The Murder Bag

by Tony Parsons

  Swire was flanked by two men who had remained silent throughout the meeting, avoiding eye contact with the incompetent Murder Investigation Team from West End Central: a young East Asian in glasses with digital geek written all over him, and a much older man, about sixty, with soft white hair who couldn’t possibly have been a part of the Met because he was wearing a suit but no tie.

  Now they stirred.

  Swire nodded curtly at Mallory and told him, ‘You will remain as SIO for the time being. But I’ll be sitting in at the morning briefings and you will be reporting directly to me.’

  Gane and Whitestone exchanged a look. Mallory’s time was passing. He was still senior investigating officer but this no longer felt like his investigation. Operation Fat Boy now felt like it was being run from Broadway, SW1 – New Scotland Yard – not 27 Savile Row.

  Mallory was a good man, but the world was beating him down. Suddenly his authority felt like a fragile thing that could be taken away by one gesture from the woman at the top of the conference table. I saw that Gane and Whitestone could not look at him.

  Swire gestured to the digital geek on her left. ‘This is Colin Cho of the Police Central e-crime Unit. As you know, the PCeU is jointly funded by the Home Office and the Met to provide a national response to the most serious incidents of cyber-crime. Bob the Butcher comes under their remit.’

  ‘Hopefully we might be able to show you a few new tricks,’ Cho said to Gane, his accent somewhere between Hong Kong and London.

  Gane said nothing.

  ‘I want Bob flushed out,’ Swire said. ‘I want him dragged out from behind his firewall. I want him taken seriously. We’re becoming a laughing stock.’ She nodded sharply at me. Her hair did not move. ‘Especially after DC Wolfe’s recent stroll in the country.’

  ‘We have taken Bob seriously, ma’am,’ Mallory insisted.

  She did not slap the table. She did not need to. She fixed Mallory with a look cold enough to give a snowman hypothermia.

  ‘Not seriously enough,’ she said. ‘The MP for Hillingdon North is highly thought of in Whitehall and Westminster.’ She inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. ‘I am receiving phone calls.’

  So that was it, I thought. The murders were too close to Ben King, and Swire had the full weight of Downing Street and Whitehall pressing on her back.

  She turned to the older man on her right. ‘And this is Dr Joe Stephen of King’s College London. Introduce yourself, Dr Stephen?’

  ‘I’m a forensic psychologist and I’m here to give assistance in any way I can,’ Dr Stephen said. He had the smooth sing-song vowels of a Californian who had lived in London for twenty years. The Hollywood Hills meets Muswell Hill.

  ‘What can you tell us so far?’ Swire asked.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Forensic psychology is more art than science. All I can do is look at the evidence, and estimate what kind of individual would commit these crimes.’ There was a file before him and he glanced down at it without, I sensed, really needing to. ‘To apprehend the unsub – sorry, the unknown subject – you need to understand that he is re-ordering the world. When women kill, they almost always kill someone they know. When men kill more than once, it’s almost always strangers. Serial killers are invariably male.’

  Gane folded his arms. ‘So we’re looking for a man?’ he said. He smirked at Whitestone but she wouldn’t return his look, or his smile. ‘That narrows it down,’ he muttered.

  Dr Stephen stared at him. ‘A white man,’ he added.

  ‘And why’s that?’ said the black DI.

  ‘Because the dead men are all white,’ Dr Stephen said, ‘and serial killers almost always kill within their own race. That’s not universal, but close enough to be considered a given.’

  He looked a little rattled. He had come in wanting to be our friend and he was being forced to defend himself.

  ‘What kind of white man, Dr Stephen?’ Whitestone said, far friendlier than Gane. ‘Any guess as to age, motive, social group?’

  ‘A white man who is trying to right some perceived wrong,’ Dr Stephen said. ‘A man who is punishing his victims. These are all planned attacks. Very carefully planned attacks. These are not confrontational homicides, these are revenge homicides. The unsub is trying to right a wrong by the only means at his disposal – extreme violence. He is the product of a place where violence is the means of achieving your aims.’

