Kiss & Die - Lee Weeks [51]
‘Sure.’ He lifted the scrotum to reveal that it was cut through by a wire which was still embedded in the wound.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this done to a man,’ said Sheng, wincing a little. ‘I’ve seen girls left tied to the bedpost, serious injuries from sadistic role-playing. I’ve never seen torture on this scale and in such a public place. Perp took a hell of a risk.’
‘It could have been accidental,’ said Mann, busy dusting for prints around the safe deposit box and the minibar. ‘Cock humiliation, servant-mistress stuff. Some people get off on pain, maybe Max Kosmos was one of them, maybe the game went too far.’
‘It’s not a game I can see me playing any time soon,’ said Daniel.
‘He bought her a rose, whoever she was,’ said Sheng, looking at a single red rose lying on its side by the champagne bottle. ‘Where do people get those on an evening? A restaurant, a bar?’
Mann picked it up. ‘Nobody buys his girlfriend fake flowers.’
‘Perp left it?’
‘Yeah, I don’t think it belongs here.’ Mann took the camera from Daniel and photographed the rose before bagging and labelling it.
Daniel Lu placed the family photo flat between two pieces of absorbent paper and inside a plastic sleeve. ‘Whoever did this was sat on him whilst they delivered the final wound. My guess is they used a butcher’s knife to cut off his head. It must have taken a while. Judging by the saturation of blood here on the pillow I would say they tipped his head forward and cut from behind first. Then I think this print here,’ Daniel examined an oval blood stain on the sheet, ‘is from the perp’s knee. I think the killer knelt on his chest and used their weight to put pressure onto the knife and sever the spine between vertebrae three and four.’ Daniel pointed to the handprints in blood on either side of Max Kosmos’s chest ‘We should get some good results from these.’
‘There are more prints in the bathroom,’ said Mann. ‘Perp cleaned up before they left.’
‘Take what you need from the box and make a start,’ said Daniel, tying bags around the victim’s hands to preserve any evidence trapped beneath the nails.
Mann went into the bathroom. He lifted the bloodied towels from behind the sink and hung them over the wire across the bath – if they got put into an airtight bag they would be ruined. He looked at the lipstick stain on the mirror. A perfect pink pout. He took out some of Daniel’s fingerprint tape and pressed it over then peeled it off in one sharp, exact move. When he was sure it was as good a print as he was going to get, he wrote on the edge and then filed it in an envelope before leaning forwards and breathing on the glass to frost it. A heart appeared. Mann breathed again to see it clearly. He stood back from it, staring. The writing was smudged; all Mann could make out was
Roses are red…written underneath
Sheng appeared beside him and reached past him and sprayed the mirror with a fixative spray. ‘If it was so much trouble to get the head off, why did the killer bother?’
Mann stared at the misty heart in the mirror.
‘And where is it now?’
Chapter 34
In the blackness the basket swayed with the movement of the tide. The silt at the bottom of the ocean occasionally burst upwards in a flurry of disturbance as the head settled. Floating particles of food were dislodged; flesh, minute shreds chewed and expelled by creatures and left to float feather-edged until they settled in another layer of silt for the bottom feeders. Through the murk a man’s head nodded with the sway of the water, open eyed and slack-jawed. He wasn’t alone in the dark. A lobster moved tentatively closer, it swam through the trap and reached out its feelers and touched Max Kosmos’s face.
Chapter 35
Lilly walked through the first-floor landing and looked at the Africans as she passed. She wasn’t afraid to look them in the eye. The dead African lying at the bottom of the lift shaft was testament to that. The body would be eaten by the rats and the mangy cats. When it began to smell the caretaker would be called and someone would take