Dead in Time (The Sara Jones Cycle Book 1) Page 6

  ‘One of the constables identified him,’ Jamie said. ‘His name was Aled Morgan; he lived on a council estate in Penparcau.’

  Sara noticed that Aled Morgan’s cheeks, temples and forehead were dirty and torn, as if struck, but no blood had run from the wounds. On the right side of his throat was a single slash of about ten centimetres.

  The police surgeon crouched next to Sara. ‘An oblique wound,’ he said, ‘long and deep. I’m no expert in this type of thing, but I’m guessing it was made from behind.’

  ‘It was,’ Sara said dully. She forced herself to squint more closely at the slash. ‘I’d say it passed through the external jugular vein, the internal jugular, and the common carotid artery. There are no hesitation marks on the neck; the offender managed it in a single stroke ... although the margins are slightly variegated.’

  ‘Sorry?’ asked Ceri.

  ‘The edges of the wound are jagged,’ Jamie explained grimly. ‘His knife’s dull.’

  ‘How long would the boy have lived?’ Ceri asked.

  ‘Not long, thank God,’ said Sara. ‘He’d have lost consciousness immediately, then died of an air embolism to the heart.’

  Jamie jerked his head towards the observation area. ‘It happened over there, at that table near the fence.’

  He led them back to a picnic table. It, and the gravel and grass under it, were coated in dried blood. To the left was a stunning panorama of Aberystwyth, its coastline curving in an arc towards the pier. Beyond that were the castle and harbour. The sun, Sara guessed, would have been setting to the boy’s right.

  ‘We know he was smoking cannabis,’ Jamie said, ‘possibly enough to miss his assailant’s approach from behind. It seems that the offender pushed Aled’s head into the table, pulled it back up by his hair, and then slashed his throat.’

  ‘Have his parents been notified?’ Ceri asked.

  Jamie shook his head. ‘The constable went to his mother’s house – she isn’t home. He’s making enquiries as to her whereabouts.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she have noticed him missing last night?’ Sara asked.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Ceri said. ‘Some kids stay out late. Maybe the mother works shifts, leaves before he wakes up ...’

  Sara thought of the poor boy’s mother, at work, maybe half a mile away, unaware that her child was sprawled at the top of Constitution Hill, dead. She walked back towards the café, and the crumpled body on its far side. ‘What about the symbol? Is there one?’

  Jamie tilted his head. ‘Nothing visible, but we haven’t moved the body. The pathologist is on his way up from Cardiff. I wouldn’t be surprised if he found one drawn somewhere on his skin.’

  Jamie looked back towards the rear of the pub. ‘Did you notice his facial wounds?’

  ‘Post-mortem,’ Sara said with a nod.

  ‘How do you know?’ Ceri asked.

  ‘They haven’t bled,’ Sara replied. ‘Living people bleed, corpses don’t – their blood isn’t circulating.’

  ‘It seems that he beat the boy after death,’ Jamie said.

  Overhead, the RAF fighter jet screamed by. Jamie waited until the aircraft’s roar quelled to a dull rumble before adding, ‘Sounds like another message, doesn’t it?’

  Eldon Carson stood, brooding, at the window of his room in the Bryn Y Môr Guest House. The imposing hotel, once a hall for nineteenth-century women students, sat at the end of Victoria Terrace, in the shadow of Constitution Hill. Having chosen it for its location, Carson had reserved his room by telephone a week ago, and was relieved its owner hadn’t asked for a credit card number. He had been at the window since before dawn, distractedly ripping sheets of paper from a thick spiral notebook, cutting them into strips and colouring them with the few pencil crayons he carried, then folding the strips into shapes. Some were abstract structures, others remarkably competent origami animals: a swan, a giraffe, a cat. They littered every surface of the room.

  Now, Carson gazed down at the rubberneckers standing next to the police tape, waiting for the body to be brought down the hill. How much did these people understand?

  Watching the aftermath of yesterday’s actions brought back all of its angst: the pounding blood in his neck, the hyper-alertness, the pensiveness, the nausea. Especially the nausea. Killing Aled Morgan had been the hardest thing Carson had been forced to do since embarking on this terrible, necessary course.