  The resentment was coming off Gane like steam, but to me Dr Stephen was making sense. I thought of the terrible neatness of those carotid thrusts and the ease with which they opened arteries that could never be closed again. It was the work of a man who was remaking the world.

  ‘Maybe he’s just a nutter,’ Gane said.

  Dr Stephen smiled at him with a kind of embarrassed pity. ‘Then he is a nutter – your term, detective, not mine – who is restoring control over what he perceives to be a mad world. Honour. Power. Control. That’s what matters to him. And when you find him, as you no doubt will, you will find a man who needs to control other men, a man who needs that more than anything in the world.’

  ‘So you don’t really know anything about him at all?’ Gane persisted.

  ‘Look, the reason I’m in this room is because these are stranger killings,’ Dr Stephen said. ‘Most of the homicides you attend, the killer and the victim are known to each other. The husband who murders his wife because of her infidelity, the mother who murders her child, the drug dealer who murders his business associate.’ He paused. ‘That link does not exist with a serial killer. He is not known to the victim. He is not a husband, a business associate, a friend. But the unknown sub leaves evidence. Psychiatric evidence. Behavioural evidence. Ritualistic evidence. The remnants of fantasy and madness.’

  On the other side of the glass walls I saw Scarlet Bush being escorted to the conference room.

  ‘Ah, this is Ms Bush,’ Swire said when she entered the room, ‘who some of you will know already as crime correspondent for the Daily Post.’

  The reporter circled the table, shaking hands and making smiling eye contact with everyone, including me. She played it as if we had never met. Then she took her place at the top of the conference table, next to Dr Stephen.

  ‘This is the plan,’ Swire said.

  The shock of these words jolted Mallory upright and made the pain at the base of my spine pulse with alarm. Whitestone and Gane exchanged a startled look.

  What plan?

  ‘Dr Stephen is going to provide a detailed profile of Bob the Butcher,’ the chief super continued. ‘Then, based on this profile, Ms Bush is going to write a comment piece in the Post designed to tempt Bob into explaining himself in an online interview. And Mr Cho will be waiting to drive a very large hole through his firewall.’

  ‘Press his buttons,’ said Scarlet Bush. ‘Make Bob stop hiding behind the grandiose Robert Oppenheimer sound bites and raise his head above the parapet.’

  Mallory shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘You really think he’ll respond if you – what? – insult him in print?’

  ‘If I do it in the right way,’ Bush said. ‘Bob wouldn’t be preening on a social network site if he wasn’t vain, and if he didn’t want attention, and if he wasn’t a narcissist, and if he didn’t want to justify himself to the world. Not necessarily insults – we have agreed that Dr Stephen will have copy approval – more observations. Just enough that Bob will feel the need to explain himself. Just a little. Just enough.’

  A look of disbelief must have passed across my face. Bush stared at me, not smiling now.

  ‘He’ll talk to me for the same reason that, in the end, they all talk to me,’ she continued. ‘Not because it would be great to hear his side of the story. But because I’m going to tell his story anyway. So he can either have his say or stay quiet and let the world have its say.’

  ‘That’s the way it works, is it?’ I said.

  ‘That’s exactly the way it works, detective.’

  I turned to Swire.

  ‘Ma�
��am, we’re throwing everything we’ve got at this Bob the Butcher and—’

  ‘And that’s what we’re going to keep throwing until we bury him,’ the chief super responded, cutting me off. She turned to Cho. ‘Colin?’

  ‘I’m confident that PCeU have the kit to find cracks in whatever encryption systems, anonymisers and onion routers he’s using.’

  Swire’s eyes swept across the subdued MIT from West End Central.

  ‘And then you’re going to bring me his head on a spike,’ she told us.

  Mallory was staring bleakly at his SIO policy book. The strength seemed to be visibly draining from him. The chief super had made it sound easy, so it felt like a betrayal when I looked out over St James’s Park and thought – why shouldn’t it work? Trace, interview, eliminate – the TIE process was standard police procedure in any major investigation. Maybe Swire’s plan was for the best. Flush the preening little bastard out from under his digital rock.

