector Beaumont wore brown tinted glasses, had a head of short slightly curly brown hair that looked like it was almost definitely a wig, and sported a stubbly beard, darker than his hair, that had every appearance of being dyed.
He was drinking a coffee with one hand and held an unlit cigarette in the other hand.
Carter walked up to him.
“Sir, I’m the new Detective Sergeant.” he said. “Steve Carter.”
“Oh right, pleased to meet you.” said Beaumont.
Beaumont’s voice sounded like he needed to clear his throat but couldn’t be bothered.
He looked at his coffee and cigarette, trying to decide which to put down so he could shake Carter’s hand, and settled for putting the unlit Marlboro in the corner of his mouth.
Carter noticed his fingers were heavily stained with cigarette tar.
“Anything I can do at the moment?” said Carter.
“Yeah, actually. New case just came in. Come into my office. Second thoughts, I’d better ‘ave a fag first. Let’s go round the back.”
At the back of the police station was a car park, filled mainly with police cars.
Beaumont lit his cigarette and inhaled with evident gusto.
“Only had ten so far today.” he said. “I don’t feel right without my fags.”
“Ten, sir?” said Carter.
“Yeah. What, you think that’s a lot?”
“It’s only eleven in the morning.”
“Fair point, fair point.” said Beaumont. “The thing is, it calms me down. Don’t know if they told you but I’ve got some psychological issues. I’m open about it. I’m seeing a counsellor. Bloody useless, mind. These are the only thing that helps. That and my wife.”
He rattled a pack of Marlboro’s in Carter’s face.
“I see, sir.” said Carter. “Each to their own.”
“You can call me Beaumont. Everyone else does.”
Carter watched as a tabby cat made its way steadily across the top of the high brick wall that surrounded the car park.
“Inspector Burrows said you’d have his job if you’d wanted it.” he said.
“Yeah, probably.” said Beaumont. “Only reason I even accepted Detective Inspector is all the tax the bloody politicians put on cigarettes. Load of parasites, the lot of them. I hate them.”
Beaumont turned and kicked the wall in a sudden flash of anger.
“Parasites!” he shouted.
His face had flushed red.
Carter looked at him with an expression of alarm.
“Sorry, sorry, Carter.” said Beaumont. “It’s the anger. I told you I’m not myself till I’ve had at least a packet. I’m calm now. I’m calm. Tell you what, I’ll have another one quickly then we’ll go to my office and talk about the new case.”
On the way back to his office, Beaumont stopped and poured himself another coffee, which he drank black with seven sugars that he hastily stirred in with a stained teaspoon.
Beaumont’s office reeked of stale cigarette smoke, in spite of the ban on smoking indoors. Six plastic disposable cups stood on his desk, some still with coffee still in them, and three filthy mugs.
“You smoke in here?” Carter asked.
“Yeah.” said Beaumont. “Now, ‘ave a look at this.”
He slapped a photograph down in front of Carter.
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” said Carter.
Carter’s eyes widened with shock.
“No blasphemy, if you wouldn’t mind.” said Beaumont.
“What?” said Carter.
Beaumont indicated a crucifix on the wall behind him, which Carter hadn’t previously noticed.
“I found Jesus three years ago when my third wife left me.” said Beaumont.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” said Carter.
“She was found yesterday, in her house on Ferrer Street. Sick bastard did this to her while she was still alive.”
“Your third wife?” said Carter, suddenly confused.
“What are you talking about? No, I mean the victim.”
Carter gazed in horror at the horrible mess in the photo. It was almost impossible to imagine that the horrific tangle had once been a human being.
“Lived with her husband. Imagine getting home from work and finding this. If anyone laid a finger on my Achee, I’d wring their necks!”
This last sentence was pronounced with considerable asperity.
“Lord help me, I’d make them pay!” said Beaumont, warming to his theme, and he brought his fist down on the desk with a resounding bang.
“Achee?” said Carter.