  He didn’t want to think about that poor kid; Carson’s new responsibility sickened him. Still, he forced himself to watch its aftermath, from the moment the waitress rode the rail car up to work, to the police’s response after she found the body, to Sara Jones arriving on the scene with the lady cop. Seeing her there, passing through the security cordon, had caused him to shudder in anticipation. Even through binoculars, Sara looked so cool, so well-crafted – like one of his origami swans. The immaculate makeup, the designer khakis, the expensive russet blouse ... all perfectly matched to the red-brown sheen of her short, spiky hair. Only a perfectionist could make hair look like that.

  But even she misjudged him. They all assumed he was a psychopath, and that was infuriating. Carson burned with the desire for them to understand what he understood, to come to the same realisations that he had arrived at. To know he wasn’t to blame.

  Nonetheless, there was no point in telling them straight; it would sound like the ramblings of the insane. To win their forgiveness, maybe even their gratitude, he had to lead them along. The question had been, what hints, clues, and signs would guide them to the right conclusions? It had not taken Carson long to realise that burning Kapadia had been too subtle. When the radio said he’d been trying to destroy evidence, he’d felt physically sick, and knew he would have to give them more to work with.

  Live and learn. Carson looked down to one of his paper sculptures, onto which he had drawn his special ‘Eye in the Pyramid’ design. Would they understand now? He hoped so. At least Sara Jones would – she would have to know the truth.

  Because Sara Jones needed Eldon Carson.

  When Aled Morgan’s black-bagged body was loaded into the back of an ambulance in front of the Cliff Railway Station, Carson knew it was time to go. Soon, the cops would learn of the muscular young American who’d taken a room just before the murder, and left right after its discovery.

  And after they learned that, he thought, sitting down at the small desk across from the bed, they would receive this. Carson pulled his notepad towards him, and began to write a letter.

  SIX

  Over the next couple of days, Sara did her best to force from her mind the image of Aled Morgan’s stained yellow T-shirt, and the lad’s dark brown fringe tumbling over his slumped face – the face that had been beaten after death. Whenever she felt compelled to phone Jamie about the pathologist’s findings, those pictures would form in her mind like spectres, and she would find a less upsetting diversion to occupy her time.

  Sara had stopped taking her anti-depressants some time ago. She knew Dr Shapiro would not approve, but she had made other attempts to keep her feelings at bay. She had continued, compulsively, to decorate her kitchen – sanding, filling cracks, painting walls, making everything smooth, bright and uniform. This psychological ruse had been at least partly successful: it had filled Sara’s spare hours, but now she found that the labour was not mentally challenging enough to keep her mind from wandering. Banishing images of Aled, Sara only created a vacuum, which she filled by thoughts of Jamie Harding.

  It was Thursday evening when Sara first realised she was missing him; they hadn’t spoken for maybe twenty hours. She told herself she was mislabelling the emotion: Jamie’s re-emergence was bound to stir up memories. It did not mean the hollowness she felt without him was significant.

  Yet, just before drifting off to sleep in the wee hours of Friday morning, she had found herself wondering what it would be like if they became a couple once again.

  Sara’s job at the mental health charity was supposed to be part-time, and Friday was one of
her days off. That morning, without the clock-radio to rouse her, she woke up late, with one certainty buzzing in her mind: if she and Jamie ever did get back together, she did not want the kind of relationship they’d had before. She was no longer willing to settle for a haphazard affair that meant nothing to either of them. And that understanding had allowed her thoughts of Jamie to fade through the morning, as if exhausted by so much wear and tear.

  In the early afternoon, she entered her kitchen looking for lunch, and stopped to admire the progress she had made in the room. Every wall now glowed a pleasant golden yellow. The paintings which had once graced her Harley Street office hung on either side of the Welsh dresser, and an Aboriginal parrying shield was mounted next to the refrigerator. Encouraged by what she saw, she resolved to begin clearing the stable of boxes – perhaps that very afternoon. She needed indoor activities: a heavy fog had rolled in off the bay, and was snaking its tendrils around trees and through shrubs, hovering above the ground like wraiths. She certainly did not want to go out in weather like this.

