Heart of the Demon (D.S.Hunter Kerr) Read online

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  CHAPTER ONE

  DAY ONE OF THE INVESTIGATION: 6th July 2008

  She bucked and jerked wildly and he had to bear down all of his twelve stone onto her wiry, yet well toned young body, as her limbs smacked against his.

  Every sign she was fighting for her life.

  Then the air exploded from her chest for the last time and at last she lay still.

  Gasping for breath and drenched in sweat he pushed himself up from her limp figure. He had thought that she was never going to die. He had been amazed at the fight she had put up. He took in several deep breaths and tried to slow his racing heartbeat, watching in fascination as dark viscous blood belched from her eye sockets, joining other rivulets which were already matting her dark bob of hair and forming a pool around her head.

  Bending down he scraped the mess from his knife into the dusty earth and then dropped it into his coat pocket and set to work.

  He couldn’t leave her body here.

  Dragging the bloodied corpse by the wrists along the flagstone floor he soon found himself gasping for breath again and he could feel fresh beads of sweat tickling his rib cage as he hauled her towards the barn entrance.

  Then a distant unfamiliar noise caught his attention; a noise which didn’t belong to the surroundings. He paused and listened. It was coming nearer. He dropped the girl’s arms and dashed to an opening slit in the barn wall, threw himself against the damp walls and twisted his head sideway to peer through the gap without being seen. For a split-second the sunlight blurred his vision but as it cleared he spotted a flat-back lorry bouncing along the uneven farm track, coming his way.

  He closed his eyes and held his breath. Then he gritted his teeth and cursed. He couldn’t believe his bad luck. He had sought out this place especially for its remoteness, regularly visiting the place at different times over the past few weeks to finalise his plan. In all that time no one had come near and now today of all days he had a visitor. For a few seconds he thought about killing the driver, but then realised he didn’t know this adversary.

  He swung his gaze back along the lane. The truck was now only a few hundred yards away and there was no sign of it stopping.

  He took one last look at the lifeless form quickly realising he was left with no other choice but to make his escape; leaving behind this bloodied mess. He couldn’t afford to be caught. Not after all this time.

  “Damn” he cussed, realising he wouldn’t be able to finish off what he had set out to do. He slipped the playing card from his trouser pocket and suit side up placed it over the gaping wound in the middle of her chest. After all he had to let them know this was his handiwork again.

  Then he bolted towards the rear of the barn where there was a windowless opening, vaulted through its gap and sprinted towards a thick hawthorn hedgerow that ran the length of the hayfield.

  * * * * *

  Dennis O’Brian swung the Bedford lorry through the broken entranceway that led to the tumbledown farm and braked sharply, throwing up a cloud of dust. Surveying the old Yorkshire stone buildings in a bad state of repair he smiled to himself. Then making a quick call on his mobile, he shut down the engine, flung open the driver’s door and leapt out of the cab. For a good few seconds he scanned the ramshackle buildings, weighing up which portions of stone would reap the most rewards.

  Then he froze and his heart skipped a beat as he caught the sound of running feet. He was just about to leap back into his truck when he realised the footfalls were actually growing fainter. Whoever had been here must be fleeing he thought. A grin snaked across his mouth and he chuckled to himself. He bet it was another stone thief who thought he was going to be caught.

  As he stepped out of the sunlight into the dimness of the barn’s interior he wasn’t prepared for what greeted him. Sprawled across the uneven dirt floor was a lifeless and bloody form. Only from the clothing could he tell it was a girl; the injuries inflicted upon the teenager were like nothing he had ever seen.

  He began to retch as he fished in his jeans pocket for his mobile.

  * * * * *

  Pushing the CID car’s door to with his hip, Detective Sergeant Hunter Kerr paused for a moment and gathered his thoughts whilst casting his gaze out over the very active crime scene before him. He watched a line of uniformed Officers, regular intervals apart, pushing their way slowly through waist high crops, their white short-sleeved shirts standing out against a backdrop of lush green trees.

