Cross and Burn

by Val McDermid

  She headed for Darlings and pushed her way through the press of bodies to the bar. Armed with a bottle of Belgian beer, she pushed back through to the tiny patio at the rear of the pub. In the old days, it had been the yard where the empties were stacked. Now, it boasted outdoor space heaters and tall cocktail tables where the smokers could hang out even in the dead of winter. She spotted a couple of women she recognised and joined them, lighting up as soon as she’d put her beer down.

  They swapped gossip, took the piss out of a new lesbian sitcom and diplomatically refrained from talking about their jobs. Two cigarettes later, Paula drained her bottle of beer, made her apologies and left, feeling like she’d turned the stress dial down to manageable levels.

  The house was dark and silent when Paula let herself in. She dumped her bag and keys on the hall table then went through to the kitchen for another beer before bed. She took one from the fridge then crossed to the patio doors so she could go outside and smoke. Suddenly the shadows beyond the breakfast bar shifted and she almost dropped her beer in shock. ‘Jesus,’ she exclaimed, taking a step back, eyes wide with apprehension.

  ‘It’s only me,’ Torin said as the darkness resolved itself into his shape.

  Paula reached for the switches and turned on the low-level lighting under the cabinets. In the soft light, she could see he was wearing what passed for pyjamas these days – baggy plaid trousers and a grey V-necked T-shirt. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack,’ she complained, reaching for the patio door and hauling it open.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He looked as if he was about to burst into tears. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’ He gestured at the half-empty glass of milk on the breakfast bar. ‘My mum always said that milk helped you sleep. Something about the calcium. It’s not working too well, though.’ He hitched himself on to a tall chair.

  Paula stepped outside with her beer, lit a cigarette and grimaced at the acrid taste that filled her mouth. Why was it that you only ever knew you’d reached the limit of daily cigarette pleasure when you went one too far? And what the hell was she supposed to say to this kid that wasn’t some desperate cliché? ‘You’re going to have a lot of broken nights,’ she tried. ‘The only advice I can give you is not to fret over it. It’s natural. Part of grieving.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to me, Paula?’ His voice shook.

  A lot of bad stuff. ‘I’m not going to lie to you. You’re going to have a shit time for a while. You’re going to feel raw, like somebody scraped your insides with a spoon. You’re going to feel like the tears are never more than somebody else’s careless comment away. You’re going to feel like nothing will ever be right in your life again. But I promise you, all of that passes. It’s not that you stop missing your mum or loving her. Somehow it becomes bearable.’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s like that would be letting her down.’

  She remembered that feeling only too well. When her colleague Don Merrick had died, it had felt like every day on the job was part of a long process of failing his memory. ‘What would be letting her down would be to not live your life as fully as you possibly can. You’ve got a helluva touchstone there, Torin. When you’re confronted with hard choices, you can always ask yourself what would have made your mum proud.’ Paula took a last drag and crushed out the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray Elinor reluctantly allowed on her precious deck. She came back inside and sat in the chair next to him.

  ‘I want to kill the man who did this to her,’ he said, staring bleakly at his milk.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But what’s worse is knowing that, even if he was standing in front of me, I wouldn’t be able to. I’m just a kid, Paula. And there’s nothing I can do to make him feel the misery he’s made for everybody that knew her.’ He banged his fist on the table. ‘I feel pathetic.’

  ‘We’re doing everything we can to bring him to justice. It won’t be the kind of wild justice that we all crave when we’re hurting, but it will deprive him of everything that makes life worth living for most people.’ She put her hand over his. ‘And you’re already in a better place than him because you’ve got people all round you who care about you. When we catch him, his friends will melt into the darkness. His family will disown him. He’ll have nothing. You’ll always have more than him.’

  Torin didn’t look convinced. ‘I wish my dad was home.’ He gave a jerky laugh. ‘Listen to me. Fourteen years old and I want my daddy, like I was a little kid.’

  ‘Of course you want your dad. It doesn’t matter what age you are when you lose a parent, you want somebody you love to take care of you. I’m sorry your dad can’t be here, but we’re going to do our best for you, Torin. Don’t bottle up how you’re feeling. Don’t worry about what we think of you, because what we think is that you’re a great lad.’

  All at once, his shoulders were shaking with sobs, huge gulping moans that filled the room with his anguish. Not knowing what else to do, Paula got up and gathered him in her arms. It was like hugging an alien; the feel of his body, the faint boy-smell of his skin, the vibration of his grief in her own chest were all foreign to her. She’d thought the best thing she could do for Torin was to nail his mother’s killer. Now she understood this was a case that was going to make far greater demands on her than that.

  And then her phone rang.

  54

  Sleep was a distant stranger for Tony. Simply being in the same room as Carol had sparked his engines back to life. He had imagined so many scenarios where the weight of grief and loss had driven Carol to destruction, and now he’d seen her apparently intact the relief made him feel buoyant in spite of being locked in a smelly cell with no prospect of walking free just yet.

