Killing the Shadows

TWENTY-FIVE

Steve replaced the handset of the phone and made a note on his pad. He’d spoken to the Garda officer running the inquiry into Jane Elias’s murder earlier in the day, and he’d hung on to wait and see if the man would get back to him. The guard had promised a response as soon as possible, but had pointed out that Elias’s office alone contained hundreds of letters and thousands of sheets of paper. However, he’d already had a team working on it, and he’d eventually called to pass on the information that so far, no letter resembling those received by Kit or Georgia or their colleagues had been found among Jane Elias’s papers.

It wasn’t conclusive, of course. She could have thrown it straight in the bin or burned it on the open fire in her drawing room. But no letter had been found with the body nor had the Garda had any written communication from a purported killer. There was nothing to indicate any connection between the letter-writer and Jane Elias’s murderer. Steve was glad he had good news for someone; he wished someone had the same for him.

He yawned and stretched his arms out so wide his shoulders cracked. He was far from the only officer still at his desk in New Scotland Yard at nine in the evening. Most of those remaining not actually on night shift, however, were well below the rank of detective superintendent. But then, he reminded himself with regret unmixed with self-pity, most of them had families to go home to. He’d accepted long ago that he would probably never reach that happy position. The ferocity of his undeclared because he knew it to be un reciprocated love for Fiona Cameron had put him involuntarily out of the running in the crucial years of his twenties when all his friends had been settling down first time around.

He’d sublimated his unrequited passion in his work and when one day he had realized that the strong bond of friendship that locked him to Fiona was, after all, enough, he had understood that he had arranged his life in such a way that he would never again have time, energy or opportunity to form the sort of relationship that would satisfy him. But lately, he had begun to wonder.

So many of those friends who had become established couples a dozen or more years ago were single again. Few of them seemed to remain that way for too long. Maybe at thirty-eight, it wasn’t too late. Perhaps the time had come when he could plug into a network of single life again. Certainly, if Francis Blake persisted in his declared intent to sue the Home Office, it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that a high-profile scapegoat would have to be found. The debacle of the sting could still mean that he’d end up with lots more time on his hands. He knew if his bosses decided he should be the one to shoulder the blame publicly, he risked at the very least being sidelined, shunted into areas where his public profile would be nonexistent, the professional challenges minimal. Without a demanding job, he would have time to fill. Time not to kill, but to grow.

On the other hand, he might yet find the key to unlock the mystery of Susan Blanchard’s killer. And while the idea of life with a partner, life perhaps even with children, was a haunting dream, the satisfaction of a job well done was something he craved more actively because he had experienced its intoxication so many times, he knew it could be a reality again and he never grew tired of it.

With a sigh, Steve closed the file on Francis Blake. He’d reread it a dozen times over the previous week, but he had no niggling sense of having missed something, no gut intuition that told him where the next lead might lie. He wished Fiona’s advice hadn’t chimed with his own instincts about how Blake would react. At least pushing a suntanned and contemptuous Francis Blake for a witness statement would give him something to attack. But he knew she was right. The only reason he wanted to talk to Blake was the desire to make a man he despised uncomfortable.

Thinking of Fiona in the context of this case set anger burning slow inside him. If only they’d been able to continue working together, he wouldn’t be in this mess now. The thought stirred a buried memory. Steve jumped to his feet and crossed to his filing cabinet. Right at the very beginning of the case, Fiona had drafted a bare-bones profile with some suggested avenues of inquiry. In the general chaos that had supervened, Steve had entirely forgotten about its existence until she had mentioned it in passing the previous evening when they’d been talking about the cyclist.

His fingers flurried through the folders as he tried to remember where he’d put it. On the second pass, he found what he was looking for. ‘FC prelim’ was scrawled in black marker pen on the top right-hand corner of a pale manila file. Steve smiled and pulled it out. It was painfully slender, which was why he’d missed it the first time. He flicked it open and started to read Fiona’s precise and familiar prose. As usual, she had not identified the case by name, not entirely trusting the security of her university computer. Case SP⁄35⁄FC The victim and the crime scene were both categorizable as low risk. She was a ‘respectable’ married woman, accompanied by her twin children, with no evidence of criminal involvement by anyone in her immediate circle. The crime scene is a public place, reasonably populated by passers-by with little to divert their attention from what is going on in their immediate vicinity. The crime took place in broad daylight, yards from a well-used thoroughfare. Hampstead Heath is generally regarded as one of the safer park spaces by day in the capital, relatively well-policed and lacking a reputation for either serious assaults or drug-related activities. This means conversely that the perpetrator took a high level of risk to carry out his crime. This indicates either a relatively high level of maturity and sophistication or a reckless disregard for the consequences of his action. If however we examine the nature of the crime itself, it is clear that this was not an opportunistic attack born of spur-of-the-moment rashness. The weapon used in the crime a long-bladed knife must have been brought by the perpetrator to the scene; the attack took place in one of the few easily accessible yet largely invisible areas of the Heath, indicating a degree of premeditation; and it is possible, given witness statement J276⁄98⁄STP, that he came equipped with the means of his escape, viz a bicycle. I would therefore incline to the view that we are looking for a man who has a high degree of confidence in his abilities. Such criminal maturity comes only with experience. While he may not have killed before, there is a high probability that he has previously committed serious sexual attacks. If he has a criminal record, the likelihood is that it will have begun with incidences of voyeurism and possibly flashing, escalating through minor sexual assault to rape. However, it is entirely possible that he has avoided establishing an arrest and conviction record. I would therefore recommend a thorough trawl of both solved and unsolved rapes and serious sexual assaults over the last five years in an attempt to establish crime linkage and develop a suspect. The key factors to look for are:

