‘Fraud squad are going to use their wizardry to check out the IP addresses used by both the phone and the sender of the e–mail that went to Amber’s family,’ Danny added. ‘Same goes for the video link, but given how careful this guy’s been up to now, chances are they’ll trace back to other countries, remote servers, that kind of thing.’
Honor nodded.
‘I think he’s following his targets, learning about them before he strikes.’ ‘The phobias?’
‘Everything,’ she replied. ‘Makes sense that he could identify targets from the website, but what about their friends, families, loved ones, other people getting in the way and spotting him? He needs to work in private, to catch his targets when they’re alone. I think this is a campaign, one he’s been planning for a long time.’
Danny nodded thoughtfully.
‘That would mean his next target is either already abducted, or is about to be.’
‘Get us a list of all persons reported missing within, say, the past forty–eight hours. If anybody on that list is also a member of the phobia forum that Sebastian and Amber visited, there’s a good chance they’re in this killer’s hands.’
Danny stood up.
‘Status meeting in ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Let’s bring this with us, see if it sheds any light on this guy’s next move before he makes it.’
Honor took a breath and followed Danny out of her office to the Incident Room. Within, more desks had been added, extra phones installed, and there was a buzz of quiet activity as more officers were drawn into the investigation.
‘DI Harper’s in a meeting with DCI Mitchell and the borough commander,’ Danny said as they walked into the room. ‘Looks like they’re going to push this up.’
Honor nodded. ‘Have the media been in touch?’
Danny gestured to the television screen, which was playing BBC News, and Honor got her answer right there as she listened to a broadcast playing out with a shot of Southwark Cathedral in the background. A reporter’s black hair was being whipped around by the wind as she stood on the A3 alongside the cathedral grounds.
‘… as what can only be described as a scene of chaos just south of London Bridge. Several ambulances, fire trucks and police vehicles were called here at dawn, and I understand that at least one body was removed from the scene. There are forensics officers at work now, concealed within tents so we can’t tell quite what they’re doing, but local witnesses reported that there were workmen here prior to the incident, and that they were either digging or filling foundation works around the cathedral as part of ongoing renovations.’
The broadcast snapped back to a well–known presenter in the studio.
‘Can you tell us anything about the victim, or victims, Rebecca, or anything about how they were found?’
Rebecca, her hair vigorously trying to leave the scene, shook her head as she swiped strands from her face with one hand.
‘The police are not sharing information at this stage, but what we do know is that one body was extracted from a pit filled with concrete, and that paramedics attempted to resuscitate the victim but were apparently unsuccessful. What is interesting about this is that it’s the second morning in a row that police have been called to a scene of a bizarre death. Yesterday it was the body of an apparent suicide victim seen hanging from St Magnus church, just over the water near London Bridge. Now, it’s one or more victims possibly buried alive in Southwark Cathedral grounds. Whether the two murders are connected is as yet unknown, but it’s clear that the City of London Police are acting on information that even the workers here on the grounds were not aware of, as witnesses say the police came in here at dawn with all sirens blazing, closely followed by ambulances, just moments after the cement had been poured. What that tells us is that they learned that there were people inside that pit before it was filled with concrete, and that in itself tells us that they know more than they’re telling the public. Rebecca Tillbourne, London Bridge.’
Danny and Honor stared at the screen for a moment, and then glanced at each other.
Moments later, the phones in the Incident Room started ringing, one after another. ‘Here we go,’ Danny said.
As officers started answering the phones, DI Harper strode into the Incident Room. Seeing that the entire team was assembled and either answering the phones or collating evidence, she closed the door behind her and gestured for the detectives to prepare for the briefing.
It took another five or six minutes for the first wave of calls to stop coming in, and it was evident from what Honor could hear that most of the calls were from journalists and television crews eager for the latest pick–up on what was happening in Southwark. Each of the calls was coming in through the Bishopsgate front desk and being routed to the Incident Room to avoid clogging up the lines, but that would all change as soon as DI Harper decided to set up a direct link to the room, a move which would require a public announcement and the cooperation of the media itself.
‘All right,’ Harper snapped as soon as the last phone call had ended, ‘where are we at? Honor, what’s the status of the investigation?’
Honor replied smoothly, her recently renewed karma–armour doing its job.
‘The victim in Southwark has been confirmed as Amber Carson, thirty–two. We have confirmed that Amber was also a member of the phobia forum Face Fear along with Sebastian Dukas, and that her greatest fear was claustrophobia, caused by a childhood accident. Autopsy is due in the morning, but I’ll ask the pathologist to draw blood and fluids for testing in case any trace of GHB, which we suspect may be in her system, becomes too diluted to detect.’
Harper nodded. ‘CCTV and surveillance?’
‘We’re reviewing footage from all pertinent locations,’ Samir Raaya replied. ‘Focusing on her home now, but it’s located in Hackney alongside a narrow alley so her abductor may have been able to access her home undetected. I’m working on likely routes in, and waiting for CCTV from the bars the victims both frequented before they were killed, looking for places their drinks might have been spiked and who might have been able to do it.’
