Chapter Text
The middle aged woman squared her shoulders as she stepped out of the lift and walked into the midst of a busy incident room in Cambridge’s CID’s main office, looking out of the window as she did so. Sadly there were no beautiful vistas of golden colleges or of green spaces of the Backs, just another sixties build office block and a more modern one tacked on next to it and a busy road.
Still, she hadn’t left London for the sightseeing.
She was a petite woman, her skin still relatively young and free of make-up except a little eye-liner and mascara, and was dressed in a smart pair of trousers and tailored jacket over a silk shirt of a pale blue and white ditzy flower print, open necked to show a neck that was rather more weathered. She wore her salt and pepper hair short and simple and easy to manage. On her ring finger of her left hand a simple silver commitment ring that pre-dated her recent civil partnership and postponed wedding. But her partner was an understanding woman, long used to the fact that her wife put her career first. After all, what she did was highly important. They had finally tied the knot, as it were, three months ago, once the arrests in Devon had been made. The honeymoon had been cut short for her to give evidence, though. She had only just finished in court a few days ago. Leanne had wanted the ceremony, she’d have been happy to pay the £10 fee and convert the civil partnership. They loved one and another and been committed to one another for almost three decades. What was a party and a bit of paper?
She pulled herself up to her full height and walked into the midst of the incident room, standing in front of the depressing too full large screen, showing the bodies of several young, white, dark haired, men. A tall, dark haired himself, ridiculously young, man turned and smiled grimly,
“I’m sorry. No one told me you were here. I’ve have sent someone to meet you.” He strode across the room from his inner office, holding out his hand.
“DCI Lemmie. Joe. Let me introduce my team. Guys!” he raised his voice, turning to the officers arranging around their desks and computers, following their actions... his voice was not too loud, but it carried. “Our expert from Scotland Yard is here.”
*
That had been two months ago now. Why had it taken so long? Why did they all have their preconceptions? Even herself? Last time she’d been to Oxford, she had argued about the assumption of a killer being a man with the SIO on that case, back in the eighties. God, she had been so young and naive then.
She missed Morse. They had kept up a correspondence until his death. Far too early, like many a good officer. Drink. Might as well be in action. It was the stress.
She opened the door of the interview room and walked in,
“Hi Hannah, I'm Siobhan.” Maitland said as she sat down.
The woman sitting at the desk snapped her head up and spat out with venom, “DCI Siobhan Caitlin Maitland, 62, wife of Leanne Rose Maitland-Jennings. Majored in crimes against woman went on to become metropolitan police consultant in serial killers and specialist crimes. Earns 35 grand a month.” The suspect then went back to looking down at the table, tracing patterns in the non-existent dust with her index finger.
DCI Maitland raised an eyebrow and sat back quickly and hurriedly. Trying and failing to hide her surprise and discomfort. “Wow, you certainly do your research!”
Hannah refused look up again. Maitland looked towards the two-way mirror and shrugged.
“I have to. I want to get away with it. Wanted.” She shrugged. “Anyway. Adam will sack me if I don't get all my facts right.”
“Hannah, I know you’re confused, but I would like to take your statement officially... And I would like to ask you some questions. Is that ok?”
“It'll have to be.”
Maitland shook her head leaning forward, “No Hannah, it'll only happen if you want it to. Ok?”
Hannah nodded slightly and took a deep breath. “Right. Do you mind if we start from the beginning?”
“Fine.” Hannah moved suddenly forward, her forearms pressing into the table “Did you know my brother Julian died when we were 10? He was my twin, my other half. When he died it felt like half of me died that day.”
“I know-”
“NO!” Hannah jumped forward again and pressed her face close to Siobhan's. The PC stood next to the door started to move forward, but Siobhan gestured for him to stand down.
“No” she repeated. “No you don't, no one knows what that feels like.” She sat back with a thump. “Mum didn't understand. Adam?” she scoffed. “Adam doesn’t know what real emotion feels like.” She clasped her hands in her in her lap, withdrawn again. “Adam had never understood...
“When I was ten, my twin died...!”
Siobhan again asked herself how they could have been so slow? It was the one case that was to haunt her throughout her career and beyond. Hannah’s troubled eyes followed her throughout her sleep for a long time, and recurred at times of stress. Why, she could never explain, there had been more gory cases, more violent, cases, some would say, more disturbing cases. But this one, for Siobhan, was the one she couldn’t let go.
