A check with security staff at the hospital showed that Matthews had entered the building shortly after Collins and Larcombe had made their way inside to carry out a second examination of the victims. Suddenly it all fell into place. Matthews had seen the pair together, guessed what they were doing and fled.
Collins was using the phone in Anderson’s study on speaker setting. He had been pacing back and forth as she made one call after another in an attempt to track Matthews down but stopped and stared intently at her as news of the pathologist’s sudden flight emerged. Collins did not meet his gaze; she did not want to be blamed for tipping off the main suspect but knew there was no way she could possibly avoid it.
‘I spoke to her last night, sir,’ she said sheepishly. ‘I said nothing about the case or my suspicions, but she must have sensed something in the tone of my voice. I think that’s partly why she’s taken off.’
It took a few minutes more to establish that Matthews had left the hospital by the rear security gate and that her vehicle was no longer in the car park.
Much to Anderson’s frustration, details of the vehicle itself were not available. Matthews had changed it a couple of weeks earlier and, despite requests from the head of security, had yet to submit the form giving details of the new make and model. There was nothing on file with the DVLA either.
Collins was not surprised that they had nothing. She had got over the shock of having tipped Matthews off. That wasn’t important. They seemed to have found their killer – why else would she go on the run? Now all they had to do was bring her in.
Anderson had been barking orders into his mobile phone. He finally finished and turned to Collins. ‘We’re all set. Let’s get to the main entrance. The Territorial Support Group are going to pick us up there.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘No more softly, softly. We’re going to make a house call on Dr Matthews.’
The driver killed the flashing lights as they approached their final destination: a small row of terraced houses in an affluent part of West London, just as the sun was breaking over the tops of the trees and the first rays of light fell across the road like spindly fingers.
Two teams of heavily armed officers from CO19 – sixteen in all, representing the entire Armed Response capability Anderson could muster in such a short space of time – were crammed into two vans that drew to a halt at the far end of the street, engines idling and waiting for the go-ahead.
No one had any idea what they were going to find inside Matthews’s house and no one was willing to take any chances.
The car carrying Collins and Anderson pulled up behind the van at the rear. The unit commander emerged from the side and came over to talk to Anderson.
‘We’re not expecting any kind of armed resistance but we’re going in fully prepared just in case,’ said the unit commander. ‘Whoever is in there, we’ll have them subdued for you in no time at all. We’re just waiting for your signal.’
‘Go ahead when you’re ready,’ he said.
Within minutes the house was surrounded; all the armed officers were pumped full of adrenalin, awaiting the final order. Each member of the team carried a Heckler & Koch MP5 carbine as their main weapon, along with a Glock 17 9mm automatic pistol, more than a match for anything the crooks might have. A few yards from the entrance the team split into two, half moving around to cover the windows and rear entrance.
Then to the cries of ‘attack, attack, attack’, the men and women of Blue Company, dressed in black combat trousers and bullet-proof vests, moved in with such ferocity that no one would have stood a chance.
Collins watched in awe, butterflies rising in her stomach as members of the first entry team took up positions on either side of the door and cleared the way for a man carrying an enforcer, which reduced the door to splinters.
Now the team were moving inside using skills they had perfected hundreds of times before. With the door gone, one officer flung himself down on a heavily padded knee and raised his gun to his eye, activating the flashlight slung just below the barrel.
There were muffled shouts of ‘armed police, don’t move’ and ‘put your hands out in front of you, on the floor now’ mixed with the sounds of screaming, breaking glass and the dull pop of stun grenades. Flashes of light could be seen through the windows on each floor as the team made their way through.
At last there was silence and then, after a few minutes when nothing at all happened, one of the junior members of the team came out of the house. He was somewhat unsteady on his feet, gulping down lungfuls of air. He moved to one side of the garden path, bracing himself against the wall; then, swinging his gun out of the way just in time, threw up violently again and again.
‘What the hell have they found in there?’ breathed Anderson, as the commander of the entry team, his face pale with shock, emerged through the doorway and approached the two officers.
‘We’re ready for you now sir. The building is secure.’
‘Any trouble?’ asked Anderson.
‘I think you’d better come and see for yourselves,’ came the sombre reply.
Collins knew they were going to be dealing with a dead body the moment she entered the narrow hallway. The familiar stench that she had come across time and time again during her career was hanging heavy in the air.
She and Anderson followed the firearms team leader as he made his way to the back of the house into the kitchen. The stench grew stronger with each step.
Collins saw the far side of the dinner table first. An empty bottle of Bordeaux was standing next to a white china plate that held the remains of a meal – a few small bones, dried-up sauce and a few scraps of green vegetable matter. A silver knife and fork were neatly placed in the centre of the plate and an empty wine glass still had drops of condensation clinging to it.
It was only when Collins took a few steps further forward that she knew what had made the young officer react so violently. At the opposite end of the table sat a man whom she instantly recognized to be Detective Sergeant Patrick O’Neill, or at least what remained of him.
He was naked and had been propped up in the chair so that the palms of his hands were lying flat on the table in front of him. His head was still attached to his body despite a massive gaping slit like a thin-lipped second mouth that smiled out across the width of his neck. His chest had been split wide open all the way down to his belly button and beyond, and inside Collins could see the now familiar marbled fat on the inside of his ribs, all too reminiscent of the hanging carcasses she saw in the trucks that pulled up outside the butchers’ shops to make their deliveries.
O’Neill still had his face. His eyes were wide open, seemingly in shock, his mouth was twisted into what seemed to be a horrific silent scream. The skin around his cheeks was as thin as tissue paper and had started to tear and peel as decomposition settled in.
A second plate of food and glass of wine had been placed in front of him as some kind of grotesque joke. It was clear that Matthews had eaten her own meal while staring at this macabre sideshow.
It took a team of twenty specialist officers the rest of the day to complete a search that ultimately yielded scores of items that needed to be followed up.
Then there were boxes and boxes of books, research papers, dissertations, newspaper and magazine clippings in the top-floor room that Matthews used as a makeshift home office.
Every item would have to be tagged, read and reported on to see if it could shed new light on the case.
In the past, days like these filled Collins with adrenalin and she would feel strong enough to keep going and never ever have to stop. Today was different. Today she felt completely and utterly exhausted. She knew deep down that nothing would have been left behind that was of even the slightest significance. Matthews had been too clever, right from the start. It was almost as if she had been planning all of this, right down to the dumping of the bodies in an area that would ensure the case was taken on by MIT South for at least six months, perhaps even longer.