by James Carol
Rachel Morris was thirty, ten years younger than he was, and that was one of the reasons he married her. The women he screwed around with would be younger still. Like Jagger and Picasso, and a whole long line of deluded men that stretched way back to the start of time, Jamie Morris believed that eternal youth could be attained through sex. Morris was five-eight with brown eyes. His hair was black and short, the grey made to disappear with dye. Manicured nails. He was casually dressed in expensive designer jeans and an expensive designer sweatshirt, an outfit that probably cost more than a halfway decent suit. Stress had left him ragged around the edges, and my initial impression was of someone who was used to being in control, but who’d had the rug well and truly pulled from under their feet.
Eventually Morris got tired of pacing and sat down. I took this as my cue and nodded to Hatcher. Time to go. On my way out, I grabbed a fresh coffee and stuffed a couple of tubs of milk and some sugar sachets into my pocket.
The smell hit me the second we stepped into the interview room. It was a smell I knew well from all the hours I’d spent in prisons interviewing psychopaths and serial criminals, a unique smell made up from stale sweat, soap and desperation. The smell permeated the room. It was embedded into the walls, the floor tiles, the wooden table, the plastic chairs. Morris sprang to his feet the second he saw us.
‘Do I need a lawyer?’ He talked fast, the words coming out in a rush. ‘I didn’t do anything to Rachel. I swear to God I didn’t. I loved her.’
Loved instead of love. I noted the use of the past tense and filed that one away. ‘Relax,’ I said. ‘We know you don’t have anything to do with Rachel’s disappearance.’
‘So why have I been brought here?’
‘We need to ask you a few questions,’ said Hatcher. ‘We’re trying to build up a picture of what happened to your wife.’
‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’
‘Why don’t we all take a seat?’
Morris crumpled back into his chair. He looked small and defeated, weighed down by the weight of his uncertainties. I took one of the seats opposite, the scarred wooden table separating us.
I’d spent a while studying Morris on the monitor, but it was different when you were up close and personal like this. The picture was clearer, more defined. Morris was nervous, but that was to be expected. Last night his wife hadn’t come home, first thing this morning he’d reported her missing, and an hour ago a cop car had rolled up outside his apartment block and transported him here. The world he woke up to yesterday morning was very different from the world he now inhabited. I pushed the coffee, sugar and milk across the table.
‘I thought you might like a coffee,’ I said.
‘Thanks.’
Morris stirred both tubs of milk into the mug, but left the sugar. His right hand shook a little, but, again, that was to be expected. There was a faint nicotine stain on his middle finger.
‘I’m DI Mark Hatcher, and this is Jefferson Winter,’ Hatcher said. ‘We’re going to record this interview, if that’s okay with you.’
Morris nodded that it was okay. Not that his acquiescence made any real difference. This interview was being recorded whether he liked it or not. I understood why Hatcher had asked. This was a softly-softly interview and he was giving Morris the illusion that he had some control over the situation. Illusion being the operative word.
‘When did you last see your wife?’ Hatcher asked.
‘Yesterday morning. We had breakfast together.’
‘What time was that?’
‘Around seven.’
‘Do you normally have breakfast together?’
‘Most days. Rachel has further to commute so she tends to leave before me.’
‘And that’s what happened yesterday?’
Morris nodded.
‘Did you notice anything odd about your wife’s behaviour?’ asked Hatcher. ‘Anything different?’
Morris shook his head. ‘She seemed her normal self.’
‘And how would you describe her “normal self”? And please be honest about this, Mr Morris.’
‘Okay, let’s just say that Rachel isn’t a morning person.’
‘Did you argue?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Did you say anything to one another?’
‘Not really. She told me she was going out for drinks with some of her work friends so she wouldn’t be back until late. I think it was someone’s birthday.’
‘You think?’ I said.
‘I wasn’t really listening. I’m not much of a morning person either.’
‘So, you went to work, then you came home, had a quiet evening, went to bed, and when you woke up your wife wasn’t there.’
Morris hesitated. The gesture was so small anyone else would have missed it.
‘That’s right,’ he said.
‘What’s her name?’ I asked.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Yesterday morning, when Rachel told you she was going out for drinks, your ears pricked up, didn’t they? It was too good an opportunity to miss. So did you go out for a meal, or did you go straight to your usual hotel?’
‘I don’t know what you’re insinuating.’
‘Of course you know what I’m insinuating. You’re emotionally dysfunctional, and your marriage is a sham, but you’re not stupid.’
‘I love my wife.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘Look,’ said Hatcher. ‘We don’t care what you’ve been up to. All we care about is getting Rachel back.’
‘Getting her back.’ Morris repeated the words in a whisper. His hand was shaking worse than ever. ‘You think someone’s taken her?’
‘We know someone’s taken her,’ I said. ‘And before you say anything else I want you to listen very carefully. The man who took your wife is a sociopath. He enjoys watching his victims suffer. He spends hours watching them suffer. He had his last victim for three and a half months and during that time he repeatedly tortured her with knives, knitting needles, all sorts of things. He’s very imaginative when it comes to his favourite pastime. And then, when he got bored with her, he lobotomised her. He took a sharp implement called an orbitoclast, wedged it into her eye, bashed it through the thin bone at the back of the eye socket, and destroyed her brain.’