‘Okay,’ Harper replied, ‘what about this smart arse’s data and IP addresses?’ ‘Fraud and cyber are both working the addresses and the phone recovered from the
Southwark crime scene,’ Danny replied. ‘It’s gonna take some time, but we’re hopeful that there might be a link back to an account here in the UK that we can raid.’
Nobody said anything in reply, mainly because everyone knew that there was only a slim chance that their killer would leave such an obvious and easy route to arrest open for the police.
‘Motivations?’ Harper demanded, and although she didn’t say her name, she looked directly at Honor.
‘He’s not seeking sexual assault,’ Honor replied, ‘and although we will have to wait for autopsy to confirm any sexual assault on Amber Carson, I don’t think we’ll find it. The video piece says it all: he wants to watch them suffer, to watch them die. This is sadism, some kind of ritualistic rite–of–passage from which he may gain sexual gratification. I can’t say what’s driving that need, but I can say that if I’m right, it won’t end here. These attacks are carried out too cleanly to be opportunistic.’
‘You think it’s a campaign, that it’s been thought out?’ Honor nodded.
‘You can’t just walk into people’s lives like this and pluck them from their families, and he needs time to drug them in advance. GHB is a tricky substance to work with, it’s tough to get the right measure into someone so they’re compliant yet not comatose. Watching them die is important to him, it’s a major part of what he’s trying to do. If they’re out cold when he kills them, then there is no gratification, he’s denied what he most needs.’
DS Hansen’s voice reached her from across the room. ‘He didn’t attach cameras to Sebastian Dukas.’
‘I know,’ Honor said, ‘and Sebastian didn’t die from being hanged, either. Something went wrong there. It’s my guess that our killer d
idn’t get the GHB dosage quite right and Sebastian came around too early, started fighting back, and so he had to be throttled to death. That would have allowed our killer to witness Sebastian’s final moment of life, but it would not have been enough to fulfil his needs. He wants to watch that moment, but not while struggling to kill someone. He wants to enjoy it on his own terms, somewhere else, safe from the event itself.’ Honor thought of something on the spot. ‘Without risk to his own safety.’
For a moment Honor was lost, visualising their killer, enjoying the suffering and fear of others but keen to distance himself from any danger of suffering the same ordeal. It felt important, a glimpse into the mind of a killer more deranged than any she had encountered before.
‘Honor?’
She blinked herself back into the room as she realised the DI was talking to her again. ‘Sorry, I was considering the killer’s motives.’
‘Next targets? Can we beat him to them?’
‘Danny’s looking into missing–persons reports and will match them against users of the phobia forum that Sebastian and Amber both frequented. If we get a match then we’ll know there’s a decent chance our guy has abducted his next victim. However, there are countless on–line forums out there dedicated to phobias, so he could in theory pluck targets from any one of them.’
Harper looked down at her notes. ‘What about the media angle, what are they asking for?’
Detective Constable Zara Flint, a new officer on the team who had made her way up from the beat the year prior, answered with her customary keen–as–mustard enthusiasm. ‘Everything and anything,’ she said. ‘They know something’s going on and people are talking about this on social media. It’ll be trending by rush hour. BBC and ITV are both connecting Sebastian Dukas and Amber Carson as the work of the same killer, even though on the outside there’s nothing yet to say they’re related. We need to tread carefully with this one. We can’t hide too much, they already know we’re working the case in both instances, but we can’t tip our hand too early or it’ll risk giving the killer an idea of how close we are to apprehending him.’
DI Harper grinned, clearly enjoying Flint’s enthusiasm.
‘The media are a double–edged sword,’ she replied. ‘You can’t always catch a killer without them, but sometimes they reveal so much that the killer escapes before they can be brought to justice. For now, we hold out. That said, a press release is going to be essential before too long, especially if we get another incident.’ She turned to Honor. ‘When the time comes, I want you to hold the press briefing. You’re closest to the investigation and you’re already on the news.’
Honor’s train of thought slammed to a halt. ‘I am?’
Samir spoke to her softly from one side. ‘Onlooker mobile phones,’ he explained, ‘they captured us both looking up at them from the crime scene in Southwark, and some other shots I think from St Magnus church.’
Oh shit. Honor’s anxiety swelled again, the black chasm churning in the depths of her neural cortex. Nobody’s looking at you, except for a few million people watching breakfast television every morning.
‘You okay with that?’
DI Harper was looking at her for a reply, along with every other detective in the room.
‘Sure,’ Honor managed to utter, a breath of a word that barely made it past her lips and then seemed to try to scramble back from where it came.
‘Press won’t be held at bay forever,’ Harper announced to the room,’ so sooner or later this is going to get out, and when it does, we can’t hold anything back. We have a serial killer on the loose in the city and he’s targeting people based on what they’re most afraid of, which is quite the bloody headline. The hacks will have a field day with it. I want something concrete…’ Harper hesitated, regretting her choice of words, ‘… something solid to give them, when the time comes. A name, a face, something to show for the time we’re spending on this. Get to it.’
