Sacrifice Read online

  Scott paused for a moment trying to describe his gut feeling. “I can’t put my finger on it, Sir. There just seemed to be an uneasy atmosphere as Abby and I drove around the streets. Just this palpable tension. It was unnerving.”

  “Well, that just may be because a body has been found. People are cautious and tense. They wonder if they’re next, or did they know the person killed, or worse, does the killer live amongst them. Most don’t expect it to happen on a doorstep, so maybe that’s why there’s this unusual tension?”

  “Erm, maybe, but I’m not too sure.” Scott rose from his seat. “I’ve got the PM for later this afternoon. As soon as I know more, I’ll give you an update.”

  “Do that, Scott. I need to report up the chain as soon as possible.”

  Scott pulled a seat alongside Abby and briefed her on his meeting with Meadows.

  “Well, I’ve been going through the misper reports for the last few weeks. There’s nothing about a child that age. The last report we had was about three weeks ago when an eight-year-old girl went missing. But that’s the wrong sex and the wrong IC background because she was white. Do you want me to look back further?”

  “Incidentally, what happened with that case?”

  Abby checked her notes. “The parents are separated. The mum is the legal guardian, and the dad hung on to his daughter on one of his days.”

  “Okay. It makes sense to go back a few more weeks just to double-check. But generally, if a child of this age goes missing, then someone would bloody report it. A young child goes missing, and the parents don’t come forward? I don’t buy that.”

  “Unless something happened to the parents?” Abby suggested.

  That was another thought that had crossed Scott’s mind. In his experience, if a child goes missing, then if the parents don’t report it, then often it’s the uncles, aunties, grandparents, or even their school or nursery who would contact the police.

  “Listen, can you hold the fort for a little bit? All this stuff with the kid has just gotten to me. It made me realise I’ve not been to see Becky for a little bit. I could do with stopping by there just before we go to the PM. Can I meet you there?”

  Abby’s face softened as she stared into Scott’s. He was a strong man, but his eyes were soft and lost like that of a child. They had been swept away with this new case. What Abby had forgotten to do was to make sure that Scott was okay. To this day, she couldn’t imagine how Scott coped without falling apart. She admired him because if such tragedy had struck her, she doubted she could have carried on.

  “Yes, sorry. I…I know this must be hard for you. You go, and I’ll keep an eye on things. If anything comes up, I’ll phone you. But I’ll see you later.”

  Scott nodded his appreciation and squeezed Abby’s arm in thanks.

  Abby called out as he walked off, “Hey. Take it easy. I’m here if you need me.”

  Scott gave Abby the smallest of smiles before he turned and left.

  It felt like an eternity since his last visit. Pangs of guilt twisted inside and threatened to drown him in sadness. The darkness he felt had lifted. Like moody clouds on a winter’s day, they had refused to budge for so long. They had trailed after him, day and night for many years. Persistent. Haunting.

  Sadness lingered and enveloped him, every other emotion pushed from his being. Aching hollowness filled the void that once flowed with love, light, and laughter. In recent months the grief had shifted. It used to have a vice-like grip around his throat that would suffocate him and send his senses into a frenzied overdrive of panic and fear. That invisible pressure had eased, allowing more reflection with each visit.

  A turn of seasons heralded a change in Angel’s Corner. Leaves from the surrounding trees lost their grip on branches, falling to the ground, and settling amongst the gravestones. Scott knelt and picked away at them, along with a few weeds that appeared amongst the blades of grass.

  “I think of you every day, little one. I imagine what you’d be like now. You’d be tearing up the place, pitting your mum against me, and finding lots of ways to curl me around your little finger.” He laughed, the sound not as hollow as in past visits. “And you would have. I just know I would have been too soft with you. You’d get away with anything. Everything, really. It will soon be Christmas, and I’m sure you’d already have a shopping list of toys from Argos or Smyths, yet alone the make-up list. Just because you’re not here, it doesn’t mean I don’t think of you.”

  A lump lodged in his throat. His eyes watered as he stared at the little picture of Becky in the headstone. “I promise I will bring you a Christmas present. From me and Mummy.” He brushed his thumb against her picture.

  Scott levelled his eyes with the horizon wiping his tears with the back of his hand. He gazed around this small corner of the cemetery. So many young lives taken so quickly.

  His mind shifted to the young victim they had discovered this morning. Were there no parents who are grieving over their lost child? Someone out there must know who he is? Someone must miss him?

  Scott stood and dusted down his knees. He placed two fingers on his lips and planted a kiss on Becky’s picture. “I promise I won’t leave it as long next time.”

  A part of him wanted to remain there, to feel connected with his daughter. If he had a choice, he’d sit there all day, every day, just to escape the cruel world that lay beyond the cemetery. He stopped by to spend some quiet moments by Tina’s grave before making his way to the mortuary.

  4

  A sombre mood reflected in Neil’s face as he showed Scott and Abby through to the examination room. In previous visits, the mortuary assistant would have greeted them with a smile. They would have chatted about trivial things as they made their way from the entrance to the robing area, and then through to the examination room. On this occasion, the presence of a child had left a sad, indelible mark on the whole mortuary team.

