Like This, for Ever

Well, it was just tough. These were ten-year-old boys they were dealing with and if anyone could be blasé about that, she wasn’t sure she wanted them on her team.
    Jesus, she had to calm down.
    She watched, teeth clenched, as Kaytes and his young technician, Troy, peeled back the sheets. Kaytes was a tall man, barrel-chested and with a thatch of thick grey hair. His eyes were bright blue. Beside him, thin, small, colourless Troy looked like an undernourished teenager.
    The gurneys had been labelled, to make it obvious which twin was which. Those little faces would have been so cute, so cheeky in life.
    ‘We got straight on to it,’ said Kaytes. ‘I thought you’d want the facts as soon as possible.’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Dana. ‘Is it the same killer?’
    Kaytes nodded. ‘Almost certainly,’ he said. ‘Same cause of death: extensive bleeding following the severance of the carotid artery. Neither boy was sexually abused, no evidence of prolonged physical brutality of any sort.’
    ‘Are you sure?’ asked Anderson.
    Kaytes nodded. ‘Hair missing around the wrists and ankles, consistent with strong packaging tape being wrapped around them,’ he went on. ‘Some bruises that would indicate struggling, the most recent of these along the left side of Joshua’s body.’
    Kaytes positioned himself on the far side of the gurney from the three police officers and reached over the body. He towered over the small, thin child. ‘Can you see?’ he said. ‘One on the left thigh, a couple of smaller ones on the calf. Then this one on the shoulder. None of them much more than a day or so old. If I were hazarding a guess at what happened to him, I’d say some time yesterday, he fell on to his left side.’
    Dana nodded. Yesterday, Joshua had been a prisoner for almost two days. He’d have been scared, but the will to live, to escape if possible, would have been strong.
    ‘Like our previous two victims,’ continued Kaytes, ‘these both have a scattering of wooden splinters on the back of their shoulders and upper arms, consistent with their being held immobile on some sort of wooden bench or trestle table.’
    These children had been strapped down for two days. They’d squirmed and wriggled to get free, and at some point Joshua had probably tipped the table over and landed heavily on his left side.
    ‘Their last meal was crisps and some sort of chocolate candy bar,’ said Kaytes. ‘They ate about two hours before they died. Again similar to the stomach contents of the previous two victims. Whoever’s holding them, he’s not big on healthy eating.’
    A woman would make them eat properly, wouldn’t she? Dana felther conviction wavering. On the other hand, would you worry about vitamins if you knew you were going to cut the kid’s throat days down the line?
    ‘Same murder weapon?’ asked Anderson.
    ‘Like the previous two victims, these two chaps were killed by a straight-edged, sharp blade, seven to ten inches long. Difficult to say, beyond that. But I am glad you brought that up. Because in one respect, Jason at least does differ from the previous two. Come and look.’
    He stepped closer, extended a gloved hand and laid it on Jason’s forehead. As he tilted the boy’s head back, Troy shone a lamp directly at the wound on the throat.
    ‘We’re going to get this photographed and blown up to make it clearer, but for now, can you see?’ Kaytes ran his gloved index finger close to the edge of the wound. A millimetre or so beneath the cut was a thin, pink line.
    ‘Is that another cut?’ asked Dana.
    Kaytes nodded. ‘That’s exactly what it is,’ he said. ‘And whilst it’s very indistinct, we’re pretty certain there’s a third cut here as well.’
    ‘Hesitation wounds?’ asked Dana.
    Kaytes shook his head. ‘No. The previous two were made earlier – sorry to sound a bit
Blue Peter
. They had chance to start healing.’
    Dana straightened up, looked at Anderson and then Stenning.
    ‘What the hell’s he doing? Practising?’ said Anderson.
    ‘To be absolutely honest with you, we saw something on Ryan’s corpse that made us wonder,’ said Kaytes. ‘It just wasn’t clear enough to draw any conclusions from. But what seems to be happening is that your perpetrator starts making cuts on his victims’ throats some time before he kills them. They’ll be much smaller cuts, of course, or else they’d bleed out. He cuts them, and lets them heal.’
    ‘And then he cuts them again,’