by Brett Adams
I inwardly squirmed, feeling every inch of my six-foot-two-inch frame, my skin tingling. I guessed it was too late to try the dog-food line.
“Hey, that could be me,” I said, alarmed at the sudden desire to giggle.
She looked at me for a heartbeat, rolled her eyes.
“Weren’t you from New Zealand?”
What? When did I say that?
“Sure.”
The radio continued: “The fugitive is considered dangerous, and under no circumstances should he be approached.”
I snorted. Dangerous? Dangerous as a plastic bag.
“I suppose if I was the Intercontinental Killer,” I said, “I’d be heading to Oxford to kill someone”—a suicidal tide was rising from deep inside me—“that would make you my accomplice.”
“An unwitting accomplice,” she said, her eyes never leaving the road. “I’m happy for my lawyers to run with that. You’re gunna murder the librarian at this Bogeyman library?”
“Yeah.” I clicked my teeth. Outside the window a man dressed in dirty overalls was peering at the underside of a tractor with obvious confusion. In my best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression: “She don’t know the Dewey Decimal System.”
I glanced at her, “A little Conan The Librarian joke there.”
And that was that. We drove in silence, and the suicidal tide ebbed within me. It wasn’t until she dropped me in the middle of Oxford that it returned. The street was thronged with police cars. A quick tally gave me at least eight chances to suicide by cop.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Any time, Jack,” she said, and winked.
I shut the door, and watched the car move off into a clot of traffic working its way past the police cars.
“Morning officer,” I said to a bobby, who tipped his hat to me.
Raising my eyes I scoured the low skyline. Somewhere over yonder was the Bodleian, and with any luck, Jane.
And with even more luck, Hiero’s corpse.
39
“Oxford?” said Marten Lacroix. “You’re sure about that?”
“Hell no. I’m not sure about anything, but forensics say the perp has put Oxford on the internet as the home of his next victim.”
“And you believe it?”
“Can’t argue with a hundred percent hit rate.”
True. Marten sucked her teeth. But . . .
“Look,” Collins continued. “Worst case it’s damage control. Can you imagine the shitstorm that would land if he did hit Oxford, and it was leaked that we knew before it happened?”
“Okay, okay.” Marten waved him off. “Can I go?”
Collins smiled. “You want to drive your desk down there?” Marten gave him a withering gaze. “Peace. I’ll get someone to take you down.”
Marten nodded as she made for the door, then paused as a thought occurred to her.
“How about that kid officer, the one who gave his gun to Griffen?”
“Trent?”
“That’s him. Can he take me?”
Collins gave her a quizzical look, but, “Sure.”
Minutes later Inspector Marten Lacroix watched Trent hold the car door open for her.
She arched an eyebrow at him in what she hoped was an unreadable expression, and slipped onto the cool vinyl seat of the BMW F85, the performance cousin of the X5 F15 SUV, and the station’s latest response toy.
The grin that kept sneaking onto Trent’s face probably had more to do with the car than the prospect of chauffeuring her for a joy ride to sunny Oxford.
As they emerged from the underground parking lot, Trent gave the throttle a prod. The back of the car snapped round and the resulting thrust of raw power sent a tingle through Marten’s stomach, and she had to fight to keep her poker face.
They wove through traffic, skirting St Paul’s. Trent right-angled at speed onto Ludgate, and headed for the M4, which would take them to Oxford. He had opted to take the Embankment, which offered a close view of the Thames as they skirted its loop beneath Waterloo Bridge. Marten had the momentary sensation she was on a breakfast date.
Her gaze drifted across the car’s dashboard, which said ‘money’ in at least five languages. Powerful multi-channel, encrypted comms, a DVR connected to cameras facing every direction, and a fish-eye atop the roof just in case. Each could be switched to active night vision if desired. A screen bigger than Marten’s first TV not only displayed information ingested from the in-car system, but fused data flowing from the control center, showing little icons moving through the city like wind-up soldiers.