“Achara, my fourth wife.” Beaumont explained. “She’s Thai. She calms me down. That’s what I need in a woman, someone who can calm me down. So far there’s very little to go on. We’re waiting on the forensic people.”
At that moment the phone on Beaumont’s desk rang. He picked it up.
“Beaumont.”
Carter couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of the line.
“Really? You’re sure?” Beaumont said into the phone.
When he put the phone down, he said to Carter, “Forensics. Only DNA they found on Mrs. Smith was from ‘er husband.”
“Her husband did this?” said Carter incredulously.
“No.” said Beaumont. “No way.”
“Has he been arrested?”
“He was. I let him go this morning.”
“You let him go?”
“Yeah. No alibi, really, but he didn’t do it.”
“How do you know?”
“Trust me, I’ve got a sense about these things.”
Carter stared at Beaumont, unable to believe his ears. This man, he thought, was clearly a lunatic. How on Earth had he ever been made Detective Inspector? Had he blackmailed someone?
“Let’s go and have a look at the crime scene.” said Beaumont. “I ‘ope you’ve got a strong stomach. They ‘aven’t cleaned ‘er up yet.”
On the way to the crime scene they passed several recruitment posters. The war with China was still raging, and only seemed to intensify with each passing day. The posters featured young men and women who, in Carter’s view, looked like they might have made good flower arrangers or interior designers, but certainly shouldn’t be in an army.
“This goes on any longer they’re going to conscript us.” said Beaumont, grasping the steering wheel with yellow-stained fingers. Beaumont insisted on driving in manual mode, even though the route to Mrs. Smith’s house was fully cleared for self-driving.
An image of Beaumont gunning down Chinese civilians in a blind rage flashed through Carter’s mind, and he shuddered.
The scene at the house was just as hideous as the photograph had suggested. Beaumont, while apparently unaffected by the horror of it, seemed keen to inspect the outside of the house and Carter strongly suspected this was mainly because he wanted to smoke.
“Look at these footprints the boys found.” he said, lighting a cigarette and gesturing with his head.
“He came in through the French door.” said Carter.
“Didn’t just come in through the door. He stood outside the window, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Waiting till her husband went upstairs. Look how deep the footprints are next to the window. He sank into the ground a bit.”
Carter peered at footprints next to the door, directly outside a large window.
“Anyone could have left those. The husband could have stood there to make it look like a break-in.”
“Nah. We checked his shoes. No match.”
“So he was in the bathroom, and he claims he heard nothing, and when he came down, his wife was in bits?”
“That’s what happened.” said Beaumont. “They’d left this door open a crack for some air. Probably checked dozens of houses till he found the right one.”
“How can you be so sure it wasn’t the husband?”
“Instinct, Carter. Here, do me a favour, go inside, draw the curtains and come out again.”
“All right.” said Carter.
When he re-emerged, Beaumont had lit another cigarette and was peering at the window from different angles.
“Have a look and tell me what you see.” he said.
Carter dutifully obeyed.
“Can’t see anything at all.” he said.
“Yeah. You can’t see into the place with the curtains closed. These are good curtains. If I get a chance I might ask the husband where ‘e got them.”
“He must have had his ear pressed to the window. He must have been listening.”
“Then there’d be an ear-print on the window.”
“Isn’t there?”
“No.”
“So, why’d he stand here? And how did he know the husband had gone upstairs?”
“Exactly.”
“The husband did it.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then what?”
“Think about it.”
“I am thinking about it.”
Beaumont smiled enigmatically.
“Let’s head off. I’ve seen everything I want to see. I’ll just have another quick fag first.”
On the way back to the station, Beaumont stopped the car suddenly, tyres squealing, outside a recruitment poster.
“Parasites!” he shouted. “This hacks me right off!”
He proceeded to tear it down, made it into a ball and, taking careful aim, threw it over a nearby wall.