  She poured herself a glass of red wine and shuddered. This, she thought, was what it should have looked like on the day Aled Morgan was murdered. Instead, the pleasant weather had made a mockery of the dead boy. Gulping her wine, she tried to shake away those visions – the same ones she had been shutting out for two days. Stained T-shirt, tumbling fringe, and a lifeless, angelic face. Shuddering once more, Sara pulled open the fridge and took stock of the contents. She needed distraction, and decided that making a bigger-than-usual lunch would keep her occupied.

  She settled on linguini with a home-made sauce. Working her way through a second glass of red wine, Sara fried finely chopped mushrooms, leeks, and garlic in a large cast-iron skillet. In London, she had eaten most of her meals out, and had only begun to discover the pleasures of the kitchen after moving to Penweddig. And they were pleasures, she was learning. Making her own meals had become yet another form of therapy, a way to create something beautiful and beneficial to her life every day. She tossed a handful of chopped tomatoes into the frying pan, lowered the heat, and cocked her ear.

  Outside, she heard the scraping of holly bushes against metal. Sara’s three-bedroom cottage lay on the outskirts of Penweddig, set into a hillside. Visitors had to drive along a potholed dirt path, overgrown with weeds and holly on either side. The farmer who owned the path had agreed to clear the brush and repair the lane, but so far had done neither. The sides of Sara’s BMW were already scratched, and any visitor’s car faced a similar fate.

  She looked out the window to see Jamie’s Land Rover sweeping around her large driveway, and was surprised to feel her pulse speed up. She checked her appearance in the glass of a cabinet. Pulling open the kitchen door, she noticed that Jamie had small bags under his eyes.

  He laid his briefcase on Sara’s large pine table, and withdrew his handkerchief, mopping his forehead. Sara had not noticed how hot the hob had made the kitchen.

  ‘That smells good,’ he said.

  She smiled, and took the frying pan off the heat. ‘It’s sauce for linguine. Almost ready.’

  He slumped in a chair. She wondered if he was here on business, or had just stopped by for lunch. ‘You look tired,’ she said, putting a pot of water on to boil.

  Jamie made a sound of agreement and Sara poured red wine into a goblet. ‘Too tired for this? I’ve also got beer.’

  He sat forward, forcing himself into alertness. ‘I’ll settle for juice.’

  ‘Ah ... of course,’ Sara said, feeling disappointed. It was a business call. She filled a tumbler. ‘So,’ she said, handing him the glass and slipping quickly into role, ‘what did the pathologist find?’

  ‘There was a symbol, and one name, written on the boy’s back.’ Jamie took a quick gulp of juice, and hesitated. ‘Our villain has an interest in your friend, Mrs Davies.’

  Sara gasped. ‘From the mental health charity? It was her name?’

  Jamie nodded blankly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘a detective constable has already spoken to her, and they’ve installed alarm mats and various other equipment at the premises.’

  Sara sat, suddenly weakened by the peculiar sensation of finding herself linked in another, strange way to this case. ‘I was with her when Aled Morgan was murdered,’ she said. ‘Did she have any connection to the boy?’

  ‘It appears he worked for her. Odd jobs, gardening.’

  ‘The poor woman,’ Sara whispered. ‘How is she taking the news of his death?’

  ‘If she doesn’t stop leaving us messages with more questions, everyone’s going to go mad.’

  Sara smiled in spite of herself. Mrs Davies had a habit of throwing herself into situations that didn’t involve her at all – Sara could imagine what she must be like in a case where she was a central character.

  ‘Naturally,’ Jamie went on, ‘she’s wondering why the killer might be concerned with her, and her relationship with the late Master Morgan. Frankly, so am I.’ He popped open the clasps of his case. ‘A lot has happened since we spoke.’

  Sara nodded in agreement. ‘It certainly has.’

  ‘More than you know,’ Jamie said. ‘The offender has made contact.’

  ‘What?’

  He pulled out a rumpled piece of paper from his briefcase. ‘This was received in the morning’s post.’