Offences that have occurred out of doors research indicates that rapists tend either to commit their offences indoors or in the open, seldom mixing the two.

Most rapists tend to offend against members of the same ethnic group, although this is not invariable. Since the victim here is white and blonde, the chances are high that his previous victims share similar characteristics.

He was not disconcerted by the presence of small children. It may even be that this provides an element of his satisfaction. Therefore any incidents which include the element of child witnesses and which fit the above patterns are even more likely to be among his previous crimes.

Offences where the perpetrator has made his escape on a bicycle. If this has worked well for him in the past, he is more likely to have repeated it.

Offences where the offender has used or has threatened to use a knife. It is clear that he must have brought the knife to the Heath with him, so it is likely that it forms part of his previous activities. With the results of such a trawl, it may be possible to establish escalation through crime linkage and thus to develop a geographical profile that could lead to the identification of a valid suspect.

As always, he thought, Fiona was succinct and to the point. And, as she had generously failed to remind him the previous evening, she had picked up on the possible significance of the bicycle straightaway. At the end of the formal report, she had attached a Post-it note in her small, neat writing. I know, it read, that you have a couple of witnesses describing a running man near the scene of the crime. I don’t think this is your killer. Whoever committed this murder was together enough to make his escape in a much less attention-grabbing way. If I had to stick my neck out, I’d say the mysterious cyclist who hasn’t, as far as I can see from the statements, come forward to admit being on the Heath at the crucial time is a far more likely suspect.

Let’s talk soon. F.

Although the case of Susan Blanchard’s murder was officially closed, Steve had managed to shame his boss into allowing him a small staff to continue the inquiry that none of them would publicly admit to until and unless it produced a culprit who could credibly replace Francis Blake in the eyes of the public as well as the Crown Prosecution Service. He had one detective sergeant and two detective constables assigned full-time under his command, as well as a pool of goodwill among most of the officers who had worked with him on the original inquiry.

Mentally reviewing what the members of his team were doing, he decided to use DC Joanne Gibb for the records trawl. Joanne was a meticulous researcher and she was also skilled in developing relationships with officers both in other divisions and outside the Met. He’d seen her soothe and cajole hostile case officers in other forces, making them forget their resentment at having the big boots of the Met trampling over their patches. Nobody would be more dogged in tracking down cases with similar MOs to those suggested by Fiona; nobody would be better at extracting details from investigating officers.

Steve carefully copied out the parameters Fiona had laid down and left a note for Joanne to start on the job first thing in the morning. He stretched luxuriously, both relieved and energized by having put something positive in train. Tonight, he might actually sleep properly, instead of the ragged hours of tossing and turning that had been his recent lot.

He unfolded his long lean body from the chair and took his jacket off the hanger depending from the hook he’d super glued to the side of the filing cabinet immediately behind his desk. Functional, not aesthetic, like so much of his life, as Fiona had pointed out more than once from the earliest days of their friendship. Perhaps if he’d had Kit’s style, things might have worked out otherwise, he mused as he patted his pocket to check he had his keys. Pointless to speculate, he decided. To have had Kit’s style, he would have had to be a different man. And a different man might not have reaped the rewards of a constant friendship with Fiona as he had done.

Two strides away from the door, the phone on his desk rang. Steve dithered briefly, then turned back. “Steve Preston,” he said.

“Superintendent Preston? It’s Sergeant Wilson on the duty desk here. We’ve just had a fax from the Spanish Police. Francis Blake’s booked on a flight tomorrow morning from Alicante to Stansted. He’s due to land at eleven-forty-five. I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible.”

“Thanks, Sergeant. Do we have the flight details?”

“It’s all on the fax. I’ll get someone to bring it up.”

“Don’t bother, I’ll pick it up on my way out.” Steve replaced the phone and allowed himself to smile. Now there would be two lines of inquiry running tomorrow. While Joanne searched for the tracks of a killer, Detective Sergeant John Robson and Detective Constable Neil McCartney would be on the tail of someone who might lead them to the same man.

Definitely a turn for the better, Steve thought, his shoulders noticeably squarer as he headed for the door for the second time.

WWW

This was the only place that mattered. This was the sacred place, the sacrificial grove where morality became concrete. Everything in it was chosen. Nothing was accidental except for the shape of the room, about which he could do nothing. There had been a window, but he had covered it with a sheet of plywood then carefully plastered over it so that the wall was entirely smooth. Only the door interrupted the perfect balance of the room. That, however, was acceptable. It rendered the room symmetrical in the way that the human body was symmetrical about the axis of the spine.