So much silicon. Was this where the fight to stop psychos would be won? Had she spent those years, that effort, the FBI course, the relentless research, to train grey matter that was already obsolete?
Her gaze slid sideways to Trent, whose smile fell as the patrol car jerked to a stop behind a traffic snarl. The engine’s purr faded.
Obsolete? she thought. Let’s find out.
“I need your help,” she said.
He glanced at her, sat a little straighter. “Sure.”
Hook baited.
“I’m having a hell of a time fitting the pieces of this psycho’s brain together into a complete picture. So many contradictions. So many pieces that don’t seem to fit anywhere.”
“Psychos,” he said, with a brief shake of his head, as if the matter of understanding serial killers began and ended with that one word. It would certainly make a succinct profile: Jack Griffen, psycho.
“Can you take me back a couple of days, to the train station. I know it’s traumatic.”
Trent was silent, staring into the brake lights of a Ford Kuga that flickered with impatience. For a moment she feared she had laid it on too thick, was too obvious, but—
“No, no. I’m cool. The guy’s just some high-paid pen pusher. I wasn’t, like, afraid.”
“Okay. Thank you, so much.” God, girl. “What kind of a morning was it?”
“Busy. Never seen the station so stirred up, like a wasp nest.”
“I mean, take it right back. You were lying in bed, opened your eyes. Take me through it.”
She watched his gaze—abstracted for moments. What mental furniture was he shuffling around? The someone lying beside him in bed? The cranial-tolling of a hangover? A yoga mat?
Didn’t matter. Marten was internally setting her expectation thermostat, finding the baseline for Constable Daniel Trent.
“First thing when I opened my eyes?”
She nodded encouragement.
“I looked at the clock, saw it was five-something. Way too early for a Tuesday, more depressing than Monday. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. Too wired. Day before the station had been full of the rumors of this guy, that he might be coming. That we might be part of it. So I got up.”
“Sheets? Duvet?”
“Sorry?”
“On your bed. What were you sleeping under, or were you on top of your bed, buck-naked for God and all the world.”
He smirked. “Just a sheet. White linen. Love the feel of it on my skin.” The way he said it left Marten wondering if the confession was inadvertent, or Step One in a play for her.
She tugged at the wedding band around her finger absent-mindedly as the car wound onto the M4 and its engine roared back into life.
“What next?”
“Showered, dressed—”
“Listen to the radio?”
“Yeah, in the shower.”
“What was on?”
“That CCR song, Bad Moon Rising. I think it struck me as right—for him, not us. A newsbreak. Some Brexit crap.”
“Breakfast?”
“Coffee. Always. Since I was a cadet.”
“Weather that morning?”
He squinted in concentration. “Colder than a monk’s balls. I had to go back into my flat for a coat.”
“Then you drove to the station?”
“Drove?” He grunted. “Constable’s wage doesn’t get you a car in London.”
Shared unders
tanding. Tick.
“Took the tube,” he continued. “Got pinned between a suit that probably hadn’t showered for a week and a bunch of school kids—Queen’s College by the blazer. Talking about a youtuber.”
Marten noticed he was starting to detail without prompting.
Time for phase two.
She let him ramble up to the mission briefing (“A faint aroma of morning sweat; a couple of older officers acting like they were Rambo”) then jumped in.
“How was that same room late in the afternoon, after it had all gone sour?”
Trent’s jaw hung open comically for a moment, perched, presumably, on the verge of a fine story about how he got to the station. He clamped it shut, then, “End of the day?”
“Yeah. I want you to work backwards, until your encounter with ‘the Intercontinental Killer’, starting with how the mission debriefing went down.” She prodded, “Collins can be a hardass? Did he scarify you?”
“Scarify?”
“Give you a proper dressing-down?”
He seemed to consider this.
“Actually?” He said, quiet. “He was too stressed. Worried that we had . . .”