The meeting broke up, Honor making her way back to her desk with a new shadow of doubt weighing her down. A press briefing, and she’d only been back two bloody days. The thought of her being on the television was bad enough, made worse now by the fact that she was already the face of an investigation that the media were stalking, like wolves hunting a wounded elk. Soon, their prey would tire and they would start nipping bits of flesh from its flanks, drawing ever more blood.
Danny and Samir followed her into her office, instinctively aware that she would need to talk to them before getting back to work. Honor glanced out of her window and saw that the sky was looking more threatening than ever, heavily bruised clouds tumbling through darkening skies.
‘Where are we with CCTV on both cases?’ she asked.
‘It’s a bust from me on St Magnus,’ Samir replied. ‘Nothing coming in on any of the cameras.’
‘Same for me,’ Danny replied. ‘There’s no evidence of anybody trying to break into the church grounds, or out of them for that matter. The first people of interest I saw on the footage was the police arriving at the scene, at about seven–thirty in the morning.’
Honor placed her hands on her desk, breathing calmly for a moment to clear her thoughts.
‘I’ve only got an hour of footage left to watch,’ she replied, ‘and I haven’t seen anything suspicious either. The only conclusion I can reach from this is that our suspect did not reach the scene by road, which must mean he used the river.’
The Thames was of course one way in which a suspect could move about the city without being detected by CCTV, but the river had its own patrol force and they would have noticed an unregistered vessel or suspicious activity.
‘Get in touch with the MET Marine Policing Unit,’ she said to Danny, ‘find out if they’ve got anything on record for the London Bridge and Southwark area that might fit the estimated movements of our suspect.’
‘Will do.’
‘What about the IT guys, anything there?’
Samir shook his head. ‘They’re working on it, but it’ll take time.’
Honor mentally kicked herself. Danny had mentioned that only a moment ago. She was losing her grip and she needed to stay on top of this: lives were at stake.
‘Right,’ she replied. ‘I’ll review what CCTV I have left of St Magnus, then pick up the threads of the Southwark footage with both of you. Either way, we’ve got a real mystery here – if this guy turns out not to be using the river, how the hell did he gain access to the church and the cathedral without being noticed by anybody?’
Neither Samir or Danny had an immediate answer.
‘Okay, let’s finish clearing what we can of the surveillance footage and then switch to other means of transport. I need you both back in here by the end of play today to collate what we know.’
Samir and Danny left the office for the IR, and Honor was about to update the CRIS database when Danny again poked his head around the corner of her door. ‘You got a minute?’
Danny walked in and shut the door, glancing into the corridor before he did so. He moved across to her desk and perched himself on the corner.
‘How you holdin’ up?’
Honor kept her features impassive. ‘I’m fine.’
Danny grinned, something between sympathy and bemusement. ‘You coloured up when Harper put you on the spot about the press conference.’
Honor felt patches of heat touch her cheeks, a vague dizziness swaying her seat. ‘I can handle it.’
‘You sure? I can stand in for you if you’d rather stay off the six o’clock news.’ ‘I’ll be fine.’
Danny hesitated, chose his words with care. ‘I get it, remember? I know how it feels. There’s no sense in pushing yourself into a corner and then realising that you can’t fight your way out of it. This case, it’s one of those once–in–ten–years cases, one that the media will really get their teeth into. It’s unique, unusual, and you’ve just been dropped right into the middle of it.’
Danny said nothing more. Honor stared at him, wanting to re
taliate, wanting to say something, but her brain had turned to mush and couldn’t come up with a single bloody word in response. The hum of her computer’s hard drive was the only sound. She opened her mouth to try to say something, but there was nothing to say.
Danny stood up, watched her for a moment.
‘That’s what I mean,’ he said. ‘Don’t take this on if you’re going to dry up like that in front of a few million viewers.’
The silence in her mind broke and she shot up out of her chair. ‘Well, what the fuck would you like me to do?’
Danny grinned as he gestured airily toward her. ‘Something like that.’ Honor realised she’d been baited. She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not that easy.’
‘It’s not that hard, either,’ Danny pointed out as he turned to leave. ‘Be yourself.
You’ve got this, don’t let your anxiety hold you back, okay?’
Honor watched him go, then slumped back down into her chair and watched the world going by outside her office window, worrying about how many of them had seen her on the television that morning.
10
There was no going back now.
This was where the anticipation began to build, where the excitement was, swelling within, an unstoppable wave of lust. No, not lust, an unworthy choice of word. Desire, yearning. Primitive cravings churned within him, tingling on his skin and filling his mind with thoughts that he would once have considered taboo.
He stared at himself in the mirror, and wondered whether anybody else out there ever had these thoughts. He doubted it. Most people were entrapped within the bubble of their own existence, oblivious to a world beyond the prison of their lives. Work, eat, sleep, raise kids, pay mortgage, watch the government rip off generation after generation but doing nothing to rectify it, retire, fall ill, lose mind, die. The whole circus appalled him, as though he alone could see its unjust flaws.
Phobia Page 11