  He ran an inventory of what he’d clocked. She’d always cheated time, looking younger than her years, but now her history had caught up with her. In his eyes, she was as attractive as ever, but the bloom had started to fade into something that told a darker story. She did look as if she was sleeping well though. The dark bruises under her eyes that had been a regular feature when she’d been up half the night trying to find a resolution to serious crimes had faded out, but her blue-grey eyes still had a weariness to them.

  Carol had never been vain, but the one aspect of her appearance she’d always taken trouble with was her hair. Naturally thick and blonde, it was always styled to look informally shaggy, but she’d once explained to Tony that it took a lot of skill to make it appear so casual. Now, whoever was cutting it lacked the necessary proficiency and it looked untidy. And the silver she’d kept at bay with clever colouring had asserted itself, changing the shade from honey to ash. The alteration he saw in her spoke volumes to Tony. Carol had lost her pride in herself. She no longer saw value in who she was and what she did.

  And what exactly was she doing? Her body shape had undergone some subtle changes too. Her shoulders were broader and she wasn’t carrying any spare weight round her midriff. She’d abandoned the silver twelve-piece Turkish puzzle ring she used to wear and her hands carried the marks of physical labour, yet she’d always been the first to insist on getting someone in when there were any problems with the house. As far as he was aware, she barely knew what a screwdriver was for. Whatever displacement activity she had chosen as her form of therapy, she had moved well outside her previous comfort zone.

  And here he was, well outside his own comfort zone, completely reassured by the arrival of a woman who was adamant in her desire not to give a damn about him. Her very presence gave him hope. And now that he had genuine hope, it was possible to examine honestly the hopeless position he’d been in previously. He wondered what he represented to Alex Fielding to make her so swift and sure in her condemnation of him. Was it simply that she sensed a sensational scalp? A headline-grabbing arrest and conviction? It seemed a giant leap to believe him capable of such crimes. After all, BMP had consulted him for years. He’d been trusted to maintain confidentiality and to produce profiles that could be relied on by its officers. He was aware that a significant
number of powerful officers thought he was odd, to say the least, but as far as he knew, they didn’t consider him potentially lethal. But for Fielding to have gone on the attack like this, she must have been confident of support from the top brass.

  And, realistically, that meant no matter what Paula believed, she couldn’t rescue him from behind the barrier of her official position. If she hadn’t already broken the rules for him, he’d have been lost. Fielding would almost certainly have charged him in the morning and the magistrates almost never granted bail on a murder charge. Definitely not on a double murder charge, regardless of who the accused was. Oscar Pistorius would have had no chance of making bail in a British magistrates’ court.

  Without Carol, he had been lost. With Carol, he stood a chance. And the best thing he could do to help her set him free was to focus not on her and how she’d changed and what was going on inside her head, but on the man who was killing a subset of women that she fitted into.

  He got to his feet and started pacing. Profiling, that’s what he was supposed to be good at. He needed to think about this killer in those terms. He’d written the introduction to his profiles so many times he knew it by heart. As he paced, he recited it aloud like a mantra to put his head in the right place. ‘The following offender profile is for guidance only and shouldn’t be regarded as an identikit portrait. The offender is unlikely to match the profile in every detail, though I would expect there to be a high degree of congruence between the characteristics outlined below and the reality. All of the statements in the profile express probabilities and possibilities, not hard facts.

  ‘A serial killer produces signals and indicators in the commission of his crimes. Everything he does is intended, consciously or not, as part of a pattern. Discovering the underlying pattern reveals the killer’s logic. It may not appear logical to us, but to him it is crucial. Because his logic is so idiosyncratic, straightforward traps will not capture him. As he is unique, so must be the means of catching him, interviewing him and reconstructing his acts.’

  He stopped and rested both palms flat on the chilly wall. He wished he had a set of the crime-scene photos in front of him; his memory, like his eyesight, was not quite as sharp as it used to be, and a lot had happened since he’d flicked through the photos Paula had shown him. Some things were still vivid, however. The smashed face of the victim. The primitive markings of the bruises that covered her torso. The shaving of her genital area and the sealing of her labia.

  ‘Mixed messages,’ he said. ‘The destruction of her face looks frenzied. The bruising on her body is organised. You didn’t stamp on her at all, which you almost certainly would have done if you’d been in a frenzy. So, as with the facial destruction, in spite of appearances to the contrary, there’s a reason. Here, it’s because you are careful not to leave forensic traces. You’re determined not to be caught and you’re smart enough to have developed a strategy to deliver that result. You knew about the limitations of the CCTV coverage but still you took care to make sure you couldn’t be identified. The things we think we know about your appearance we may not know at all. You’re wearing glasses but they might have plain lenses. You’ve got a limp but you might be faking it. You look reasonably strapping but you could just be wearing bulky clothes on your upper torso. The only thing we will be able to say for sure, once some techie has done the biometrics, is how tall you are, give or take an inch.’