When he got back into the car, he sat there for a minute, shaking slightly and inhaling deeply. He had flushed bright red.
“Sorry, it’s me nerves.” he said. Then, his voice rising to a shout, he added, “I bloody hate politicians!”
And he slammed the steering wheel with his hands.
“Would you like me to drive?” Carter said, nervously.
“No, no, it’s all right, mate.” said Beaumont. “I’ll be all right in a minute.”
Beaumont reached into his pocket and took out a bottle of pills. He popped one of the pills into his mouth and washed it down with a bottle of water that he took from the glove compartment.
Gradually he grew calmer.
“I really need to see Achee.” he said. “She calms me right down. What time is it?”
“Nearly one o’clock.”
“Bloody ‘ell. Another four hours then.”
In the days that followed, Beaumont resisted all of Carter’s pleas to arrest the husband.
The second murder occurred three weeks to the day after the murder in Ferrer Street.
The victim was male, aged 33, and had been murdered in his own car. The murderer apparently flagged the car down after dark on a country lane and somehow persuaded the driver to wind the window down, whereupon he stabbed him in the face, likely with a kitchen knife.
All that was bad enough in itself, but the murderer had then removed the body from the car, draped it over the bonnet, and disemboweled it.
It was this last hideous facet of the case that made the police think it might be connected to the earlier murder.
“I reckon we’ve got a serial killer on our hands.” said Beaumont, as he surveyed the murder scene in the now cordoned-off road.
He had a mug of cold black coffee in one hand and a lighted cigarette in the other.
“It’s horrible.” said Carter.
Beaumont sipped his coffee.
Suddenly his radio beeped. Beaumont conversed with the caller for a minute, then said, “They’ve got him, or someone at any rate. He went home covered in blood in the early hours, neighbours spotted ‘im and called it in.”
They returned to the police station immediately, Carter fidgeting nervously, Beaumont insisting on smoking out of the window of the police car while driving, completely against regulations.
The suspect, a 45-year-old man by the name of Adam Davidson, was pale and gangly and reminded Carter curiously of a spider.
“Right then,” said Beaumont, “did you do it or what?”
“No.” said the man.
“Why did you go ‘ome covered in the victim’s blood then?”
“I’ve already told the other copper. I like to drive about late at night. I suffer from insomnia. It helps me relax.”
Beaumont nodded understandingly.
“I happened upon the murder scene,” Davidson continued, “and I went to see if I could help. Then I slipped on the blood pooled on the road and fell on the victim.”
“Rubbish.” said Carter.
At that moment there was a knock on the door.
“Hang on a sec.” Beaumont said to the man, and he beckoned Carter.
They went outside, where PC Whiting was waiting for them.
“Sorry to disturb.” he said. “Just want to let you know, the DNA matches, and the footprints match his shoes. The footprints match the ones found at Ferrer Street as well. Looks like we’ve got our our man.”
“Thanks Whiting.” said Beaumont, and he watched Whiting walk off down the corridor. Then he turned to Carter and said, “Take a statement and let him go. It’s not ‘im.”
“What do you mean, it’s not him?” said Carter, outraged. “Of course it’s him.”
“Nah.” said Beaumont. “I don’t think it’s him.”
“Why not, in the name of God?”
“He’s left-handed. You can tell from how he gestures, mate, and his eye movements. Killer was right-handed or ambidextrous.”
“You can’t let him go based on that! What about his footprints?”
“Coincidence. You can buy those shoes all over the place.”
“They were the same size!”
“Like I said. Anyway, forensics probably cocked it up.”
“We can’t let him go.” said Carter adamantly. “We should charge him.”
Beaumont shook his head.
“Are you going to send him on his way or I shall I do it?”
“We need to charge him.”
Beaumont inhaled deeply and drew himself up to his full height.
“Now you listen here.” he said, jabbing his finger at Carter’s chest. “That man’s innocent. You’re making me angry now. Don’t make me angry. You check him out or I’ll check him out. Go in there and take his statement, and tell him he’s free to leave. Bloody well do it.”