*
Just over two months previously, Siobhan Maitland had stood in front of the Assistant Commissioner in his office at the top of the New Scotland Yard building, holding his gaze. She was not keen on him, one could even come close to calling it an intense dislike, and she hated it when he tried all that macho crap on her.
“Six murders, same MO. They need your specialities...” he was saying
Maitland had raised an eyebrow. “Sir, please.” She sighed and sat down, asking, “Have you got the case files?”
“Yes,” he replied tersely, handing them over to her, a great fat bundle of brown and blue files with Cambridgeshire Constabulary’s log on them.
Maitland sighed deeply, “Right. When are they expecting me?”
“As soon as you can get there.”
She sighed again, more deeply, as she stood up. “Right.” She nodded to the twat of her superior officer and headed for the door. As she exited she muttered to herself. “There goes Lea's fifty-ninth!”
“Did you say something?” the Assistant Commissioner asked, curiously.
“No sir. See you sir.” She nodded to him again and closed the door. Balancing the bundle against her chest one-handed she fumbled for her phone from her jacket pocket and dialled a number, “Hey Lea?” Just the sound of her wife’s voice relaxed her, though she felt sick at the thought of imparting yet more bad news. How many times had she let her down in twenty-seven years now?
“Hi sweetie, why are you ringing me at work?” Leanne was a secretary and reader for a literary agency in Highgate, a short tube ride from where they lived in Camden,
“I’m sorry. It’s bad news again I'm afraid.”
Leanne sighed audibly on the phone. “Where are you off to now?”
Siobhan opened the top file, struggling to balance it on a raised knee and read for a few seconds before answering, “Cambridge.”
“Where I when to uni,” Leanne said sadly. “Wish I could get away and keep you company. I hate it when you’re alone for long in a hotel room, struggling with a case. You never eat or sleep.”
“I’m so sorry love. You know how it gets me. I’ve never not solved a case, have I?”
“No no! It's why I married you, saving the innocents by hard honest police work.”
“I am really so sorry.”
“Well there goes my idyllic lake district birthday...”
“Sorry!”
“Stop apologising darling!!!”
“So-“ Siobhan bit back the next sorry with a smile. As if Leanne could see the smile she laughed back down the phone, the asked practically,
“When do they need you?”
“Well, the guv said as soon as poss so, I'm heading home to pack quickly.”
*
She liased the following morning with the SIO’s DS, one Lucy Waite, a chipper young woman, considering what was going on in Cambridge – another serial killer, two in fifteen years, for a small city in the quiet Fens, an improbably, impossible statistic. It wasn’t America, or even Midsomer, not even Oxford - which seemed to have a ridiculously improbably murder rate among its intelligentsia! - although it might like to be, but that was only in terms of academia. Better not let Leanne catch her thinking like that! To her, Oxford was the second rate place. What right had she to judge anyway, a redbrick girl like herself? It must be her old friend Morse’s influence.
They decided between them that taking the train was the best option, as she could read the case notes on the way down and leave immediately. She would let them know when she was arriving and DS Waite would arrange a car.
As it was, she took a taxi. Small force; big crime.
Six young men over the past six months had been killed. All students, all in separate colleges, reading different subjects, a full range of differences too, physics to philosophy, literature to theology, history to chemistry. Not on any sports or social club together. As far as anyone could tell, they didn’t know each other, had no friends or acquaintances in common, and did not frequent the same clubs or pubs or bars. They may have bought a sandwich for lunch once or twice from the same outlet or had a coffee of two in the same Starbucks, but that was all that could be uncovered towards any connection. And of course, all waiters, barristas and sandwich makers had been cleared.
The MO was identical. They had been drugged with Rohypnol, garrotted and then finally killed with a sharp implement by and upper thrust from the left side into the lung. Some had been already finished off by the garrotting and stabbed post mortem, mercifully. Others, poor boys, had bleed out or suffocated on their own blood.
The first victim has been Marcus Leicester, aged 23, a DPhil student in inorganic chemistry. He had been of a slight, slim build, with black hair, standing at 5’11”. He has rowed quite a bit it seemed, in the boat race two years previously, as an undergraduate. He had been drugged, garrotted and stabbed post mortem.
Kevin Swift had been 21, about to graduate in medieval literature. He had been athletic build, and played for the college and the university rugby teams. He had been 6’4”, and again, had short black hair. The MO was exactly the same.