  As Scott and Abby walked in, they found Cara’s face positioned just three or four inches away from the cadaver. Her bright, cheerful disposition absent from this particular post-mortem. She puffed out her cheeks and stepped back as they joined her at the table.

  In the cold clinical surroundings of the examination room, the child’s body took up a third of the steel table. A reverent silence filled the stagnant air as all three just stared at the remains. None of them exchanged glances, no words were spoken and no words could be spoken.

  Abby wrapped one arm around her waist and brought her free hand to her mouth. A mixture of shock, sadness, and revulsion etched deep on her face as her eyes widened.

  Scott swallowed hard. Thankfully, he’d only attended less than a handful of post-mortems involving children. But on this occasion, the sight of a child’s body without its arms and head pushed his resolve to the breaking point. His fixed a stare towards the top of his body where he could visualise the child’s head. “This ranks up there as one of those occasions when I fucking hate my job.” He glanced up towards Cara, who had pursed her lips in sympathy. “Let’s get this over and done with. What can you tell us?”

  Neil stood by Cara’s side, holding a clipboard detailing the findings so far.

  “We have a clean cut to the neck, most likely done with a very large, sharp knife. As suspected, there are no serrations to the edges of the skin. That confirms that the head wasn’t cut in a sawing action. There’s significant blood loss, which suggests that the child was still alive when that happened.”

  Scott nodded, realising one of the biggest fears.

  “The removal of the arms hasn’t been executed cleanly. The initial cuts are clean, but when we get closer to the bone structures in the shoulder, there appears to be more of a destructive force applied. It appears that whoever carried this out found it difficult to separate the arms from the body. They appeared to slash and chop through the bone.”

  Cara highlighted with the tip of a scalpel where the bones appeared to have splintered and broken into smaller fragments.

  “What is
concerning, is that the child’s heart was removed, which explains why the chest cavity was opened.”

  “Oh, Jesus!” Abby muttered.

  “Has anything else been removed?” Scott enquired.

  Cara shook her head. “No, nothing. There’s a lot of disturbance to the internal organs. As if they were rummaging around inside.”

  Scott took a sharp intake of breath and shook his head in disbelief. “Was there any…?” Scott asked staring down at the boy’s lower half.

  “No. There’s no evidence of sexual interference. There’s no evidence of anal penetration.”

  Scott let out a sigh of relief.

  “Identification will take longer. Without the presence of arms and head, fingerprints and dental records are out of the equation. I’ve taken some blood samples, so we can get a DNA profile. We’ll send those through to the lab right away. I’ve also extracted the stomach contents so they can be examined. Generally, he was a well-nourished boy. I’ve speculated on the extra weight that his arms and head would carry, and I believe he was of average weight and well cared for. If you want I can call in a paediatric pathologist to see if I’ve missed anything?”

  “No, I think that’s fine for the moment. We need to see how our investigation proceeds first,” Scott replied.

  “What are these?” Abby pointed to some marks on the boy’s torso.

  “It’s scarring. And it’s not recent either. We are talking about three scars about an inch long and about half a centimetre apart, all in line. I’ve seen this type of scarring before. But it tends to be on the face. Common in African tribal communities. But that’s as far as my knowledge goes.”

  Scott stepped forward and inspected the scarring close-up. “Without formal identification, is there any way for us to determine his background, his origins, that type of thing?”

  Cara nodded. “Sometimes, we can identify the country of origin because advances in forensic science have allowed us to extract mineral samples from the bones. We cross-reference them against the various drinking waters to be found across the globe. It does depend on how long he’s been in this country. But we can look into that and speak to Matt in forensic services?”

  “Well, it’s worth a punt. It depends on how detailed the analysis is, and how long it takes. But I certainly think the country of origin could play a part in this and help us to build a bigger picture of his background.”

  “Well, it can certainly be useful, if as in this case, the individual is someone from another country. Perhaps they’ve not been reported as missing because they are here illegally. Or because there are no other means of identification.”

  Scott’s eyes widened as he pointed at Cara. “You’ve just hit on an important point.”

  Cara looked puzzled. “Have I?”

  “He could be an illegal which is why no one’s reported him missing. His parents are too scared.”

  Abby shrugged in agreement.

  “His last meal appears to have been nuts, raisins, and some type of white, sticky substance. The process through which food is absorbed into the body can take anything from twenty-two hours to two days to complete. Within that time, food is broken down and reduced to a liquid pulp before absorption. The nuts and raisins had hardly been broken down, so he certainly had his last meal well within twenty-two hours of his death.”

  “Seriously? You can determine that?” Abby asked. She looked surprised by the level of detail Cara could determine.

  “Absolutely. Advances in technology and forensic science have helped us to look at a victim like never before. We can identify the circumstances around their death, their environment, and their habits, just by examining the stomach contents.”