  Scarlet Bush leaned back in her chair.

  ‘So, Dr Stephen, what kind of guy is Bob the Butcher?’ she said.

  ‘I can tell you about the unsub,’ the American said. ‘I can – I believe – also tell you something about Bob the Butcher. What I can’t tell you is that they are one and the same.’

  Swire and Bush glanced at each other. And I saw just how desperately they both wanted Bob to be the same man – our killer.

  ‘Society struggles to understand the repeat serious offender,’ Dr Stephen continued. ‘The serial rapist and the serial killer. Often they are the same thing but at different stages on the road to madness.’

  ‘But there’s no sexual element to Bob’s crimes,’ Swire said.

  ‘My point is that the serial rapist and the serial killer tend to share the same basic characteristics. Because transgression is a way of life, they tend to be charming, manipulative, vain, ruthless, morally numb and devoid of even a shred of human empathy. The unsub will have a rich fantasy life – a fantasy life so rewarding that it will have come to have more substance than the real world. The unsub is likely to be a liar of near genius. As you know, serial killers often sail through lie detector tests. Trauma in his background is a given. Frequently, but not always, they come from backgrounds of mental and sexual abuse.’

  Scarlet Bush perked up. ‘You think Bob the Butcher was the victim of child abuse?’

  ‘It’s possible. The rational mind struggles to understand the psychopathology of the irrational. These murders are an expression of the killer’s masculinity. As I said, these homicides are displays of honour, power and control. Their sole purpose is punishment – for some perceived wrong done against the killer himself or a third party. The killer almost certainly doesn’t know his victims. He is simply righting a wrong – or a series of wrongs.’

  Scarlet Bush was jotting down notes.

  ‘So you’re saying that Bob the Butcher has a fragile masculinity?’ she said.

  ‘Not necessarily. But the unsub has a limited means of expressing his masculinity. He can’t do it, for example, in the business world. So he does it with violence. He does it with murder.’

  ‘What if I – I mean we – implied that there was, for example, a gay element to the crimes?’

  Dr Stephen looked at her levelly. ‘I doubt you will endear yourself to him. Look, he’s seeking to gain control of a situation that is totally beyond his control. Unlike the overwhelming majority of murderers, he fully intends his victims to die. What’s unusual is that most homicides, as you know far better than me, are simply a by-product of extreme violence. Most murder victims are just unlucky.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Gane.

  Dr Stephen had become good at ignoring him.

  ‘Medical help is delayed,’ he continued. ‘A vital organ is accidentally severed. A fatal injury is sustained when a head hits the pavement.’

  A sharp point of pain in my neck began to throb. Please. The cut beneath the scab where I had felt his knife. Please. I slowed my breathing before it was out of control.

  Please. I have a daughter.

  ‘Our unsub sets out with the intention to kill,’ said Dr Stephen. ‘Honour. Power. Control. If I can tell you anything at all, it is that: honour, power, control. There’s your motive. These murders are an expression of affronted masculinity.’

  Bob and the killer no longer sounded to me like people who were just different. They sounded like polar opposites.

  Dr Stephen smiled pleasantly.

  ‘And I can tell you one more thing for nothing,’ he said.

  We all looked at him.

  ‘He won’t stop.’

  21

  THE FOX HAD the playing fields to himself.

  I had driven out to Potter’s Field for Guy Philips’ memorial service, and with an hour to kill I had wandered out to the playing fields, remembering when Piggy had come running from the woods with the life draining out of him.

  The rugby and football pitches were all empty now. There was just the lone fox, which I’d watched come out of the trees and mooch along the touchline of the far rugby field, heading towards the little stone cottage.

  There was no sign of Len Zukov, the groundsman, but the fox moved more warily near this sign of civilisation, slowing his pace and raising his head to sniff the air. My phone began to vibrate as I saw the fox veer away from the cottage and move into the great muddy green expanse of the playing fields.

