Summary
A woman whose love drives men mad…
A madman driven to kill if he can’t make love…
Jennifer Wiwa is a consulting psychiatrist who occasionally helps out London’s homicide detectives. An expert in African religious practices, she’s been invaluable in the past for helping to clear up ritual murders. Now two back-to-back cases are about to turn her life upside down and threaten her career. At almost every turn, strange events happen that can be partly explained by reality, but Jennifer is too often left unsure… Is the “African magic” real or an incredible con?
Helping her is her friend and her new lover, Detective Sean Chapple—modest, good-looking, brilliant, relentless. The trail leads from a supermodel’s penthouse suite to a kinky sex club to a shattering, violent confrontation with a maniac. Together, Sean and Jennifer will discover a passion they’ve never known before, and face a horrific insanity they didn’t dare imagine.
Excerpt
The small flurry of activity in the two-bedroom flat in Shepherd’s Bush offered a disturbing image to Detective Chief Inspector Sean Chapple. For a moment he thought of ants working a hill. But he knew better than to let his mind go idle like this, and besides, everyone here was simply doing their job. If they looked insensitive to the horror, it was only because they were focusing on their own little piece of the jigsaw. He heard the fast click-click-click of photographs taken, the squelch and warble of the radios of the constables posted at the door. The dispatch gossip tonight was about some mad fool running around naked in Notting Hill and getting himself steamrollered.
More unnecessary noise: the upstairs tenants were not happy at all about the commotion, or the polite but firm refusal to let them pass through the building foyer. It was sorry, sir, and no, sir, and no, we can’t discuss that, sir, please return to your flat. Bowman was busy bagging the hands of both victims—always a top priority for collecting trace evidence. Julia Solomon was tagging comparison hair samples.
It looked like it had been a nice home for these people. Neat, tidy. Simple furniture but elegant. There was a photo on the wall, a holiday snap in a cheap little frame, the kind you pick up in Woolworths. Nice looking couple.
This case, he knew, was going to be awful. He could feel it. He could feel the complications like the distant thunderclouds of a migraine. Bound to be a lot of media attention, too, and that meant heat. On him among others. The last thing he needed was to have a crowd looking over his shoulder.
Sean Chapple was in his mid-thirties, his blond hair starting to recede but his face still smooth and handsome, his blue eyes, according to his mates, having an uncanny power to stare and hold you yet communicate empathy. Yet while the eyes empathized, Sean Chapple was not known for giving much of himself away. His superintendent, Hodges, called him “The Puzzle Box,” and his mates on the force had taken to calling him “DCI BL.” Detective Chief Inspector British Library. Not a very manageable nickname, he thought, in his humble opinion. It started because Sean’s desk was often stacked with books on a cornucopia of subjects. Metallurgy, the Crusades, David Attenborough’s rather prettily photographed companion book to his TV series about birds. A constable picked up one volume on frogs and asked Sean why he had it.
“I like frogs,” replied Sean. That was the sum of the explanation.
Yes, he liked frogs. He liked those omnibus volumes about how microwaves and other devices worked, and oh, yes, Penguin Classics (he was never seen reading any new fiction, whether it was Ben Elton’s latest or a Dan Brown bestseller). For a Metropolitan Police detective who stuck to Marks & Spencer’s Italian collection suits and who had a Thames Estuary accent, he shocked his colleagues by getting picked up several times after his shift by gorgeous women. Their mouths fell open as ol’ BL, the Met’s top geek, was kissed hello by a long-legged blonde in a stunning backless cocktail dress or a tanned brunette who gushed and hugged him, not minding at all that he couldn’t pick her up at Heathrow. And off they drove, this Venus and quirky Chapple.
No one ever asked him his secret. That would be admitting the fellow was successful. And they would have been shocked and dismissive had they known what it was, for it was such a simple thing, one that Sean Chapple wasn’t even conscious of himself. It was plain common sense when it came down to it; Sean didn’t talk about frogs or forensics or his other arcane interests when he was out with a woman. He listened to them. He was genuinely interested in them.
His relationships, however, never lasted long. He could blame the job and often did, but the truth was that while he sought out intellectually stimulating women, he soon drank his fill and could measure their limitations. Each one, it seemed, had found her selection of interests and had stopped growing. He thought maybe he was being arrogant, but he couldn’t help it. He got bored easily, especially when things moved into the cozy domestic live-in stage. Was this immature? He didn’t know. He thought it would be even more foolish to drift along in a relationship that bled away all its passion and commitment. He wanted... Well, he wanted a woman with whom the adventure would never end.
