As Durgin gently brushed the powder over the exposed eyeball, an image began to appear. Maggie moved closer to watch, mourning the murdered woman, disgusted by the physicality, but also undeniably and irresistibly fascinated by the science.
Durgin continued to move his wrist with delicate grace and guide the brush with his fingers. More and more lines began to emerge, like a photograph developing in its chemical bath. “The chemical composition of fingerprint powders can vary,” he murmured, “but they all basically work the same way. Latent prints are created by the natural secretion of sweat and oils from the skin that leave behind an outline of the ridges found on one’s fingers. A person’s fingerprints remain constant from womb to grave. Only damage to the skin of the finger can alter the print. So each print is wholly unique—even the prints of identical twins differ.”
The Detective Chief Inspector tapped his brush back into the powder and began again. Faint swirls began to take shape on the eyeball.
“My goodness,” Maggie breathed.
“I’ll be damned,” Collins muttered. “The murdering devil did leave a print on her eyeball. Deliberate, I’d say. Like a bloody calling card.”
Durgin selected an adhesive strip and placed it on the powdery eyeball. He waited, peeled the strip off, then pressed it to a blank white page in his notebook. There it was. A fingerprint, as distinctive as a snowflake.
“Good job, Miss Hope. What I’m using,” Durgin told Maggie, “is Henry Faulds’s classic method of recovering prints from a crime scene.”
Through a magnifying glass, he examined the print in the book. “It’s a good one,” he assured them. “So we can take it back to the Yard and see if we have a match.
“You were right this time, Miss Tiger,” he said, straightening. “Good on you. But don’t get your hopes up. First of all, there are hundreds of thousands of prints and no way to match them, except going through all of them one by one. And we have limited manpower. And, even if we could go through all of them, there’s no guarantee there’ll be a match in our records. And, even if there is a match, a positive latent match doesn’t guarantee a conviction.”
“Still, when we catch our Blackout Beast, we’ll have solid evidence for his arrest and conviction,” Maggie mused. “Detective, you did say serial killers—er, sequential murderers—have the same sorts of victims, the same ways of murder, and always a calling card? We thought the Ripper graffiti was his calling card—but here’s a far more personal one.”
“Glad to see you’ve been paying attention,” Collins muttered.
“Collins,” Durgin said. “You’ll check the eyeballs of the other Blackout Beast’s victims for prints, yes?” It was not a question.
“Oh, the things I do for lurve…” the shorter man grumbled, but went to pull on gloves nonetheless.
Durgin peeled off his, tossed them into a garbage bin, then scrubbed his hands with soap and water in the sink. “Good job, Miss Tiger.”
Maggie tamped down her surge of pride—she didn’t want the men to see any emotion, good or bad, in her expression. No smiles. No reactions. To exist in a man’s world, you need a face like a poker player’s.
Durgin dried his hands and picked up the notebook with the print. “And now let’s head to the Yard. Maybe we’ll get lucky and this devil’s print will match something in our books.”
—
The New Scotland Yard, on the Victoria Embankment, was housed in respectable-looking large red-brick Romanesque-style buildings, slashed by thick horizontal bands of white Portland stone. As Durgin led Maggie through a maze of poorly lit corridors inside, she couldn’t help but wonder: How many murders had he worked since the outbreak of war? Too many, probably—and how sad and ironic. How many air raids had the people survived? How many nights had they been dragged from the warmth of their beds by the wailing of sirens? To survive the Luftwaffe bombs—only to be murdered by a fellow Briton…She shuddered.
“The governing principle of forensic science, as laid down by Edmond Locard at the beginning of the last century, is ‘every contact leaves a trace.’?” Durgin was speaking as swiftly as he walked. The peeling painted walls they passed bore posters: DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN? City of London Police—Murder of Police Officers—REWARD! And ENLIST NOW—YOUR KING NEEDS YOU. “There are eight basic fingerprint patterns of arches, loops, and whorls. And every human finger fits into one of these categories in its own unique way.”
Maggie nodded, listening intently. This was a science she didn’t know—it was intriguing.
They reached a door marked EVIDENCE ROOM. Durgin opened it and led them in. The room was large, with towering pigeonhole cabinets lining all four walls. “We have about ninety thousand finger-and thumbprints on file here,” Durgin said, going to a cabinet and pulling down binders. The middle of the room was stacked with boxes upon boxes, marked ROPE AND TWINE BINDINGS, TORN AND STAINED CLOTHING, and DEATHBED SHEETS. Maggie walked around them. Exactly what horrific tale had each box to tell, what mysteries could each solve—if only there were enough time and manpower to devote to them all?
Durgin gestured for her to follow him. “Now we have to see if our Blackout Beast’s prints match any we have here.” They reached a large room of desks, and Durgin went to one by a large window overlooking the Thames. The river glimmered coppery green in the gray light, and curved like a snake. “Have a seat,” he said as he put down the books of prints. “I’ll get us some tea and then we’ll begin.”
Tea? Made for me? Maggie tried not to smile as she took off her coat and sat opposite his desk. It was chilly in the vast room, despite a few portable radiators glowing orange dotting the perimeter, and she left her gloves on. Stacked around each desk were boxes and boxes of files, again marked EVIDENCE. It would take an army to get through them all in any sort of timely way, and even so, more and more cases were pouring in. The staggering amount of information, each box representing a dead person, made her head spin.
“He doesn’t have to work these cases, you know.” At the desk next to Durgin’s, a broad man with carroty hair streaked with white looked over as Maggie arranged her scarf to make sure it covered her bruised neck. His nameplate read GEORGE STAUNTON. “He’s of senior rank, but he insists on working murder scenes himself.”
“Really?” Maggie realized how little she knew of the DCI.
“Oh, Durgin’s probably sent—let’s see now—hundreds of murderers to the gallows over the years. He’s too modest to say, but he’s our own Sherlock Holmes, he is. He hates that it’s on the wall, but you should read it.” Staunton jerked a thumb at a framed Time magazine cover that read HIS MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT’S REAL-LIFE SHERLOCK HOLMES, with a picture of a younger Durgin with his magnifying glass.
He was handsome, Maggie thought. Still is, really.
She walked over to read the smaller print. The caption said: Detective James Durgin is far more human than the great fictional sleuth, and the cases he handles are of a bloodier nature.
“I framed it for him, just to tick him off—he hates it. He hates any kind of publicity. But he’d be a fool not to take on the Beast,” the orange-haired Staunton continued. “It’s a career maker, it is. Did you see this morning’s latest?” He handed a newspaper to Maggie. The headline screamed, HUNT IS ON FOR THE BLACKOUT BEAST!
The article described the gruesome slayings and Scotland Yard’s search for a maniac, written with lavish speculation and very little accuracy. Well, if our Blackout Beast is looking for attention, he’s certainly got it now, she thought grimly.
Maggie looked over Durgin’s desk. No photographs. No books. Nothing personal at all, except for his nameplate and, tucked in one corner, a worn postcard of Simberg’s Wounded Angel.
Durgin returned and set down the tea tray on the desk. “Grand, just grand,” he groaned, seeing the headline.
“Do you want me to be mother?” Maggie asked, out of habit.
“No, you’re our guest. I’ll pour.”
Well, this is getting better and better.