  Above him the Force helicopter hovered, the drumming noise of its rotor blades disturbing the peacefulness of the surroundings.

  He had raced here at breakneck speeds, all the time listening to the up-dates being broadcast over his radio. By the time he had arrived he had gained enough information to enable him to formulate a picture in his mind of what had happened.

  Strafing the surroundings with his steel blue eyes he knew that in one of the dilapidated and derelict farm buildings ahead a young girl’s battered body had been found, and that her killer had fled the area only about an hour beforehand, and right at this moment, everything was being done as quickly and thoroughly as possible to track down her slayer and secure the site.

  Hunter knew this area well. As an amateur artist he had visited this location on many occasions and painted the subjects in the vicinity. In fact, the old farm buildings had been captured many times in his oil sketches. He found it quite disconcerting that suddenly such beautiful surroundings, which featured in paintings back home, were now centre stage in a gruesome discovery.

  “Hi Sarge.”

  Hunter recognised the voice immediately and turned to see his partner DC Grace Marshall tramping towards him at pace. In her smart, pale grey, business suit he couldn’t help but think that Grace looked more the confident professional business woman, than a hard working front line murder detective.

  As she approached he saw that she was corralling her dark corkscrew curled hair into an elastic scrunchy. Her face was set grim.

  “It’s bad in there Hunter. You ought to see what he’s done to her.”

  “Tell me what you’ve learned then Grace.”

  “We’re fairly confident that it’s the body of one Rebecca Morris. A fourteen year old girl who was reported missing only a few hours ago. Apparently she didn’t turn up for an exam at her school this morning.” Grace finished bunching her hair. “She’s in a real mess. Her face is hardly recognisable. No one’s moved or touched the body yet. First uniform on site could see from the state of her that she was dead and immediately cordoned off the area. The three nine’s call came from a guy who had driven here in his flat-back lorry. He’s now back at the station being interviewed. His story is that he just happened to be driving up the track to the farm for a quick ten minutes rest, but my guess is that he was going to nick some of the stone or slates from here. Anyway he says he just got out of his cab, heard the sound of someone running from the back of one of the buildings and then a car starting up and screeching away. When he goes round to look he finds the girl dead in the barn.”

  “And do we believe him?”

  “No reason not to at the moment. The local cops know him fairly well. He’s got previous for nicking stone and lead from church roofs. He’s also got a couple of convictions for drunk and disorderly but those are over fifteen years old, and he’s got nothing for violence. And to be fair he did ring it in and stick around until uniform arrived and they say he appeared to be really genuinely shook up over it. I’ve had him lodged in a cell and he can stew there for a couple of hours til’ we’re clear from here. I’ll get a statement from him and then kick him out. That’ll serve him right for coming here to nick stone on my patch. ”

  “Any description of the person he disturbed?” Hunter asked

  “No, unfortunately not. Well gone before he got to the barn. The guy does say he heard a car or van driving off up the dirt track over there.” She pointed to a small copse of trees several hundred yards away.

  Suddenly realising
it was warmer than he anticipated, Hunter found himself tugging at the crisp collar of his blue shirt. Before he had shot away from the station he had slung on his jacket. Now he wished he hadn’t and he quickly undid the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie.

  “Where does that track go to Grace?” He asked, pointing towards the line of bushes just beyond the old farm buildings.

  “It leads up to a B road half a mile away. It brings you out near the village of Harlington. I’ve just got uniform to seal off that area as well.”

  “Okay, good job Grace. Are Scenes of Crime here?”

  “Just arrived. The Forensic Pathologist and the Senior Investigating Officer are also on route. Everything should be in place in the next hour.”

  Hunter realised this was an ideal opportunity to slip off his jacket and make the most of the warm breeze drifting across the fields. Going to the rear of his CID car he sprang open the boot and dropped his coat into the back. Then pulling the sides of his shirt from his sticky and clammy skin he reached into one of the storage boxes within the boot and pulled out a white forensic suit and set of shoe covers. He handed these to Grace and then pulled out another set.