So it was a shock to him when he woke up and realized that the woman he found most attractive lately, the most intriguing, was Dr. Jennifer Wiwa. Not as a conquest, but as his Grail-woman of friend plus lover.
Right. But she has someone. Couldn’t be sure, mind you, but he got that sense. And look at the business we have to discuss. Not that easy after a double homicide to say oh, by the way, fancy a drink? His other girlfriends and partners had come from outside this world, conveniently so when he had played the glamour card of oh, yes, I’m a detective—the whole cop thing that they initially found a turn-on. Dr. Wiwa had come into this world and knew right away that he and his police colleagues were mortal.
What the hell was he thinking anyway calling Jen in the middle of the night to drag her down here? You Muppet. But he needed her expertise. She had the mind for this grotesque business. She had insight, and he wished he had her gift. She had been kind to him once, telling him that he had it more than he thought. Maybe she was being sincere.
His career, he thought, had been going pretty well up to this point. He had put in a couple of years as a constable in Lambeth then progressed to the Wandsworth Criminal Investigation Department before taking the sergeant’s exam. Now here he was a Detective Chief Inspector handling murders, and while his superiors had singled him out for praise, he knew that the string of ritual killings a year ago would never have been stopped without Jennifer’s analysis. Jennifer. They were on a first name basis, but she was going to be mightily pissed at this morning’s rude awakening.
There she was at the door. A petite black woman who could only be a couple of years younger than him but who could pass for in her twenties, lithe as a dancer, her oval face a café au lait shade with large brown eyes and a generous full mouth. Her sculpted eyebrows lifted as she caught sight of him, and she smiled like she owed him a slap for a cheeky remark.
“Least you could do is have a Prêt à Manger coffee waiting for me,” she said.
“After,” he replied, grateful that she wasn’t too annoyed. “The main action’s in the bedroom.” And he led her past the spatters and streaks of blood on the hardwood floor.
Jen followed him in and stopped in shock. She heard Sean Chapple sigh, realizing that he could have prepared her better. It was one thing to see homicide victims in police photographs, quite another to be confronted with the actual bodies only a few feet away from you. And like this. And with so much blood on the floor. But—
“You’re right, Sean. This is something to see in person.”
The long smear trails of blood from the living room told her that he had dragged the bodies here to stage them in bed. That much was obvious. The victims were a man and a woman, both light-skinned black, both looking like they had northern African ancestry. He had stripped them naked and then placed the man on top of the woman, moving their limbs to put them in missionary position. It was grotesque yet strangely, eerily beautiful and compelling.
The murderer had cleaned them up. He had washed their wounds. Interesting.
As Jennifer took in the décor of the room, the forensics staff began to roll the bodies. She fleetingly looked back and glimpsed beautiful brown naked torsos defiled by metal, blades that had savagely cut down many times. None of this, however, was what captured her attention. She heard Sean running through the details, but her mind was floating away. The belongings. The belongings were wrong.
“Mr.. and Mrs. Iyyasu,” said Sean. “Discovered by an Algerian neighbor who had a key to the flat. Wasn’t the smell—they’ve been killed too recently for that. One of the other neighbors complained about the thick odor of incense floating through a vent or something. For whatever reason, the kindly friend felt something was wrong and went in.”
Jennifer nodded.
“From the looks of it,” Sean went on, studying the bodies as Solomon turned the woman over, “he got the husband as he opened the door. She ran—and he stabbed her in the back. We don’t know why nobody heard a commotion. It’s a Friday night—maybe nobody was home the time he hit. Bloke who rents right over their head is a single male.” He added with a tart sneer, “Plays in a band. We won’t know until we get ’em back to the medical examiner if he’s... sexually interfered with them. You’re very quiet. Tell me what you’re thinking, Jen. He gets off on this? They didn’t find any semen. He didn’t masturbate afterwards or—”
“No,” she said at last, biting her lip pensively. “You probably won’t find any signs of rape or interference on the bodies.”
“Is that a guess?” A faint smile, as if to say he wasn’t making a challenge.
“He posed them,” she explained. “And look how carefully. It’s not a terribly demeaning pose, not even a pornographic one. And he washed them for the staging. The pose looks like it was to send a message, not for his own gratification
” She stared at the bodies, still brooding.
“What message?”
“Don’t know yet,” she said quietly. “But look at this stuff. You should take these things with you.”