Carter glared at Beaumont, whose face was flushing red.
Finally he went into the interrogation room and began taking the man’s statement.
When he’d finished, he asked the man to wait. Davidson was happy to comply.
Carter went immediately to Chief Inspector Burrow’s office, where he found Burrows immersed in administrative tasks.
“Sorry to disturb, Inspector.” he said. “It’s just that, we’ve got a suspect for the Hill Way murder. His footprints match, DNA matches, footprints match the Ferrer Street murder, and he was spotted returning home at four in the morning covered in the victim’s blood. Thing is, sir, Beaumont says I’m to let him go.”
“Well, what are you waiting for, Carter? Tell him he can go home.”
“Sir?” said Carter, astonished. “But —”
“Beaumont must know what he’s doing.” said Inspector Burrows. “I have every faith in him. You’re good at your job, Carter, but with all due respect, Burrows is a better detective than you’ll ever be, or I’ll ever be. Let the suspect go.”
“Beaumont is unhinged. I saw him tear down a recruitment poster in the street a few weeks ago. He’s got major issues.”
Burrows harrumphed and pressed his lips together. He seemed to arrive suddenly at a decision.
“Look, he probably wouldn’t like me telling you this, but there are reasons why he’s like what he’s like. You see, Beaumont was in the war.”
“Which war?”
“With Russia. Conscripted. Messed him up pretty bad. But whatever his emotional problems, he’s an incredible detective. If he says to let the suspect go, you do it. OK?”
Carter nodded disbelievingly, lost for words, and eventually managed to say, “If you insist, sir. Under protest.”
“Under whatever you like, Carter.” said the Inspector.
As he was leaving the Inspector’s office, Carter turned and said, “Can I have the suspect put under observation, sir?”
“No.” said the Inspector curtly.
Carter watched Adam Davidson leave the police station with a nervous sinking feeling in his stomach. Davidson had surely murdered twice, and he would surely murder again.
The night of the 15th of September was unnaturally dark, due to a heavy storm. By the following morning, the roads were still wet with rain.
At nine in the morning the police station received an emergency call. Two officers rushed out of the rear exit of the police station, into the car park at the back. In doing so they passed Beaumont, who was standing behind the station, smoking. He asked them where they were going and one of them shouted a reply over his shoulder.
Beaumont quickly finished his cigarette and went into the station to find Carter.
“Let’s go.” he said. “There’s a development.”
“What kind of development?” Carter asked, but Beaumont was already halfway out of the door.
Ten minutes later they pulled up outside a large depressing square concrete building.
“Used to be a hospital, till they found it was riddled with asbestos. Now it’s awaiting demolition.” Beaumont explained. “There’s a courtyard in the middle of it.”
“That’s where the crime occurred?”
“Yeah. That’s the site of the occurrence.”
As they made their way into the building, one of the officers who’d responded to the emergency made his way out of the building, accompanying a slightly-built man in late middle age.
“Who’s he?” Beaumont asked the officer.
“Caretaker, Inspector.” said the officer. “He phoned it in.”
“I want to talk to him personally.” said Beaumont.
“How long are you going to be?” the officer asked.
“Half an hour, tops.” said Beaumont.
“I’ll be happy to wait.” said the man. “Anything I can do to help.”
The man forced a smile, but he was clearly in shock.
“Much appreciated.” said Beaumont.
Inside, the building was full of dust and spider webs. The walls had once been painted a pristine white but now the paint was full of cracks, smeared with unidentifiable substances and adorned with sporadic outbreaks of graffiti. Ancient flaking signs directed people to obsolete departments: X-Ray, Orthopaedics, Cardiology.
They made their way towards the courtyard at the centre of the building, completely surrounded by the grey crumbling walls with their dark, blank windows.
“Might as well light up.” said Beaumont. “No-one’s going to complain in here.”
