Fallen Angel (3 page)

The young PC in his fluorescent yellow waistcoat stood beside the tape marking the border of the crime scene and watched closely as the three series BMW pulled up close to where he stood. He only got as far as ‘You can't park there, miss …' before Stacey Collins flashed her ID in his face.

‘DI Collins, I'm the SIO for this case.' The young man immediately stepped aside and lifted the tape, allowing her to pass underneath. As she walked along the path towards the church, she secretly prayed that she'd been given the wrong information. But even in this house of God her prayers were not about to be answered.

The first thing that struck her was the smell: a mixture of blood, vomit and death. In seventeen years of policing she had never witnessed a scene like the one that now unfolded before her eyes. Up in the gloom of the rafters was a sight she knew she would never forget: the body of a young boy.

It wasn't just the poor child's youth; it was the look in his eyes – that of terror personified.

Perhaps it was the environs of the church and the mythological images on the stained-glass window that made the DI remember a book her parents had when she was a child. It had shown pictures of the nine circles of hell. The looks on the faces of the tortured souls had
been so distressing to her that she used to insist on checking that the book was closed and safely hidden away before her lights were turned out at night. The same look was on this poor dead boy's face – exaggerated fear, a hideous caricature. She knew she would not be able to describe it to anyone who hadn't seen it, nor would she want to. Some things shouldn't be shared.

With her eyes, she followed the line of the rope that was attached around the boy's neck. From the ceiling rafters, it went down on a diagonal to the end of one of the heavy wooden pews on the left-hand side of the church, where it seemed to be tied in a firm knot.

The pews to her left were soiled with vomit, and the sound of a man's pitiful sobs, coming from a room adjacent to the altar, echoed around the church walls. She assumed both came from the priest who had found the body. She looked above the altar at an ornate statue of the Madonna, her hand held forward in a gesture of benediction, her gaze beatific. To Collins, it somehow seemed gruesome.

The fire brigade were quietly erecting a scaffolding tower around the body in preparation for lifting it down, but nothing could be done until the forensic scientist and his team of SOCOs, along with the pathologist, finished their initial examinations. There were still procedures to be followed, even in such difficult circumstances.

‘DI Collins? What are you doing here?'

Collins turned around to see DCI Colin Blackwell moving towards her.

‘I was on call.'

Blackwell's face fell a little. ‘I was told Watson was on call.'

‘He was supposed to be, but he's ill so I took his slot. Is there a problem?'

‘No. Of course not. I need to give you some background on the victim.' His voice had a tone of disappointment in it that he couldn't hide.

‘You know who this is?'

Blackwell nodded and began to relate the events of the last few days, doing his best to avoid eye contact with the junior officer.

Blackwell and Collins had run into each other a few times over the years, and there was little love lost between them. She was well known in certain circles of the Met but not well liked. Blackwell had first heard about her through an old colleague, DCI Sean Baxter, who had spilled the beans about her after a few pints. He was at his wits' end. She was insubordinate and a loose cannon without any thought for proper procedure or authority. But his hands had been tied: the DCS insisted that she should have a free hand, as long she continued to get results – which she did with astonishing regularity. Baxter knew that one day she would go too far, and that when she did, she would inevitably take good officers down with her.

They were three pints down when Baxter's tongue started to wag more freely than it should have done. There was one occasion, he said, when he had caught Collins attempting to falsify evidence in a child molestation case. Blackwell had listened and quietly absorbed the antics of this renegade officer. He would never have had her on his own team, and would never have wanted to work with her, especially on a case like this. But he knew that,
although the Eliot case had started out with SCD7, it would now proceed as a regular murder case and therefore had to be passed over to homicide's murder investigation team.

‘So. Who fucked up? You?' asked Collins once Blackwell had finished.

The DCI spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Remember who's the senior officer here. This is my case.'

‘You mean
was
your case,' she replied, turning to look directly at him. ‘SCD7 is for kidnapping and extortion; once it turns into a murder, it comes under the jurisdiction of MIT. I'll be answering to DCS Higgins – which you know as well as I do. I've already called my team in, and they'll be here shortly.'

Blackwell frowned. He knew she was right, and it annoyed the hell out of him. ‘But we have a relationship with the parents, we've been with them from the time the first call came in. And anyway, it's not down to you.'

‘True, it's the Chief Super's call, but you guys don't have the manpower to run something like this. Something tells me we're going to have to learn to get along.'

Blackwell nodded slowly. ‘I need to make a couple of …' He was interrupted by the ringing of his mobile. He glanced at the screen and saw displayed a number that filled him with dread: that of Daniel Eliot's parents. He had received more than a dozen hysterical calls from Christina ever since the kidnapper had told her he was going to kill her son. The family liaison officer was doing her best to try to calm the parents down but failing miserably. Blackwell knew he could not postpone the inevitable for much longer.

Blackwell excused himself from Collins, headed to a quiet corner of the church and hit the answer button.

‘Do you have him yet?'

Blackwell knew he couldn't tell Christina over the phone that her son was hanging above him from the rafters of a church in Peckham. ‘I'm going to be heading over to you very shortly, I promise.'

‘What's going on? Something's happened. Something's happened to Daniel, hasn't it? Why won't you talk to me?'

‘Christina, I promise I'll be with you soon.'

‘Please bring my little boy back with you,' she sobbed. ‘Please.'

Collins went over to the table the SOCOs were using to hold their evidence. A page from a Bible was inside an evidence bag next to a pile of gloves and swabs. She picked it up and read the words underlined in blood:
By the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners
.

The sound of a disapproving cough came from behind her.

‘Didn't anyone ever teach you to keep your hands in your pockets at a crime scene?'