  Wren was calling. She wasn’t in MIR-1. I could hear street noises, voices I didn’t know.

  ‘Edward Duncan,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He doesn’t have a criminal record. He doesn’t have a driving licence. He doesn’t have a national insurance number. He doesn’t have a passport. And he doesn’t have a credit card, a bank account or a wife.’

  She was pleased with herself. I could almost see her grinning with pleasure, brushing a strand of red hair from her pale face.

  ‘What does he have?’ I said.

  ‘Edward Duncan has an art dealer.’

  I let it sink in. ‘Well done, Wren.’

  ‘Nereus Fine Art. Small place. North London, right at the top of Heath Street, Hampstead way. I drove past it.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to do that, did I?’

  ‘Relax, detective, I didn’t go in. It was closed anyway. It’s tiny.’

  ‘Nereus Fine Art,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a Greek myth,’ Wren explained. ‘Nereus was a god of the sea. He was kind and just and he had a special power.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He had the power to change his shape.’

  The fox was trotting towards me, taking his time.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘See? Everyone leaves a shadow.’

  I took down the details of Nereus Fine Art.

  ‘When are you going to check it out?’ she said.

  ‘When I get back to town,’ I said. ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Pick me up at West End Central?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because I’m coming with you.’

  I almost laughed. ‘You’re not coming with me. This is off the book.’

  ‘And that’s exactly why I’m coming with you,’ she said. ‘It’s off the book and I found him and I’m coming with you.’

  I figured we could argue about it later.

  ‘Who is he?’ she said. ‘Who’s Edward Duncan?’

  The fox had paused in the centre circle of the football pitch. He sniffed the air, then pointed his face at the dirt and began to dig furiously.

  ‘Edward Duncan is a dead man,’ I said.

  It was a shock to see Captain Ned King again.

  He wore the immaculate black dress uniform of an officer in the Royal Gurkha Rifles, but he was unshaven and red-eyed, as if he had come to the Potter’s Field College Chapel straight from Brize Norton, as if he had spent last night on a Hercules transport plane. But what shocked me was how alike Ned King was to his brother, yet how totally different. They sa
t side by side in the ancient chapel, as Peregrine Waugh glared out from the lectern. Ben King with his smooth politician’s face, Captain King with his scarred soldier’s face. Although I remembered it wasn’t soldiering that had scarred his face.

  Salman Khan was by Ben King’s side, and he was looking up at the stupendously tall Head Master, as if he might be asked questions later.

  ‘We gather today to remember Mr Philips,’ Waugh said. ‘An old boy. A master. A friend.’

  Like most good public speakers, Waugh was a bit of a ham. He told us to look at the memorial leaflet. He told us to look at the year when Guy Philips was born, and the year when he died. And he said that they were not important. That what mattered most was what came between them. What mattered most was ‘the dash’. His life.

  He talked about Philips as if he had been a cross between Mother Teresa and Jesus Christ.

  I thought of poor dead Piggy. I saw him hurting Natasha at Hugo Buck’s funeral. I saw him making his pupils roll in the mud. It seemed to me that he had spent the dash bullying.

  But Waugh was a commanding speaker, and I could hear the wet noses and choked throats of emotion behind me. Yet as I looked at the Head Master’s stone-hard face I could not decide if Guy Philips had meant everything to Peregrine Waugh.

  Or nothing at all.

  The Potter’s Field College Chapel was packed with what felt like the entire school. Black-robed masters in the first few rows, a great mass of boys in green and purple behind them and, under the stained-glass window, six rows of the choir facing another six rows. More boys and masters lined the perimeter of the chapel, and spilled through the open doorways.

  The place was much smaller than I had expected. I had read online that building work had been interrupted during the War of the Roses and had yet to resume, and I had the feeling I always got at Potter’s Field – that you could blink your eye and a hundred years would go by.

  Captain King walked to the lectern.

  ‘Our revels now are ended,’ he read. ‘These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself – yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.’