He lit a cigarette, after offering the packet to Carter, who declined, since he had never smoked, and in fact detested the odour of cigarettes.
The lights in the building worked only sporadically; most of them were long since defunct, and if anything the endless corridors seemed to become darker as they walked further into the building.
Frustratingly, it seemed to be impossible to simply walk directly from the outer doors to the inner courtyard; instead they found themselves walking along one grimy corridor after another.
Carter experienced a curious mixture of emotions that both pulled him towards the courtyard and simultaneously pushed him away from it. He was beginning to fervently wish they would emerge once more into what little sunlight was available on that overcast morning, while at the same time feeling distinctly apprehensive about the sight that awaited them there.
Finally they saw the courtyard through the cracked filthy panes of a glass door. A couple of people from Forensics were milling about taking samples.
“Where is he?” said Carter, peering outside.
Beaumont raised his eyes upwards.
“We’ve got to walk out underneath the body?” said Carter.
“No, don’t worry, it’s off over there a little bit.”
Beaumont gestured with his cigarette.
They pushed the doors open and stepped into the courtyard, turning immediately to look at the body hanging from a window on the upper floor.
“Sick bastard.” said Carter, gasping.
The legs of the cadaver had been severed at the knees and the arms at the elbows. The body had once belonged to a young man.
“Why is he doing this?” said Carter.
“Who?”
“The murderer. The serial killer.”
“It’s terrorism.” said Beaumont. “He wants to shock us.”
“How do you know?”
“Limbs cut off after the victim was already dead, otherwise they’d be more blood. Different thing every time. No consistency.”
“Maybe it’s a different bloke.”
“No.” said Beaumont. “Same bloke.”
Carter eyed the blood that had streaked down the wall and collected in a blackish pool on the broken concrete tiles below.
“That’s a lot of blood.” he said.
“Not enough, mate.” said Beaumont, shaking his head. “Purely done to shock. Not to inflict pain. Let’s go and have a look at the room he’s hanging from.”
In the end an hour passed before they arrived back at the police station, Carter shaking and nauseous. The caretaker had waited patiently for them. Beaumont was carrying a large hunting knife that had been carefully placed in an evidence bag and which was, apparently, the murder weapon, having been found in the room from which the body had been hung.
PC Leaming had almost finished taking the witness’s statement.
“We’ll take it from here, Leaming.” said Beaumont.
“Very good, Inspector.” said Leaming, and he left the room, shutting the door quietly and respectfully behind him.
“Right then, what can you tell us?” Beaumont asked the man.
“I’ve already told that other fellow everything.” he said. “I’m happy to repeat it if you like.”
“Just give us the basic outline.”
“I was mopping the floor when I heard a dreadful scream. I looked out my window and …”
He paused, clearly holding back strong emotions.
“… I saw that poor man hanging there. From my quarters I can clearly see the other side of the courtyard, where he was hanging. Oh, it was so dreadful. Then I thought I saw something moving in one of the upstairs windows. I took a fire axe in case I had to defend myself and I ran downstairs and over to the other side of the building.”
“Very brave.” Carter interjected.
“I just knew I had to do something.” said the man. “I ran round and about the other side of the building a bit, then I heard the doors at the front closing. I hurried over to the front and I was just in time to see someone running off. A powerfully-built man, dressed all in black. I couldn’t see his face. He had a balaclava pulled over his head, and I could only see him from the back.”
Beaumont picked up the evidence bag containing the murder weapon, sliding it across to himself over the table. He stood up and began turning it around in his hands.
“How tall was ‘e?” Beaumont asked the man, walking over to the other side of the room and gazing into space in the corner.
“About six foot I should think.” said the man. “I don’t know what that’d be in metres.”
“Six foot.” said Beaumont, taking the knife out of the bag and peering at it thoughtfully. “So if ‘e was six foot and ‘e ‘eld the knife like this, in his right hand …”
Beaumont trailed off, making short stabbing motions with the knife.