Collins turned to see Edward Larcombe, a veteran forensic scientist with whom she had worked with many times, walking along the aisle towards her, two more evidence bags in his hands. They exchanged weak smiles.

Despite Larcombe's joke it was clear that they were both deeply affected by the horror of what they could see around them.

‘I hope to God you catch the sick bastard that did this,' said Larcombe.

‘I'll need everything you can find.'

‘I'm already ahead of you. That's why I called in Jessica Matthews: she's the best forensic pathologist I know.'

Collins chewed slightly on her lower lip. She was always telling Sophie not to do this but sometimes did it herself without even noticing.

‘Edward, are you religious?'

He looked confused by the question but shook his head. ‘No,' he replied. ‘Why do you ask?'

Collins glanced down at the page from the Bible. ‘It doesn't matter. Have your guys found any sign of a forced entry?'

Larcombe shook his head. ‘None.'

‘Is the priest still here?'

Larcombe nodded and pointed to a door on the far right of the altar. ‘The paramedics took him in there. He's in shock.'

The door to the side of the altar was slightly ajar. Collins pushed it open with her foot and stepped into the vestry. It was a small room, dimly lit by a single light bulb. A number of cassocks hung on the wall, and the air was filled with the musty smell of incense and old hymnals. There was a steel cabinet with a flimsy-looking lock on the front – probably where they kept the communion wine, she supposed.

Father Connelly sat on a wooden chair, his eyes staring blankly ahead of him, his deeply lined face grey and pallid. A female paramedic in bright-green overalls knelt beside him, gently stroking one of his hands. She looked up enquiringly at Collins.

‘You're needed out front, one of the lads has fainted. You know what these probationers are like,' said Collins.

She shook her head. ‘I can't leave him. I've just given him a sedative to calm him down.'

‘I can watch him for you,' said Collins, smoothly interrupting.

The paramedic looked at her patient, then back up at the DI. ‘He can't be left alone,' she warned.

Collins nodded, then knelt down on the other side of the priest and removed his hand from the woman's gentle grasp.

‘I'll be back as quickly as I can,' the paramedic said before walking briskly away.

Collins had to move fast. It would only be a couple of minutes before the woman realized she had been sent out on a false errand – but there were a couple of questions that needed answering, and she knew from experience that it could be hours, or even days, before the doctors gave the all-clear to formally interview the old man. She took the priest's face in her hands and turned it towards her. ‘I need to ask you some questions,' she said in a low but direct voice.

Father Connelly just started at her, his eyes seemingly focused within.

‘Can you hear me?' she said, more firmly this time.

The priest seemed to nod his head, though in truth it was more of a tremble than a nod. Collins had so many things to ask him. Routine questions, ones that he was in no fit state to answer.

She ran through them in her mind. Does anyone beside you have keys to the front door? Do you know the parents
of Daniel Eliot? Why would someone leave the body of a child in
your
church?

Then, in her mind's eye, she pictured the torn-out page from the Bible and the words marked out in red. She recited the line: ‘
By the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners.
What does it mean, Father Connelly? Why would someone underline it in blood?'

At first the priest just stared, as though he hadn't heard. But, at the mention of the word ‘blood', his whole body suddenly started to shake, and Collins felt the rough skin of his face slip in her sweaty hand. He opened his mouth and took in a gulp of air, and then another. And another. In seconds he was hyperventilating, his lungs wheezing.

And then the paramedic returned. ‘What the hell …' she started to say, before removing the officer's hand from around the priest's face. Collins stood up and let her attend to him.

‘He's in no state to talk,' the medic barked over the sound of the priest's gasping. ‘And you knew full well there was nobody in need of my attention outside. I've got a good mind to report you for this.'

The woman's voice boomed off the walls of the small room, but Collins had already turned away. She wasn't going to get anything out of Father Connelly at the moment.

Back at the altar, Collins slowly absorbed the scene in front of her. She pictured the killer standing at the side of the pews, pulling on the rope as Daniel's body rose into the air. It must have taken some strength, especially as there would have been a good deal of friction between the rope and the wooden beam. Was it possible for one
man to get Daniel in here without being noticed and then to hoist his struggling body up like that? Perhaps there was an accomplice, someone to help in his sinister night's work. There was no way of telling. All she knew was that she was dealing with a very dangerous person – or persons – capable of watching fear distort the face of a child, watching his legs flail around while the light of life slowly faded from his eyes.

Collins walked out of the front entrance, manoeuvring her way round a SOCO clad in a white boiler suit who was dusting the door and handle for prints. She made her way to the back of the church. She needed to see what was there. The answer, of course, was another cordon. The familiar blue-and-white tape cut off the road on either side of the back of the church, and two uniformed constables stood guard while a small crowd of onlookers wondered what was going on inside. Beyond the cordon the street itself was busy with Friday night traffic. A little further down was a pub with an abundant display of hanging baskets outside.

She looked up at the walls of the buildings around the church until she found what she was looking for: a sleek grey rectangular CCTV camera trained on the street to record the drunken antics of trouble-makers who might cause damage to the pub or surrounding buildings. Collins made a mental note to ensure that her junior officers retrieved the footage as soon as possible and continued her walk.

Back at the front of the church, she saw a small laminated sign, held in a wood-and-glass frame, showing the weekly Mass times. Collins checked that day's services:
there had been a morning Mass, a midday Mass and another scheduled for seven. The priest must have been arriving to prepare everything for the evening service. The phone call to Daniel's parents had been made at just after five o'clock. The killer must have known that he had a window of about two hours should the money not arrive or the drop-off turn out to be a set-up.

Larcombe appeared beside her. ‘We're ready to bring the body down now,' he whispered. ‘Unless you have any objection.'