Detective-Superintendent Andrew Kidlington, unlike most members of his profession, avoided murder scenes when he could. A lay preacher in his local church, he had lost his taste for the more ghoulish side of his profession long ago. He had assembled a thoroughly professional team of officers and believed it best to give them free rein. He had a legendary ability to deduce more about a murder from a good file than from a visit to the crime scene, and he made certain every shred of paper generated by his department crossed his desk. But it wasn't every day that someone stuck a knife in a man like Vernon Pope. This one he had to see for himself.
The uniformed officer standing watch outside the warehouse door moved aside as Kidlington approached. "The lift is at the far end of the warehouse, sir. Take it up one level. There's another man on the landing. He'll show you the way."
Kidlington slowly crossed the warehouse floor. He was tall and angular with a head of woolly gray hair and the look of someone perpetually preparing to break bad news. As a result his men tended to tread lightly around him.
A young detective-sergeant named Meadows was waiting for him on the landing. Meadows was too flashy for Kidlington's taste and put himself about with too many women. But he was an excellent detective and had promotion written all over him.
"Pretty messy in there, sir," Meadows said.
Kidlington could taste blood in the air as Meadows led him inside. Vernon Pope's body lay on an Oriental rug next to the couch. The dark circle of blood extended beyond the gray covering sheet. Kidlington, despite thirty years on the Metropolitan Police, still felt bile rising in his throat when Meadows knelt beside the body and drew back the sheet.
"Good Lord," Kidlington said, beneath his breath. He made a face and turned away for a moment to regain his composure.
"I've never seen one like this," Meadows said.
The dead body of Vernon Pope was lying naked, faceup, in a pool of dried black blood. It was obvious to Kidlington that the fatal wound was struck only after a brutal struggle. There was a large ragged slash across his shoulder. The nose had been badly broken. Blood had drained from both nostrils into the mouth, which had fallen open in death, as if to issue one last scream. Then there was the eye. Kidlington had trouble looking at it. Blood and ocular fluid had drained down the side of his face. The eyeball was destroyed, the pupil no longer visible. It would take an autopsy to determine the true depth of the wound, but it appeared to be the fatal blow. Someone had shoved something through Vernon Pope's eye and into his brain.
Kidlington broke the silence. "Approximate time of death?"
"Sometime last night, perhaps early evening."
"Weapon?"
"Hard to say. Certainly not an ordinary knife. Look at the shoulder. The edges of the wound are ragged."
"Conclusion?"
"Something sharp. A screwdriver, an ice pick perhaps." Kidlington glanced across the room. "Pope's is still on the drinks trolley. Unless your killer is walking around with his own ice pick, I doubt it was the murder weapon." Kidlington looked down at the body again. "I'd say it was a stiletto. It's a stabbing weapon, not a slashing weapon. That would account for the ragged wound on the shoulder and the clean puncture wound in the eye."
"Right, sir."
Kidlington had seen enough. He rose to his feet and gestured for Meadows to cover the body.
"The woman?"
"In the bedroom. This way, sir."
Robert Pope sat in the passenger seat of the van, pale and shaking visibly, as Dicky Dobbs drove at speed toward St. Thomas Hospital. It was Robert who had discovered the bodies of his brother and Vivie earlier that morning. He had waited for Vernon at the East End cafe where they ate breakfast each morning and became alarmed when he didn't appear. He fetched Dicky from his flat and went to the warehouse. When he saw the bodies he screamed and put his foot through the glass table.
Robert and Vernon Pope were realistic men. They realized they were in a risky line of work and that one or both of them might die young. Like all siblings they fought sometimes, but Robert Pope loved his older brother more than anything else in the world. Vernon had been like a father to him when their own father, an abusive unemployed alcoholic, walked out and never came back. It was the way he died that had horrified Robert the most: stabbed through the eye, left on the floor naked. And Vivie, an innocent, stabbed through the heart.