Page 13 of Dropping Like Flies

“The post mortem was inconclusive. The original theory was that blood loss caused his death. Patrick Holmes, the forensic pathologist, said he suspected suffocation at the scene and the PM confirmed his theory. Given the position of the body, the consensus is that someone pressed his head into the pillow for long enough that he stopped breathing. The killer either removed the fingers shortly after or during the suffocation.”

“You think he was strong enough to do both at the same time?”

“I don’t think anything,” Ben said. “I’m simply detailing all the possibilities. You asked me a question and I’m giving you the answer.”

I sat back to contemplate the information. I hoped for Duncan’s sake he had been dead first. Or at least unconscious. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the excruciating pain of having your fingers removed while you were still conscious.

Ben pushed another photo my way. “The missing fingers weren’t at the scene, but the killer used them to draw these. Tests have confirmed that.”

I pulled the photo closer and stared at the symbols drawn in blood. “Do we know what they mean?”

Ben shook his head. “Not yet. It’s an area we’re looking into. The assumption is that it’s satanic, hence the moniker of Satanic Romeo being used. None of the experts have been able to shed any light on it yet.”

“Not that expert, then, are they?” I said drily.

Ben ignored me as he pulled another photo from the folder and lay it down on the table. “Victim number two. Murray Clegg. Age twenty-one. Killed six days after Duncan, but his body lay undiscovered until his parents became concerned about why he hadn’t turned up for Sunday lunch and came looking for him. Apparently, come rain or shine, he never missed one.” He placed another crime scene photo on the table. This time, the victim was lying on his back, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. Blood stained his bedsheets just like with the first one.

“Same M.O,” Ben said. “Fingers missing, but not at the scene. He’d had sex shortly before being murdered.” At my raised eyebrow, he elaborated. “There was evidence of penetration. Unfortunately for us, the killer used a condom.”

“He likes to get right to it on a first date, then,” I said.

Ben’s stare was icy. “We prefer not to make judgments about people who are dead.”

“Not judging,” I pointed out. “Just stating a fact. I’m not averse to getting right to it myself.”

Ben’s jaw clenched, taking it as the dig it was, given the two of us had wasted no time in getting down to it ourselves on the night we’d first met. “It might be important. Did the first victim also have signs of penetration?”

Ben shook his head. “Either they didn’t go that far, or our murderer is a switch.” He pushed another photo over. “We found the same symbols at the next scene.”

“Exactly the same?” I asked, even as I located the first photo and lined them up next to each other like the world’s most macabre spot the difference.

Ben leaned forward. “Can you see any differences?”

“Slight variations in size,” I said, as my gaze flicked from one to the other. “But apart from that, no.”

Victim number three turned out to be an almost identical story, the body hanging off the bed this time. Callum Summers, twenty years of age. Evidence of penetration before death. The missing fingers. The symbols on the wall. The only difference him being found by a housemate who’d spent the night at his girlfriend’s house. I might not have been a detective, but even I could see a pattern unfolding.

“All white,” I pointed out. “All aged in their late teens to early twenties. The killer has a type.”

Ben laughed, but there was very little humor in it. “That’s what we thought until the most recent murder two nights ago.” He added another photo to the pile. “Meet Baris Demir, a Turkish immigrant who’d lived in London for five years.”

My fingers curled around the edge of the photo to bring it closer. “He looks older.”

“Thirty-eight,” Ben said with a distinct air of I-told-you-so. “He was also married with three kids. It was probably because of his marital status that his assignation took place in a hotel room rather than at a private residence. I guess it’s difficult to smuggle a secret gay lover into the marital bed.”

“Now who’s judging,” I said.

Ben grimaced. “Difficult not to when I did the interview and got front row seats to his wife’s complete denial of why he’d been in that hotel room. Nobody wants to discover that their husband liked men that way. She can’t even have it out with him.”

I stared at the photos. “A deliberate act to shake things up, maybe. Perhaps he realized he was leaving a pattern and wanted to make predicting his next victim more difficult.”

“Perhaps,” Ben agreed. “Or maybe there never was a pattern in the first place, and the age and race of his previous victims was nothing but a coincidence.”

I lifted my gaze to his. “You’re the detective.”

His mouth twisted. “I am. Fat lot of good it’s done me so far.”

I picked out the photos of the four men, the ones showing them all alive and well, two men smiling, two men not. “How far apart were the murders?”

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