The witness twisted around to glance at him, then turned back to look at Carter.
“What time did you get to work?” he asked.
“About six.” said the witness. “I like to get started early. Then I can finish early.”
“Did you see the sunrise this morning, then?” said Beaumont.
The witness glanced at Beaumont again, puzzled.
“I might have see it briefly after I got up, through the window. Why do you ask?”
“Do you like sunrises?”
“They’re all right. What’s that got to do with the price of eggs, if you’ll excuse me asking, Inspector?”
“A little exercise.” said Beaumont, running his finger along the edge of the knife, which was still smeared with the victim’s blood.
Carter gazed at him, puzzled. This didn’t seem a proper way to handle evidence, but Carter wasn’t going to criticise Beaumont in front of a witness.
“It ‘elps with recalling details.” said Beaumont. “Will you ‘umour me a bit?”
“Certainly, if you think it’ll help.”
“How do sunrises make you feel?” Beaumont asked.
“Well.” said the man, almost laughing slightly. “I suppose I like to see the sun come up, hear the birds singing. Makes you feel ready to start the day.”
“I see.” said Beaumont. “You got any more questions, Carter?”
“No, I —” Carter began, but at that moment, Beaumont plunged the knife into the witness’s neck.
“What the —” shouted Carter, jumping up from his chair.
Beaumont pulled the knife handle forwards, the knife cutting deep into the man’s windpipe.
Carter staggered backwards, shocked beyond belief.
There was a loud bang and a shower of electric sparks emerged from the witness’s severed neck.
“Bloody clanker.” said Beaumont. “I knew it as soon as I saw him.”
He continued to sever the witness’s head. Its arms worked spasmodically, grasping at him, but he stood back, leaning over the machine, methodically sawing at the head.
“Engineered to look and sound ‘armless. Would ‘ave killed both of us if we’d tried to detain it. Chinese probably. Seen loads of these when I was fighting in the Russian war.”
“How did you know?” said Carter.
“You build up a sort of instinct. I like to give them a chance to get a bit poetical. They always trot out typical AI slop. No actual feelings, you see, Carter.”
He took the machine’s head by its hair and placed it on the desk facing Carter.
“I’m going out for a smoke.” he said. “Come and join me. Get some fresh air.”
Outside, Carter leaned back against the wall, exhaling shakily.
“I really thought you were murdering a witness.” he said.
“I may be a bit unhinged, mate, but I’m not that bad yet.” said Beaumont.
“I still don’t understand how you spotted it.”
“Instinct.” said Beaumont, exhaling a enormous blue-grey plume of smoke. “That girl in the back office who looks like your wife—”
“Carla?”
“Yeah, Carla. ‘Ow do you know she’s not your wife?”
“I … well, I … she looks different. Her teeth are different, for a start.”
“Do you recognise her by her teeth, then?”
“No.” said Carter, laughing. “I don’t know how can tell her apart from my wife, but I definitely can and do. Otherwise my wife would do to me what you did to that clanker.”
“Exactly.” said Beaumont. “You don’t know how you do it, but you do it. I’ve met enough of them to know the difference between them and us. Best start practising. There’s probably hundreds of them here already.”
“Why are they here? There’s not enough of them to kill us all.”
“Demoralisation.”
Carter nodded gravely.
“When did you first realise?”
“When I saw those footprints outside the window. What’s ‘e up to, standing in one spot for an hour, probably, sinking into the earth, when he can’t even see anything? Typical clanker behaviour.”
“Do you think it did the other two murders?”
“I’m certain it did.” said Beaumont. “Forensics’ll check its memory and we’ll have confirmation in a day or two.”
Beaumont gazed reflectively at the brick wall that surrounded the car park. He seemed almost calm, for once, Carter thought.
“God, I hate politicians.” said Beaumont. Then he crossed himself and said, “Forgive me, Lord.”