“Let a killer into the country?”
The slightest nod.
“What do you remember about the trip back to the station?”
“You know, I think maybe I was in shock.” (More revelation. Step Two in the playbook?) “I drove a patrol car, but was reacting a second too slow to everything—almost hit a pedestrian near the university—a short skank too busy yammering into her phone to pay attention.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Black dress, super-short, super-tight, lotta leg for such a short girl.” His delivery had become monotonic, as if he had entered a trance that echoed the shock of that afternoon.
Marten was on the verge of prompting him again when he continued.
“Collins asked me at the station car park if I was okay to drive, and I said yes, like a hero. Before that, well it had been chaos. Senior guys running every which way, barking orders. But everyone knew the pooch was screwed, and were just moving so as not to be a target. We searched everywhere. I had to check the ladies toilet near reception, startled a teen redoing her lipstick. Not sure who was more embarrassed.
“Then we started in on the bins, grates, working from the concourse out, anywhere Griffen might have stuck my—the gun.
“Detectives worked the crowd at the same time, asking passengers on the way in, store keepers, anyone, ‘Seen this man?’ Except the photo was wrong. He had shaved his head.
“It was starting to get dark. I had to take a piss. Nearest toilet was the one I’d found him in, so I walked five hundred meters to find another toilet.” He glanced at me. “That’s weird, innit?”
“Sounds human to me,” said Marten. It did.
“Who cleaned you up?” she said. “Your nose, I mean.”
“Nurse,” he grunted.
Marten popped her eyebrows.
He shook his head. “It was a guy.”
Marten laughed at the disappointment in his voice.
“Sorry.”
“There’s a tiny first aid station over the way in Kings Cross. Collins sent me there after I’d made my way onto the main stage and told him the good news.”
We were approaching the entrance ramp to the M25. Trent flicked the shift down, and the engine reacted with an angry whine.
Marten felt the tail of the car sway out as he gunned it around the curve.
“S’pose you want to hear about what happened in the toilet again.”
“I do. But I need you to try something for me. It’ll help me work out this psycho. You’ve been so helpful. We’re almost done.”
“Shoot.”
“I want you to imagine yourself in that cubicle again. That’s your scene. Wrap it around you—the harsh light, the touch of cold porcelain, the echo of its tiled walls, the smell. I need you to live in it for a moment.”
His gaze slid over to her.
“DCI Lacroix, I do believe you’re subjecting me to a forensic sketch interview.” A tight smile. “I took the class.”
That was to be expected, she thought. But I’ll bet you don’t know a thing about latent cognitive interviewing technique—need to travel farther than Hendon Police College to get this one, as far as Quantico.
Latent Cognitive Technique applied pressure to a story the way ice applied pressure to the hull of a trapped ship. Under the gentle but unrelenting pressure of the probe, sooner or later, the liar ran out of fresh detail, and the fabrication began to fall apart. He couldn’t help but return to canned sentences like a dog to its vomit.
“Close,” said Marten. “But I’m not after Griffen’s mug. We have that. I want a sketch of the inside of his skull.” Marten observed Trent closely. He was buying it.
“So you’re picturing yourself squatting on the crapper, embodying that moment.”
“Oh, the relief,” he joked lamely.
“And you hear the sound of approaching footsteps. They draw near, and fall silent just outside your cubicle. You hear a tap run. You flush, stand up, open the door and . . .”
Here goes.
She finished: “What does he see?”
Trent glanced at Marten, apparently checking he had heard right.
“Griffen?”
“Yes.”
“Um . . . well, he sees me.” Doubt laced his tone, as if he had suddenly realized he was talking to an idiot.
“Come on, Trent. Put some color into it. You’re allowed to speak the truth. ‘He saw a handsome young officer, dark-haired . . .’”
He smirked.
“Okay,” he said. “So, I’m at the sink, facing the wall, the mirror. I think I’m crying.”