And she pointed to the small wooden sculptures. African carvings—a few of heads, others of whole body figures. She leaned down carefully to smell them. Yes, of course. Polish. He was too smart to leave any prints. But he had left the carvings.
“These sculptures don’t belong here,” said Sean quietly.
“No, they’re part of our killer’s stage set,” she answered. “He didn’t make it obvious for us, like putting them in a circle, but he must have known we’d realize they don’t belong to our victims. He’s got a couple on the nightstand, some more on this table over here—” Impressed with Sean, she asked “But how did you know?”
“Didn’t you notice the writing in the frame in the living room?” he asked her back.
“Arabic, yes.”
“It’s a sura, a chapter from the Koran, and it says ’in sha’ Allah,” he explained. “It means ’As God wills’. No way this couple kept African idols like these in their home.”
“You read Arabic?” she asked in astonishment.
“Oh, no,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. “I’ve just learned to recognize a few words.”
Huh. Right, thought Jen, amused. Point for DCI BL. They had told her his nickname even before she had ever met him. She looked at the faces of the victims and remembered something.
“What’s your take on this then?”
“Not sure yet,” she said. “It looks like he’s washed some of their wounds. That can be taken sometimes for remorse, but I think it’s because he was concerned about the aesthetics. The carvings bug me. I don’t recognize them at all from any particular culture. It’s like he’s put together a mix and match.”
“Maybe it’s to throw us off. “
“That’s just it,” said Jennifer. “I’m not convinced it is to throw you off. It’s obvious your victims don’t have anything to do with this scenario he’s brought in, but it doesn’t mean there’s no significance to it.”
Sean flipped through his notes. “I thought ritualistic murders don’t involve sexual gratification. There’s no body part removal in this, and he hasn’t left his little icons in any discernible pattern. But he’s stripped them and put them in a sexual pose. What’s that all about?”
“I don’t know,” muttered Jennifer. “Textbook, it’s not.”
Sean was still flipping pages. He made a long hiss through his teeth.
“You all right, Sean?” she asked.
“Me? Oh, I’m fine, fine. You get used to the gruesome.”
She wasn’t fooled by the faint bravado.
“Wouldn’t want to get too used to it,” she answered.
Curious fellow. Likeable guy. Hardly ever talked about himself, but despite this he was the closest she had come to a friend on the force. There had been a time last year when she thought he might ask her out—maybe he’d been working up the nerve. But he never did. When she had considered the possibility, she realized she would have said yes, if nothing else than to learn more about him. But then Greg had come along, and the Detective Chief Inspector had moved on to other cases where her help wasn’t needed
Life had gone on. Until it stopped for the Iyyasus.
Sean flipped back a page in his notebook and frowned.
“We have a problem,” he announced grimly.
“What?”
“It’s here in my notes,” said Sean. “I didn’t think it was important before, but it’s a bloody good thing I jotted down a couple of things because sometimes you don’t have the photos in front of you.”
“Well?”
He picked up one of the medium-sized evidence bags that now held a sculpture.
“There was a murder three weeks ago of a single victim near Angel Tube Station, prostitute who used her flat for business. Only this was much bloodier, much more savage. No staging, just utter mayhem, multiple wounds clearly inflicted in rage. Left behind semen, but there was no finding of rape. Had a probationary police constable on the scene detail lose his breakfast in a rubbish bin.”
“Okay, but I don’t see the connection,” said Jennifer.
Sean held up the carving in the baggy. “Here’s the thing. Victim was female, twenty-four, not African, not Christian or Muslim, just your standard non-religious capitalist-minded call girl. And three of these little statues were in her flat.”
“But the crimes are completely different in—”
“I know,” he said, shaking his head in mild frustration. “At this girl’s place, we reckoned these things were knick-knacks, you know—innocuous. Maybe she liked the art. Now we know better. Jennifer, we are going to need you very, very badly on this. You have to tell us what’s going on in this guy’s mind before he acts it out again. Two different MOs? Whatever he does to a victim, it’s not pretty.”
She looked at the wooden figures stacked in their evidence bags—their only witnesses to a truly demented mind.
As Sean walked her out, the image of the married couple in a frozen dead embrace came back to her, and she had her first insight. She couldn’t explain it or defend it with a logical rationale. She just knew. It was about sex after all. And more than just sex.
“The way they were posed,” she said, and Sean stopped to pay attention. “Think about it. What’s the most default romantic position we assign to intercourse? The one in all the movies and on book covers. He’s twisted and sick, but consider the way he posed them. This is about love.”
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