Morris’s face drained of colour. ‘My God,’ he whispered.
‘You said earlier that you loved your wife. Now I don’t know if that was ever the case, but even if it wasn’t you’ll want to help get her back safely because it’s the right thing to do. That means you need to co-operate with us. I’m talking full disclosure here.’
Morris slumped back in his chair, a conflicted look on his face. He wanted to do the right thing, but at the same time he didn’t want to.
‘Helen Springfield,’ he said quietly.
‘And how long have you been seeing Helen for?’
‘A couple of months.’
‘And before that there were other Helens, weren’t there? A whole string of them?’
Morris nodded.
‘Did Rachel know about your affairs?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
I raised my eyebrows and gave him a look. People knew, particularly when their partner was a serial cheat. They might choose to deal with it through denial, but they knew.
‘Maybe she suspected something,’ Morris admitted reluctantly.
‘What time did you get home last night?’
‘A little after eleven. Rachel said she’d be back by midnight, so I wanted to make sure I was back before her. I went to bed as soon as I got in and when I woke up in the morning she wasn’t there. I sleep soundly, particularly when I’ve had a couple of drinks. As soon as I realised she wasn’t there I tried calling her friends, but no one had heard from her. That’s when I called the police.’
‘Was Rachel ever unfaithful?’ I asked.
‘Rachel? No way. Never.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘My wife would never cheat on me.
’
22
‘I’m ready to give the profile now,’ I told Hatcher. We were outside the interview room in a quiet, grey corridor, just the two of us. The corridor was long and lit with strip lights and smelled of disinfectant. It reminded me of a hospital corridor.
‘In that case I’ll go rally the troops.’
‘Not so fast. You owe me fifty pounds.’
Hatcher pulled a wallet from his back pocket. He counted out two twenties and a ten and slapped them grudgingly into my hand.
‘Double or quits,’ I said.
‘I’m listening.’
‘Get one of your people to phone up Rachel Morris’s workplace. I’m betting there was no birthday girl inviting anyone out for drinks.’
Hatcher considered this, then shook his head. ‘Too rich for me, I can afford to take a fifty-quid hit, but a hundred would be pushing it. The wife would kill me if she found out.’
‘Fine, but get someone to make the call. I need confirmation on that one.’
‘How certain are you that Rachel Morris is the next victim?’
‘Certain enough to leave my lunch half-eaten.’
‘Seriously, Winter.’
‘Rachel Morris is the next victim. If it makes you feel better you can have your people keep looking, but all you’ll be doing is wasting time and resources that could be put to better use elsewhere. Like finding Rachel Morris.’
‘But how can you be so sure?’
‘Because Rachel Morris did not go out for a birthday drink last night.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Give me ten minutes. I need a smoke before I give the profile.’
‘I’ll get someone to make that call.’
Hatcher strode off one way down the corridor, and I headed the other way. I took the elevator to the ground floor and went outside, found a quiet corner where nobody would bother me and lit up.
The thing that was most frustrating about this case was the lack of crime scenes. The police had no idea where the victims were being snatched, and there were no bodies, therefore no dump sites. I like to walk the same ground as the unsub. I like to see the same sights, to smell the same smells, to breathe the same air. It helps me feel closer to the people I’m hunting, which in turn helps me build a more detailed profile.
I huddled deeper into my sheepskin jacket in an attempt to ward off the cold and thought about Rachel Morris. She’d be alone right now, more alone than she’d ever been in her life. More terrified, too. There was nothing that could prepare her for what had happened, and nothing that could prepare her for what was about to happen. I dealt with this stuff day in, day out, and had built up a tolerance to the horror. I’d had to. It was all about self-preservation. Without that layer of insulation, I wouldn’t be able to do my job. But Rachel Morris was just a normal person who’d led a normal life. No doubt there had been plenty of ups and downs, but no real danger, at least nothing to match this.
That mental snapshot of Sarah Flight dropped into my head again. One second I’d been thinking about Rachel and now I was thinking about Sarah. The image had been bugging me since this morning, dropping into my head without warning. My subconscious was trying to tell me something, but what? I pulled my hood up to block out the world, took a drag on my cigarette, then closed my eyes and drifted back in time a few hours. I could see our ghostly reflections in the glass but still couldn’t see the significance.
And then I got it. I grinned to myself and shook my head and wondered how the hell I could be so dumb. So slow. That mental snapshot had nothing to do with Sarah Flight and everything to do with the unsub.
I smelled Templeton before I saw her. Her scent was subtle and sensuous. I turned around and there she was, smiling that great smile and looking gorgeous.
‘Hatcher sent me to tell you we’re ready,’ she said.
‘I told him ten minutes. By my reckoning I’ve still got another five.’
‘He also wanted me to tell you that you were kind of right.’
‘Kind of?’
‘Rachel Morris’s colleagues did go out for a birthday drink last night.’
‘But Rachel wasn’t with them,’ I finished for her. ‘That figures. All the best lies contain an element of truth.’