  “Come on then, show me what we’ve got,” he said as he stepped into one leg of the protective suit.

  Having satisfied themselves that all the relevant evidence sites were secured, DS Hunter Kerr and DC Grace Marshall made their way back to the murder scene, carefully following the police cordon tape past the ruined farmhouse building, and into a tumbledown barn. Streams of light burst through gaps between the old roof timbers where slates had become dislodged or broken, and yet despite the sunlight the interior was cool.

  The body of the young girl lay unceremoniously on the dirty stone slab floor, a pool of thick congealed blood around the head and shoulders. The battered and swollen face was caked in the same reddish brown deposit. Where the eyes should have been only two dark sockets crusted in dried blood looked back. At first glance, from the facial injuries, if he hadn’t already been told it was a young girl, he would never have known. The arms were outstretched above the head and Hunter could see that the hands had already been forensically bagged. He also noticed that the girl’s T-shirt had been pulled, along with her padded pink lace bra, up towards the chin, exposing her small pale breasts. A huge gash exposed the breastbone and other less deep cuts covered her abdomen. Her jeans were undone but still around her hips.

  In another white forensic suit, bending over the cadaver, he recognised Professor Lizzie McCormack. Slim and petite in her early sixties, with features not dissimilar to the actress Geraldine McEwan she had dutifully earned herself the nickname Miss Marple. She was one of the small number of British forensic experts who had been invited to work with American scientists at the Tennessee body farm studying detection experiments on decomposing murder victims, and had gained national recognition in the location of human remains and the linking of offenders to the scene.

  He was pleased that she had been called out. Hunter had first seen her at work a year ago when the remains of a young mother had been found in a muddy ditch just outside town. Being one of only a few forensic botanists in the country she had been able to establish that the pollen found on the shoes of the girl’s partner also exactly matched the type found in the ditch. Not only had this evidence broken his story but also such was her presence in the witness box that the jury had no difficulty in reaching its guilty verdict. It had been a good result.

  Her light-grey eyes wandered up from the dead girl and from behind a pair of thin gold-framed spectacles, fixed his. “Detective Sergeant Kerr, long time, no see,” she greeted him in her soft Scottish lilt.

  The welcome salutation surprised him. “You’ve remembered me after all this time,” he responded.

  “With a fine Scottish name like that, how could I forget you?”

  “And there’s me thinking it was because of my good looks.”

  She returned a smile, tut-tutted, and gave him a quick dismissive shake of her head. “By the way before I start my examination I think you need this.” The Professor handed him a clear plastic exhibit bag. Inside was a playing card, its reverse side facing him.

  He turned it over. The seven of hearts. He returned a quizzical frown.

  “My sentiments exactly,” the pathologist responded. “That card was partially covering the gaping wound you can see in the centre of her chest. She dropped her gaze back to the cadaver.

  Hunter watched her move painstakingly around the body, her every move captured on video. The samples she pointed to were quickly photographed and bagged by the Scenes of Crime officers and forensic team who followed in her wake. Pausing momentarily she lifted her head towards Hunter and Grace. Glancing over her spectacles, which had fallen onto the bridge of her nose, she enquired, “Has anyone moved the body?”

  Hunter gave Grace a questioning look.

  Grace responded with a shrug of her shoulders and shake of head. “Not that we know of. The man who found the body couldn’t get away quick enough before he phoned in. Though he has said he heard someone running away from the scene.”

  “Well the body has definitely been moved. There are scuffmarks in the matted blood on the floor; clearly where she has been dragged. And also we have the arms outstretched above her head which tend to reinforce that theory.” She slowly rolled the corpse towards her and examined the purple lividity pattern that covered the back and buttocks.

  Looking on, Hunter knew that this was the result of the muscles and organs no longer pumping blood around the body, and gravity taking over.