  Cara placed her utensil down before continuing. “Let me give you a simple example. Let’s say that in the stomach contents of someone who’s just passed away, we found the remains of some pizza. We know that pizza would take roughly two hours to digest within the stomach. If the PM shows that the pizza is still in the stomach, then it would be safe to assume the deceased died within two hours prior to discovery.”

  “I didn’t think we could go so deep.”

  Cara smiled at Abby. “So yes, stomach contents can be a treasure trove of information. We can reveal if the deceased was experimenting with any form of drug or exotic food which might have brought about a state of internal poisoning. So it can reveal anything like trace elements of poisons or other toxins that might not be found in the deceased’s system.”

  “Well, we’ll shoot off now. It sounds like you’ve got plenty to be getting on with. Call me if there’s anything else you identify that can’t wait until you submit your report.”

  Cara nodded her confirmation as she returned to continue her examination.

  Scott stared into his black Americano as Abby sipped on her soya latte. It was one of those rare occasions where they sat in silence, both reflecting on their own thoughts. Seeing the boy’s body had left them both saddened and traumatised.

  Scott broke the silence. “You would think that we’d get used to post-mortems, considering the amount we’ve been to. But they always have a knack of throwing a curveball at you. I think what I’ve just seen is just as bad as it gets.”

  Abby just hummed her reply. Scott had pretty much verbalised her emotions. As a human, and as a parent, she’d found the whole experience disturbing. She glanced towards Scott and couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. She decided to try to inject some humour to lighten the mood.

  “Do you know that this is the first post-mortem I’ve been to with you where you haven’t stuffed your face the moment we left?”

  A small crease of a smile broke on Scott’s face, as he huffed. “Do you blame me?”

  They both shared a light-hearted moment before shaking off the melancholy and calling it a day.

  5

  The usual chatter, banter, and frivolity were absent this morning as the team sat in an arc around the incident board. An air of loss permeated the atmosphere as the dismembered body of a child stared back at them. Scott had pinned the SOCO’s photographs on the whiteboard. The pictures painted a grim scenario, triggering the emotions of everyone present.

  Scott glanced around the team, his eyes moving from one team member to another. He gauged their reactions and imagined their melancholy and macabre thoughts. “Okay, you’ve all seen these pictures, and you’ve read the initial report from Dr Hall following the post-mortem that Abby and I attended yesterday late afternoon.” Scott summarised the main points of the post-mortem back to the team.

  “Have you got any indication whether the child was conscious at the point of dismemberment?” Raj asked.

  “No, we haven’t at the moment. That he was alive at that point is appalling. How did we get on with the door to door?”

  Helen and Raj flicked through their notes. “Feedback from the house-to-house enquiries was poor, to be honest, Guv. In most instances, we were met with a wall of silence. No one saw anything, and no one heard anything. I sensed it was a case of, ‘It’s none of my business, so I don’t get involved.’ There were a few derogatory remarks about us, and a general unwillingness to talk to us.”

  Helen continued where Raj had stopped. “There were a few racist comments as well, Guv, which Raj and I cautioned them about, but then that was just met with vile abuse.”

  Scott had expected this and had held out little hope for support and intelligence from the local community. They often saw the police with suspicion, so chances of gaining anything of value were slim.

  Raj narrowed his eyes. “There were a few African families, but again no one willing to talk to us. It was crazy. A tiny crack in the door would open, we’d see this set of eyes darting back and forth between Helen and me, and then the occupant would shake their head and shut the door. Uniform appeared to be met with the same response. In fact, I think they got it worse than us when they knocked on the doors of some of the scrotes that they had picked up in the past.”

  Raj’s comments
were met with some knowing smiles.

  “Okay, Raj. That’s helpful to know. Can you contact social services and find out how many African families live on the Whitehawk who are under their care? Find out their residential status, and what type of support structures they have in place for them. Now we don’t know if this child came from the Whitehawk, Brighton, or even Sussex. For all we know, the child could come from a different part of the country.”

  “That might be the case, Guv,” Mike interrupted. “But bearing in mind the post-mortem said he’d been dead for less than twelve hours, if he had been killed in a different part of the country and dumped on the Whitehawk, then he might have been dead for longer?”

  “Not necessarily. The child could have been alive, pulled down from a different part of the country, and then killed either at the crime scene or close to the crime scene. That would be the more logical explanation and fit in with the timeline of death. That’s why we’ve deployed a PolSA team last night, and they are continuing their search again this morning with the help of dogs. Again it’s a long shot, but we need to be thorough.”

  “Have they found anything yet?”

  Scott shook his head. “No, nothing yet. I’m hoping that the remaining body parts might have been dumped close by, and we need those to help us with identification. Or they locate anything else relating to the murder, including the murder weapon.”

  “I’ve still been checking the misper reports, and nothing flashes up of missing black children locally or within Sussex,” Abby blew out through gritted teeth. “Someone must have lost their child or reported it to someone unless there’s a cover-up. But I’ve drawn a blank so far. That’s why I think we need to go to the press. But then again we have got little to give them. Surely a press appeal might flush something out?”

  Scott agreed with Abby’s suggestion. And it was indeed something that he was keen to push upon Meadows, despite his boss’s reluctance.