‘Rachel stayed behind, working late. She told her workmates she had a couple of jobs she needed to catch up on.’
We headed back inside and rode the elevator to the fourth floor, where Hatcher’s team had taken up residence in a large incident room. The room was cluttered with the detritus of a major investigation. A ton of paper, half-empty coffee mugs, overflowing wastepaper bins, fast-food containers and pizza boxes. Today there was a buzz in the air, a sense of collective purpose emanating from the cops working the case. There was nothing like a fresh development to get people motivated again.
Everyone turned to look when I entered, a dozen cops, all checking me out, suspicion and wariness in their eyes. Most of them wanted me here because they figured I could help, some tolerated me being here because they’d been ordered to, and a few resented me treading on their turf because they felt it reflected badly on them and made it look like they couldn’t do their jobs properly.
It was the same every time I was called in to consult on a case. I couldn’t care less what other people thought of me. That was one of the few positives that comes from having a serial killer for a father. If I’d let other people’s opinions get to me, I would have been destroyed years ago, like my mother had been. She died three and a half years ago, a haunted woman who never got the peace and closure of knowing the man she’d called her husband for so many years was dead. She drank herself to death, a slow, slow suicide. I thought of her as my father’s sixteenth victim.
Walking into that room was like walking into a new school for the first time, something I’d done plenty of times. My mother’s way of dealing with what happened was to run. She started running when the FBI took her husband away, and kept running until she reached her grave. Between the ages of eleven and seventeen, I lived in fifteen cities in ten different states. Fifteen new homes, fifteen new schools. Every school was different but the same in that the new kid always started at the bottom. The trick was to get out from the bottom before any real damage was done, and you did that either by hitting first and hitting hardest, or by being smart. I chose smart.
On one wall was a large map of London with four red pushpins marking the places where the victims were found. Three were inside the M25, all north of the Thames. Patricia Maynard’s was the only one outside. The five green pins scattered across London marked the last places the victims had been seen before they were kidnapped.
To the right of the map was a gallery of photographs of the victims. They were arranged in two neat rows, one on top of the other. The top row contained the five before shots and the bottom row contained the four after shots. Rachel Morris was the newest addition, and the only one who didn’t have an after shot. She was striking a pose in front of the Eiffel Tower, smiling and clearly having a great time, obviously there for pleasure rather than business. Her dark hair was tied back and her brown eyes sparkled. Happy days with Jamie, the denial doing its job.
Hatcher shushed the room, did a quick introduction and waved me to the front. I walked into the space the detective had just vacated and turned to face the crowd. The detectives had arranged their chairs in two neat semicircles, five in the front row, six in the back. Aside from Templeton there was only one other woman there. The men included one guy who was overweight and grizzled and looked like he should have been put out to pasture a decade ago, and a kid who looked like he was too young to be playing with the big boys.
I cleared my throat, then said, ‘What we’re dealing with here is a pairing. There are actually two unsubs.’
23
A wave of murmured speculation went through the crowd of detectives. The idea there were two unsubs working together had obviously not occurred to them. It hadn’t occurred to me until a few minutes ago. I was prepared to wait their reaction out,
though, let them get it out of their systems, but Hatcher wasn’t as patient. The detective shouted for everyone to shut up and the incident room fell silent.
‘Pairings are rare,’ I said, ‘but it’s not unprecedented. You guys actually have the dubious honour of having two of the most famous pairings of all time. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, and Fred and Rose West. The reason pairings are so rare is because, thankfully, we live in a society where psychopaths are the exception rather than the rule. That means the odds of these monsters coming into contact with one another is highly unlikely. This is good news for us generally, but bad news for you guys right now. There’s strength in numbers. Two heads are better than one. Pick the cliché that fits. This strength can also be a weakness, though. One strategy we might consider is to try to drive a wedge between the unsubs. If we can undermine the relationship, if we can somehow get it to start unravelling, then they’re going to make mistakes.’
‘How come you’re so certain this is a pairing?’
This came from the grizzled old cop. He made the last word sound like a cuss word. Odds on he belonged to the subsection who felt their toes were being trodden on.
‘What a great question. Maybe I took a guess, hoping to get lucky. Or how about this? Maybe I actually know what I’m talking about.’ I gave him the hard stare. ‘The reason I’m certain this is a pairing is because there are two very distinct signatures.’ Half the detectives nodded their heads, while the old guy and the rest looked blank. ‘You all know what a modus operandi is, right?’
Nods all round.
‘Okay, so your MO is the way a crime is carried out, the methods used. The signature is very different. This is something unique to the unsub. With this case you have two distinct signatures. One of the unsubs gets off on performing DIY surgery. The other gets off on playing dolls.’
‘Playing dolls?’ said Templeton.
‘You had dolls when you were a kid, right?’
‘Yeah, but I never played with them.’
That figured.
‘One of the unsubs likes to dress the victims up,’ I said. ‘She likes to do their make-up, that sort of thing. We know this because of the traces of make-up found on the victims. The main reason the victims have their heads shaved is to make it easier to play around with wigs.’