  Sara took the paper from Jamie’s hands. It had been torn from a spiral notebook. As Jamie rose and filled his drained tumbler with water from the tap, she read the small, very neat handwriting:

  “Please try to understand my motives. I know the truth of events before they have been revealed. I did not ask for this, but realize now I cannot run from the duty it brings. The Kapadia family, Miss Elliott & Mrs Davies are safe, & that is what matters. One of you will know the truth.”

  Under the words, as neatly rendered as it had been on flesh, the murderer had left his signature: the eye, the pyramid.

  Sara stared at it, her eyes were blank with thought.

  ‘First impressions?’ Jamie asked.

  Sara nodded slowly. ‘I think I know what he’s on about.’

  He arched an eyebrow. ‘You know?’

  ‘Well, I have a hunch ...’ Suddenly, a swell of certainty rose within her, and she blurted, ‘Jamie, this guy thinks he’s psychic.’

  The inspector stared at her levelly, his expression implacable but his eyes thoughtful.

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ Sara added emphatically.

  He sat silently and rubbed his tired eyes. ‘The possibility had occurred to me, too,’ he said.

  Sara felt a prickle of defensiveness. ‘Have you discounted it?’ she asked.

  ‘Not out of hand. He says he knows the truth of events before they have been revealed. That could refer to psychic powers – but it could also mean he’s got inside information from some other source.’

  ‘That’s not likely when you consider his emblem,’ Sara countered. ‘My bet is that that eye represents him – or at least his psychic powers.’

  Jamie leaned over her shoulder and looked again at the photocopied note. ‘So he believes his supposed powers present him with a duty – a mission.’

  ‘The mission to administer justice,’ Sara agreed.

  The more she articulated these thoughts, the surer she was that she was right. It was almost as if she was thinking with the killer’s mind, understanding what he understood.

  Sara stared at the symbol drawn on the bottom of the note. Suddenly, she had another flash of insight. ‘It should have occurred to me before,’ she said. ‘I know what these semi-circles at the bottom of the pyramid are. They’re scales – symbolic scales of justice.’

  Jamie raised his eyebrows, then nodded thoughtfully. ‘That’s possible ... but justice for whom?’ he asked.

  ‘For the Kapadias ... Miss Elliott ... Mrs Davies. He was never threatening them, Jamie, he was avenging them!’ The pot on the hob boiled furiously and steam was filling the room. ‘He believes he can look at people and
see the wrongs that they’ve done – and who they’ve done them to. He feels that this special power gives him the responsibility to do something about it ... so he kills them for their crimes.’

  She opened the refrigerator door and drew out a packet of fresh pasta.

  Jamie frowned sceptically. ‘What did little Aled Morgan do to Mrs Davies?’

  Sara paused. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, peeling the plastic packet open, ‘but don’t you think it’s worth finding out?’

  Jamie shook his head, bemused by the force of Sara’s enthusiasm. ‘Look,’ he said patiently, ‘even if we find out that Aled had wronged Mrs Davies, where does that leave Carol Elliott? All Dan Williams ever did was buy fags from her.’

  Sara dropped pasta into the boiling water. ‘That’s what Carol Elliott claims. But who knows what their relationship really was? Maybe he did something she’s afraid to admit.’

  She looked into Jamie’s green eyes. He was sceptical, but wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. For reasons more complicated than she could articulate, she needed Jamie to be convinced. ‘And we don’t know how Mr Kapadia treated his family,’ she said.

  Jamie broke their gaze, and stared into the distance, blinking several times. ‘To accept this premise,’ he said finally, ‘you’d have to believe the offender really is psychic.’

  Sara shook her head. ‘You don’t have to believe that at all,’ she said. ‘It’s possible there was no connection between Miss Elliott and Mr Williams, but the killer imagines there was. Or maybe they were acquainted, but he knows about it by some other means.’

  She strode back to the table and dropped into her seat. ‘Look, Jamie, I don’t have all the answers. But based on this letter and that symbol, my gut says I’m on the right track.’

  Jamie thought, then chuckled mirthlessly. ‘A psychic vigilante multiple murderer. Jesus.’

  They remained silent for a moment, listening to the light rain which had begun drumming on the kitchen’s flat roof. Finally, Jamie broke their silence. ‘What do you really believe about psychic phenomena?’ he asked. ‘Do you think they’re real?’