“You think?”
“I am crying. I hear a cistern flush, and see the cubicle door open behind me. I’m rattled; I thought I was alone. Wouldn’t have stopped at that sink if I’d known that cubicle was occupied. But then I see, just over the reflection of my own shoulder. Cop’s hat. Cop. I turn to face him, and he goes for my gun—”
“You’re Griffen, remember.”
“Sorry. I go for his gun.”
“How do you go for his gun?”
“I reach over,” he took his right hand from the steering wheel and reached across the dash.
“And you take the gun?”
“Yeah. It’s unclipped, lucky me. I grab it, and the cop goes for me—we grapple, spin. I get a finger to the trigger and bang! Glass and tile fragments everywhere, taste of propellant in the air.”
“You’re still wrestling? Then what?”
“Yeah. No. We’re apart. Shock of the discharge, I guess. The cop is still staring me down, but he’s afraid—who wouldn’t be?”
“So . . .”
“So I reverse the gun, grab it by the barrel like a hammer, and smash the cop in the face. His nose pops like a tomato, blood everywhere.”
(Wow. The creative juices are flowing.)
“Then I push him back into the cubicle, onto the seat. I take his radio, drop it in the bowl.”
“And leave?”
“Yes. But not before saying: ‘Move, follow me, and I’ll kill you.’ Then, ‘Alley ecka est—’” He glanced at Marten, a grin on his face. “—whatever you said.”
Trent slumped back into his chair, his eyes glittering above the swollen contour of his nose, the storyteller after the story is told, when there is nothing left to do but bask in the adulation.
Marten smiled back. “Alea iacta est; The die is cast.”
It was a good story.
Pity for him she didn’t believe it.
40
I stood staring at the massive iron gates guarding the library’s entrance, the face of Hogwarts to my Harry Potter.
The vast arch of the gates stood in faded limestone. From their edges lines rippled outward, as if the gates had been thrown at wet cement. Their surface was a grid of rectangles, each containing the coat-of-a
rms of an Oxford College.
“Alohomora,” I whispered, mindful of the tourists ambling across the quadrangle, and pushed on the wicket gate. It yielded to my touch, and as I passed through, my footfalls echoed on the irregular concrete tiles, bounding off the high enclosing wings of the library. Passing through a smaller door, I was enveloped by the cool, silent gloom of one of Europe’s oldest libraries.
I was hunting for Jane Worthington, and it occurred to me now how vague would be the query, ‘I’m looking for Jane of Oxford.’ I didn’t even know if she still went by the same name, or if she was married, or hyphenated, had taken a barcode tattoo, or joined a cult and given up on the Devil’s monikers altogether.
In fact, I’d heard bugger all from her since she left Australia eight years ago. I’d made a point of not contacting her. Maybe I should have been more worried about that, and the kind of reception I’d get.
All these thoughts took time to uncoil in my head, and I’d been standing, staring into space for minutes. Much longer and I would start looking like a thief or a terrorist, or worse, a salesman.
I padded over to what appeared to be a loans counter. A plump woman in a paisley dress peered at me through thick glasses and asked if she could help me. I still hadn’t decided how to discretely ask for ‘Jane of Oxford’ (‘Me Jack. Where Jane?’) so I stalled.
“I wanted to borrow a book.”
The woman in the paisley dress poked her lapsing glasses a half-inch higher on her nose, leaned forward and said, “The Bodleian does not loan books, but you are welcome to sit in and use the reserved collection.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “Can you point me in the direction . . . ?”
“No,” with a mischievous crinkling of the eyes that was unexpected on her matronly face. “First you must take the oath.”
“The oath,” I said, voice flat. Was this women gatekeeper of a hitherto unknown sect?
“The borrower’s oath,” she said, once again matter-of-fact. “Here,” and she slid a sheet of paper across the counter to me.
On it were three blocks of text. One in Latin, another in French, and the last in English.