Peter McCoy has been 27, a junior research Fellow in quantum physics. He had been far from the sporty type, a chubby, short chap of 5’4”, more at home with war-gaming and on-line gaming in his spare time, that on the field or river. Again, his death had been identical.
Danny Ironside was just 19, in his first year reading theology, sponsored by his church, everyone expected him to go on to the Methodist theological college. His physical appearance has been tall with a medium build, 5’11” and again, black hair. His death had been the same as the others.
Benjamin Brown had been 22, graduating in Modern History that year, having had a gap year travelling in Australia. He had been a gymnast when younger, and taught yoga to make a bit of money. He had been six foot tall and again, with white skin and very black short hair. Sadly though, the garrotting had only incapacitated him, and he had bleed out into his lung, struggling against the plastic coated wire around his neck.
Forensics said it was probably the type that was commonly used as a washing line.
Justin Zarr was just 18, and had been sent down on a health sabbatical after one term of philosophy and theology. He was again one of the shorter victims, at 5’6” and had been seriously underweight, suffering from anorexia and other mental health issues. He had not been drugged not garrotted, simply stabbed. The investigating officer and the pathologist both agreed this might be likely due to his lack of strength and ability to fight back, that the murderer felt no need to incapacitate him first.
The pathologists reports were detailed and exact, and Siobhan studied them intently for the rest of her journey, wanting to ignore the CID theories, until she had a chance to review all the evidence, and the body was always the best – dead men could speak.
The stabbed lung seemed to indicate some form of ritual, the pathologist, a Professor Graying Russell, had also suggested.
She had idly, she remembered, wondered at such a strange name, and how the doctor felt about it. Morse never, ever, had revealed his name to her, and she had imagined it must have been an awful one, but she had never imagined something quite so bad as... a quick Google on her phone told her it was some kind of fresh water fish!
Later on she was to become close friends with the doctor, who lectured at Cambridge as well as worked for the Home Office as Cambridge’s consultant pathologist. The case was to haunt her too. Also, she later found out, she too had worked with Morse; the cantankerous, sexist old bugger had driven both to the top of their fields, just to spite him!
She had made initial notes on the train, and later, had gone over and over it with Lemmie, Waite, and their team. The previous serial killings had been (mostly) prostitutes, and elsewhere, victims of such criminals were mostly women. In cases were they were men, usually the perpetrator was gay, as with a well documented case long before her time. But the victims had been gay, or at least rent boys, which wasn’t always the same thing. But none of these victims were gay, or bisexual, or, it seemed from the many statements from families, friends, colleagues, and neighbours, not one had struggled at all with their sexual identity, nor every considered renting themselves to pay for their lifestyle of get themselves out of debt, and debt was a perennial problem with students.
Cambridge was floundering, and that was a fact, and Maitland, over the years, had gained somewhat of a reputation of coming in from New Scotland Yard and rescuing smaller constabularies from such horrific multiple murders. That night in the hotel, missing Leanne and their two cats, Tony and Gordon, her first meeting with the SIO and his team went around and around in her head. How she wished she could save them, as her, well earned, reputation, suggested, but after her initial look through, she was in the dark as they.
After the initial, formal introductions as their long-awaited expert, coffee and cake was produced – it was gone six and the whole team was still hard at it. DI Joe Lemmie, who really was an abnormally young DCI, had leapt up as a young DC returned with the box of cakes from what was obviously a well patronised bakery and offered her the first one, “This is for you, as, oh my God! You totally saved us!”
Maitland was a little taken back by this sudden flip to sounding like a schoolgirl, but a subtle glance around the team told her this was normal, and did not seem to interfere with any respect or authority. She selected a lemon poppy seed muffin and replied, “Glad to feel wanted!”
As the box of cakes was handed around the room, Joe Lemmie said again, “This is Chief Inspector Maitland, guys. She’s come to save our necks!”
At the time she had laughed and replied, “I think you're underestimating your ability,” and she later agreed with her reassessment, but she also, over the two months, felt she was letting them down, they were also seriously over-estimating her ability, that perhaps she was too. Apparently they had been requesting her help for over a month before she had been assigned.
A woman she took to be the DS, who looked nothing like the woman she had imagined on the phone, came in, shadowed by what looked to be a child, and came up to Joe and the cakes. The DS was a compact, strongly built woman with long, dark blonde hair, roughly screwed up into half a bun, half a ponytail, on the top of her head, and she had swung around the door frame and put a reassuring hand on her DCI’s shoulder, and intimate gesture, that Maitland wondered at, as she was to many touches, gestures and private smiles. Much later she was to realise how wrong she had been.