He had papered the walls with lining paper. The wallpaper he wanted had been discontinued years ago, but that was of no consequence. He’d made a stencil of the stylized leaf pattern that had run down it in stripes, had paint specially mixed to replicate the exact hues of green he remembered, and meticulously made a perfect copy. Then he’d covered it in a light coat of colourless yacht varnish, so that any splashes or smudges could be readily cleaned off without damage. That, he felt, was one improvement he could comfortably make.

The floor had been easy. He’d bought the old parquet tiles from an architectural salvage yard. Maple, the man had told him. From the offices of an old woollen mill down Exeter way. It had taken a few evenings to lay them in the closest possible approximation to the remembered arrangement, but it had been a task more boring than truly challenging.

The light fitting had come from a junk shop out on the Taunton road. It had been the very first thing he’d bought, the item that had in fact given him the idea for this magical place. It could have been the original, so closely did its three frosted bowls match his memory. As he gazed at it in wonder in the dingy shop, it came to him that he could make the place live again, reassemble it just as it had been, and make of it a temple to the dark desires it had bred in him.

The furniture was simple. A plain pine table, though the scars on this surface were different from the ones he recalled. Four balloon-backed pine chairs, worn dark along the top from the regular wear of hands pulling them out and pushing them in. A small card table covered in faded green baize, where the tools of his vocation were arrayed, their shining steel glittering in the lamplight. Surgical dissection knives, a butcher’s cleaver, a small handsaw and an oilstone to make sure they were always laser-sharp. Beneath the table was a stack of polystyrene meat trays of various sizes and an industrial-sized roll of cling film.

The killing took place elsewhere, of course. It didn’t matter where. That was irrelevant to the meaning of the ritual. The method was always the same. Strangulation by ligature was the technical term, he knew that. More reliable than hands, which could slip and slither on skin slick with the sweat of fear. The crucial reason for this choice of means was that it did least traumatic damage to the body. Stabbing and gunshot wounds created such havoc, destroying the perfection he craved.

Then came the cleansing. Naked to match his sacrifice, he lowered the stripped body into the warm water and opened the veins to allow as much blood as possible to seep out, to prevent the ugly stains of lividity from spoiling the appearance of his oblation. Then he would drain the bath and refill it. The body would be carefully purified with unscented soap, the nails scrubbed, the effluents of sudden death washed away, the body purged of every defilement.

Finally, he could set about his task. Once the process had begun, he could afford to waste no time. Rigor would start within five or six hours of death, making his job both more difficult and less precise. The body, laid out on the table, pale as a statue, was his votive offering to the strange gods of obsession that he had learned must be placated all those years ago.

First, the head. He sliced through the sinews and complex structures of the throat and neck with a blade so fine that it left a trace no thicker than a pencil line when he removed the knife to exchange it for a cleaver to separate the skull from the first vertebra. He put the head to one side for later attention. Then he made a Y-incision like a pathologist. He peeled the epidermis back, carefully rolling the body so he could remove the skin from neck to toe, stripping it off like a wet suit till he had revealed a cadaver that resembled an anatomy illustration. The shucked skin went into a bucket at his feet.

Then he plunged his hands into the still-warm mass of the abdominal cavity, gently lifting the intestines and internal organs clear before slicing them free and placing them in a pile to one side. Next he broke the diaphragm and carefully removed the heart and lungs, putting them symmetrically on the other side of the torso.

He moved down to the wrists. He severed both neatly, the disarticulation causing him no problem. His career in the butchery trade had provided him with all the basic skills, which he’d refined to an art, he confidently believed. Never had the human body been so perfectly dissected nor so reverently.

The feet were next. The elbows and knees succeeded them, followed by the separation of the remaining upper limbs at hips and shoulders. Now he was working swiftly and surely, jointing the torso with the efficient movements of an expert at home in his specialism. Time flew by as his hands worked methodically, until all that remained was a mound of jointed meat, the head facing outwards at the top of the table.

Now, his excitement was at a peak, his heart pounding and his mouth dry. With a soft moan, he took his penis in his blood-slicked hands and carefully slid it into the open mouth that sat like a totem in front of him. Holding the head by the hair, he thrust into the slack-jawed orifice, his body shuddering with his ecstasy.

All passion spent, he stood with his fists on the table, leaning forward and breathing as heavily as a marathon runner at the finishing tape. The sacrament was over. Nothing remained but the disposal.

For most killers, that would have presented insurmountable problems. If Dennis Nilsen had managed to develop a more practical way of getting rid of his victims, he would probably have been reducing the homeless statistics of London for years.

But for a man who owned a wholesale butchery company, it was a simple matter. He possessed dozens of freezers filled with packs of meat. Even if anyone ever made it through the padlocks of the freezer that his staff knew was his own private cache, they would see nothing more suspicious than dozens of freezer packs. Human flesh, fortunately, looked much like any other kind once it was slaughtered.