As cold and chilly as London in Winter time, this compelling police procedural is a harsh reminder of the price we pay for obsession and the sacrifices we can sometimes make for love. Set just a few months after both Mark Tartaglia and his colleague Sam Donovan battled the serial killer known as the Bridegroom, where both nearly lost their lives, this novel opens as DCI Carolyn Steele calls Mark to a suspicious death at Holland Park, the victim female, late twenties or early thirties, stripped naked, her body kneeling in the snow. When a positive ID is released the Barnes Murder Squad discover that her name was Rachel Tenison, an art dealer who was last seen at work in the West End on one late afternoon a few days ago. According to her business partner Richard Greville she failed to turn up for work the next morning. Rachel's Knees and ankles were taped together and there is bruising on her face and scratches around her mouth; it's also possible that she was sexually assaulted.
Mark, Sam and the rest of the team are certain that if she was killed in the park, this means she was there roughly two days, but there's no evidence of a struggle. Her head was bent right over, touching the ground, and her face was almost entirely hidden beneath a tangle of pale blond hair that spread out stiffly in front of her like waterweed, her skin as white as snow.
Toxicology reports say that she reeked of booze, and there was bruising on her neck and breasts, as though she had been raped and killed by two different people in the space of a few hours. It is almost as though she was drunk and had rough sex, whether consensually or not. There's also no evidence of a struggle or anything suspicious having gone on in the flat, although Mark does notice that it doesn't look lived in, as though its almost like a theatre set with none of the usual feminine clutter.
Rachel's brother, Patrick Tenison, a local up and coming MP can shed little light on her movements on the days before his sister's death. Indeed, he seems to speak of his sister with a type of off-handed dispassion as though he were a third party observer. Although he does tell Mark that Rachel had been having an affair with Greville, her boss at Christie's, but the relationship had run out of steam a while ago, probably because Greville was married and would never leave his wife.
As the monochrome images of the naked and bound Rachel kneeling down in the snow keep flashing through Mark's memory, the Barnes team gradually develop a profile of a totally organized and a clear thinking killer, certainly not someone in a panic. The way the body was bound and exhibited after her death was also sexual and ritualistic. Surprisingly, the team keeps turning to Rachel's best friend Liz Volpe. Liz was about to inherit Rachel's flat on Camden Hill, but from the way Liz talked there was something odd about her relationship with her best friend. Mark is positive that Liz is hiding something or even protecting someone and it's strange that she's so out of touch with what was happening in Rachel's life.
With practiced dexterity and with prose that seems to dance off the page, author Elena Forbes ties in all of the peculiar threads of Rachel's murder into another crime that was committed a few years previously, the victim being university professor Catherine Watson. The killer had taken his time and tortured Catherine over a period of several hours. Like Rachel, she too had had a mystery caller the night before she died which indicates that both women knew their killer. Both were also roughly the same age, and they were both well-educated, intelligent and successful women in their own fields.
It isn't long before Mark and the rest of the squad are thrust into a subliminal world of female fantasies, of dominance and submission, where Rachel's sexual kinks are almost like a secret world and a type of rebellion against the straitjacket of what was expected of her. Forbes writes her fast-paced and compelling drama from every angle: from the disaffections and insecurities of detectives who betray their positions of authority to the various suspects and acquaintances of Rachel - and Catherine - who gradually line up, all desperate to provide an alibi. But it's the handsome Mark's dedication to the case that eventually allows him to unravel the mysteries behind both murders.
In the end, the Barnes murder team faces treachery from one of the most unexpected places and the poor Sam finds herself yet again the victim, walking straight into the lion's den of misplaced passion and obsession in a shocking and most unexpected finale. Mike Leonard September 08.
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