  “The lividity is just starting to blanch. Hypostasis is in the early stages and body temperature readings would indicate she has been here for only a few hours. By the drag marks through the blood I would say that someone has attempted to move this body after death.”

  “From the bodies general description” interjected Grace, “we’re certain it matches that of a fourteen year old girl who was reported missing only a couple of hours ago.”

  “Well my initial findings would suggest she was most probably murdered less than three hours ago. She has multiple stab and incised wounds to her head and as you can see a sharp instrument has penetrated both eyes. There is also the deep wound to the upper chest. Despite the considerable amount of congealed blood I can’t say for sure yet if she was dead before or after the wounds were inflicted because I have also found this.” Professor Lizzie McCormack pulled down the neckline of the dead girl’s T-shirt a few inches below the throat. With a latex gloved hand she pointed to several red weal marks around the front of the neck.

  “There is petechial haemorrhaging on the skin which is consistent with some type of ligature being placed tightly around the anterior neck. In other words she has been strangled with something approximately five centimetres wide. And looking at the nip and graze marks on the side of her upper neck my first thoughts are a belt of some type. The post-mortem will give us a better indication.” She snapped off her gloves. “I’ve finished now if you’d like to bag up this once dear creature and remove her to the mortuary for me.”

  Lizzie eased herself up gently, her hands clasped around her knee joints. “The arthritis is playing me up today.”

  *****

  The smell of death was something Hunter Kerr could never get used to. Despite the air conditioning in the white tiled mortuary the stench was a nauseating mixture of decaying flesh and stale blood, which enveloped him, and which he knew would be clinging for many hours thereafter to every article of clothing he wore. He popped an extra strong mint into his mouth in an effort to cover the smell. The mortuary also brought back the memories of the time he had dealt with his first cot death. The baby had been roughly the same age as his own first-born and all he had seen throughout the procedure was the face of Jonathan superimposed on the dead child. For days after he had lain awake at night watching the movement of the Moses basket at the side of the bed, and listening to Jonathan’s breathing pattern.

&nbs
p; The girl on the metal slab had now been cleaned up and he could now see clearly the horrendous wounds, which had been inflicted on the head of the girl. The dark mushy sockets, devoid of eyes, gave the face an almost surreal appearance. Throughout his career he had never been squeamish when it had come to looking at dead bodies, whatever state they were in, though as a young cop he had never actually liked having to physically handle the cold flesh. That was always one job he had always faced with trepidation, and wherever possible avoided.

  Now in her green Pathologist’s scrubs, Professor Lizzie McCormack moved gracefully around the body, her dexterous hands in an organized routine, measuring and moving limbs, picking up and setting down the many shiny precision instruments, each having its own function to perform, whether it be cracking and cutting bone or slicing through flesh. She probed orifices with swabs and scraped under fingernails, meticulously noting and labelling each sample, whilst speaking with her soft Scottish brogue into a metal microphone hanging from the ceiling, poised above the cadaver.

  “The body is that of a normally developed pubescent white female, and appearing generally consistent with the stated age of fourteen years,” she began. Moving to the head, she scrutinized, probed and measured the many and numerous wounds. “There is evidence of multiple sharp-force injury,” she continued in a steady voice. After spending some considerable time counting and detailing each of the head wounds she moved to the neck. She pointed at several marks to the Scenes of Crime Officer hovering around her and then stepped back whilst close-up photographs were taken. Then, taking a small surgical scalpel, she began the process of incising the yellowing flesh at the base of the neck and peeled the scalp and face completely over the head to reveal a glistening white skull.

  Inside fifteen minutes the Professor had removed the brain, measured and weighed it, and sliced off small samples of the grey tissue for further analysis. She then began moving down the body, examining the many cuts and gashes inflicted on the upper torso. Within a minute she gave out an elongated “Mmmm,” paused, and caught Hunter’s gaze. “You’re going to find this very interesting, very interesting indeed.”