Waite had impersonated Corporal Jones from Dad’s Army with her; “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” Everyone in the office had laughed politely, as they had seen and heard it many times. But it broke the tension as much as the cakes. Waite turned then to Siobhan and held out her hand, “Hi. DS Lucy Waite. We spoke on the phone. Welcome.” And she smiled an enchanting smile.
The other officer, the petite, young woman, with dark skin and an elfin hair cut introduced herself as DC Tia Warner. Although she looked to be about 12, obviously Siobhan knew she couldn’t be. The introductions were continued, until everyone in the office had been made known to Siobhan. She sat on a desk in front of the main incident board with her cake, and said, immediately taking charge,
“Right, why don’t you all fill me in? I’ve read all the reports, but I’d rather hear it from the horse’s mouth.”
That had been two months ago, and in that time Siobhan was floundering as much as the very young, and quite remarkably gifted, DCI Lemmie and his team. Three more young men had been killed, all black haired and white skinned, but all different physical types, all killed in exactly the same way. Gerry Toon, 26, Robert Potter, 24, Mark Rowell, 29, now all stared accusingly from the incident boards, all indictments at Siobhan’s failure to solve this in time.
There had been a lull for three weeks, a chance to review evidence and the trail to begin to grown cold, when there, on HOLMES 2, suddenly flagged a murder in Oxford, with exactly the same MO. Harry Sugg was 20, a student reading Maths up at Merton, only Siobhan’s height of 5’3”, but tough, he boxed for this college, and his death has been in exactly the same way – Rohypnol, garrotting, and an upper thrust under the rib cage to the left lung post mortem. Joe immediately made the decision to contract Oxford. While he did so, Maitland phoned Russell.
She and the pathologist had met first six weeks previously, at the crime scene, over the body of poor Gerry Toon,
“Professor Russell?” Joe had asked as they walked up to the grey-haired pathologist, knelt by the body. Her hair was pulled back from her face by a severe ponytail. She looked up. She was well groomed and made-up, yet chose not to dye her hair, like many a woman in their late fifties might. She was very attractive. A gold wedding ring showed through the white plastic gloves.
“Joe, she laughed gently, “How many times have I told you, you can call me Grayling.”
So the weird name didn’t bother her, then?
“Grayling Russell this is Siobhan Maitland, down from Scotland Yard, our expert,” Joe introduced her.
Maitland smiled, and mouthed a hi. They didn’t have time for social niceties. Graying smiled back,
“Hello. Well it's another one by the College Ripper, Joe, that much is obvious; same M.O.”
Maitland had questioned, “College Ripper?”
“Haven't you read the paper?” Grayling asked, going on before Siobhan could say she tried not to, it might prejudice her conclusions if she read the wilder tabloid speculations, “That journalist Adam Westcott did another really lovely piece yesterday. Really tore into Joe and Lucy.”
“Yeah,” Joe said tersely, “Awful. Bloody awful. Suggested that we're just sitting on our laurels and waiting for another death...”
At the time, Siobhan had just said, “Oh?” and they had moved on to the pathologist’s initial findings and what forensics had found – bloody nothing as usual. This was what made it so hard, no fingerprints, DNA or clothing fibre was ever found at the scene apart from the victims, and often, whoever was the poor unfortunate sod that found the body.
Later, Westcott kept skirting close to being a suspect himself. A freelance journalist, his reports he sold both to local, national tabloid and broadsheet alike, all had far too many details, details that no one could know as they had not been released. They just never has enough to stick, and an internal investigation was launched along side the murders, as somewhere, the Chief Super and the ACC decided, there must be a press leak in the station or in forensics.
Now, as she boarded the coach to Oxford she wondered is there would any reports of unreleased info from the Oxford crime scene too by this hack, Adam Westcott. She had interviewed him twice herself, and although circumstances, if not evidence, pointed to him, her gut told her he was probably innocent.
She was on a coach and not being driven as it was decided she would go alone initially, Oxford had yet to make the connection, of it they had, the senior SIO, had yet to request any pooling of resources, and the AC back in New Scotland Yard had advised her to tread gently until he did. “A bit of a control freak, or at least my old mucker Moody tells me. DCI Moody’s expecting you by the way, even if the arse leading the investigation isn’t!”