  He pushed off from the wall and began pacing again. ‘So how do we use these contradictions to provide investigative value?’ He started numbering points on his fingers. Pinkie. ‘First, the victims resemble each other. Similar height and build, blonde, blue eyes, professional women, not in a relationship. As far as we know. You’re going for a type that means something to you. You want them to fit a specific niche in your picture of the universe. And when they don’t, you destroy their faces.’ Six, eight. Six, eight, brow furrowed in thought.

  ‘You destroy their faces because it turns out they don’t live up to the template. They look right but they don’t act right. So they don’t have the right to belong in that cohort any more. They’ve forfeited the right to be on the team. Let there be no mistake about it. They’re worthless. They’re history.’

  Ring finger. ‘So it’s not a frenzied attack at all. It’s more in sorrow than in anger. And now the other stuff makes sense. You kick them to death to teach them a lesson. How dare they fail you? How dare they trick you into thinking they were the one and then not be the one? You’re sending a message, only there’s nobody there to read it. If only she knew it, you’re sending a message to the next one. “This is what will happen to you if you don’t pass muster.”’ He paused, frowning. ‘It’s savage, it’s lethal, but you never lose control, do you?’

  Middle finger. ‘And that’s the thing with the washing and the shaving and the superglue. It’s not just about removing forensic traces. It’s another message. It’s like stamping the carcase “not fit for human consumption”. You’re warning the rest of us, don’t get taken in, this one isn’t even worth shagging. You’re protecting other men from the mistakes you made. You’re the good guy, you’re providing a service, making sure nobody else wastes time on them.’

  Tony scratched his head with both hands, as if creatures were crawling over his scalp.

  ‘So what is it that you’re looking for? It’s more than auditioning a girlfriend. I think you’re looking for a replacement. You had your perfect woman and something went wrong. And before you could make her pay the price for her fall from grace, she got away. And you can’t find peace without her so you need a replacement.’

  He threw himself down on the bed, forgetting it was so hard. He yelped and sat up again. ‘I didn’t think it through when I told Carol to find a dead woman who looks like her. But that’s it. She’s either dead or on the missing list. Because if she was around to be killed, he wouldn’t need to bother with anybody else. And he didn’t kill her then, so although he kids himself he’s looking for a replacement, what he’s actually looking for is an excuse to kill them. He kept Nadia alive for three weeks. He believed he could mould her but then he had to kill her when she couldn’t make the grade. But killing her was such a kick he’s convinced himself that it’s a waste of time trying to get them to toe the line. He’s run out of patience when it comes to training them because, whether he’d admit it or not, he’d rather kill them than keep them.’ Index finger. ‘He’s not looking for a replacement now, he’s looking for satisfaction, and unless he gets a perfect replica more or less straight away, he’s going to be just like Mick Jagger. Trying and trying.’

  All of which was interesting but not helpful when it came to catching a killer. What Carol – and Paula – needed was something a bit more concrete. ‘You’re not young,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Bev was in her late thirties and you thought she was a possibility. Which probably puts you between thirty-five and fifty. You’re authoritarian and arrogant, contemptuous of others. You let people know when they don’t come up to scratch, which has probably hurt your career. And that makes you even more resentful. You’re practical. You turn up with a taser and whatever is in that case.’ He paused for a moment then smacked himself in the forehead. ‘Of course. It’s a portable anaesthetic kit. Like paramedics use. You’re putting them under so they don’t make a noise in the boot of the car. That’s what you’re doing.’ He patted his pockets for his phone out of habit. Then it dawned on him he couldn’t call Carol or even text her to share his revelation. Disappointment rippled through him, leaving him frustrated and annoyed.

  ‘Focus, you moron,’ he chided himself. ‘Just make sure you remember it in the morning. And as for you, you clever bastard – you’re probably in a white-collar job, though not a highly qualified professional. Not a doctor or a lawyer. Maybe a middle-manager of some sort. But you think you’re better than that. That’s why you’re leaving them where they’ll be found. You want us to pay attention, to take you seriously.’

  Tony stood up again a
nd walked the perimeter of the room, trailing his fingers along the wall as he went. ‘You’re local. Both your victims are from Bradfield. I think you’re picking them at random. You see them on the street or on the bus and they look right and you stalk them to see whether they’ll do. You acquired and killed Bev very soon after Nadia, which makes me wonder whether you’ve got a little list of possibles.

  ‘You’ve probably got a house with a garage or a private area for parking cars. You’re taking their cars somewhere, then going back for your own later. Then you dump theirs. We need to find out where those cars end up. Burned out? Left with fake plates in long-term parking? What are you doing with them?

  ‘The other thing is, you need to be able to contain them. Keep them captive without being overlooked or overheard. No nosy neighbours wondering what the screaming is all about.’

  It was thin, he had to admit. But with the limited resources at his disposal, he’d made a start. He was beginning to have a sense of what kind of man this killer was. And if he was right about the portable anaesthetic machine, Paula might be able to develop that into a viable lead.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling the adrenalin finally ebb away, leaving him weary and depleted. But the despair was gone. Carol might not know it yet, but her arrival at Skenfrith Street signalled the installation of the caissons. Now the real work could begin on rebuilding the piers that would hold up the bridge that needed to be built between them.