Solomon's Key

by Tim Ellis

‘I was the youngest person ever to achieve two PhDs at Cambridge. I completed them in tandem.’

  This kid was bright. ‘Listen, Gail. Can I call you Gail?’

  ‘No, you can call me Doctor. Now, tell me about your wife?’

  I folded my arms. ‘What’s to tell? She died.’

  ‘Angie died a year ago this month, describe what happened, James.’

  I answered her with a shrug. I didn’t need reminding. ‘Is this really necessary? I’ve got a murderer to catch.’

  ‘The more you fight me James, the longer this is going to take. Without your co-operation, how can we understand the child inside you?’

  ‘There is no child inside me crying to get out.’

  ‘Don’t be obtuse, James, you know exactly what I mean.’

  I picked a thread from the chair, rubbed it between my thumb and forefinger until it became a ball, and then flicked it towards a three-foot African wood carving of a Giraffe in the corner by the window – it didn’t reach. ‘I thought this was about last night? What’s my wife got to do with it?’ Bloody Doctor Gail knew how to press buttons.

  ‘The anger you unleashed last night was merely a manifestation of a deep-seated unresolved unconscious conflict, which stems from your repressed childhood memories. The neurosis is a maladaptive solution to your repressed memory.’

  ‘Neurosis! You make it sound as if I need help?’

  ‘You do, James. Tell me about Angie.’ She was pursuing me like the psychotic liquid metal robot out of the Terminator. Unfortunately, I wasn’t Arnold and I didn’t have a big gun.

  I got up and started pacing. She began writing furiously in that bloody huge notebook. What was she writing? She could write another PhD thesis in that notebook.

  It was a large sprawling room with a false ceiling and soft lights. Psychology books adorned three walls like old friends. I saw Sigmund, looking a bit old and well thumbed; Carl was there, with his grey hair and piercing eyes. My reading was slightly darker these days. I saw no BPS accreditation hung on the wall. Was she really qualified to practice? How long had I been here? I looked at my watch, only ten bloody minutes. How long were these sessions?

  ‘Another twenty minutes yet, James.’

  She could read minds as well.

  ‘It would go a lot quicker if you co-operated.’

  I stopped pacing and sat down again. ‘I am.’

  She was looking at me, but still writing. ‘Not from where I’m sitting,’ she countered.

  Defeat stared me in the face. ‘We were married for twenty-one months. She was murdered by a hit and run driver. The police never caught the bastard. Is that what you want to know?’

  She turned the page over on her colossal notebook. A full page already! ‘That’s all in the file, James. How did it make you feel?’

  Here we go, bloody feelings. Pour your heart out, James. ‘What? My wife’s useless death, or the inability of the police to catch the murdering bastard?’ The police did go through the motions. The car had been stolen the day before, and they found it two days later burnt out on an industrial estate in Brixton. They even discovered some CCTV footage of the car, but no indication of who the driver might be. Eventually, the investigation petered out, and became another manila folder in the unsolved pile.

  She leaned back. The high back of the chair seemed to emphasise her teenage qualities. ‘Let’s start with your wife’s death,’ she said. I was sure I could detect victory in her voice. ‘Why do you refer to her as my wife instead of Angie?’

  The cow, she hadn’t won yet. ‘You think it’s a Freudian slip, don’t you?’

  ‘Do I, James? What do you think?’

  I knew the drill. Keep the patients focused on their own feelings. ‘I think you’re reading something into nothing.’

  ‘You don’t think that you’re subconsciously trying to distance yourself from Angie then?’

  ‘No, why would I?’

  ‘Why aren’t you looking at me, James?’

  ‘I am.’ I wasn’t.

  ‘Do you think that you’ve come to terms with the loss of Angie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With the anger?’

  I noticed my white knuckles and balled fists. ‘Yes.’

  We jabbed and parried for the remainder of the session. I felt that I had held my own. As she stood up, I noticed that she had half-filled that monstrous notebook.

  ‘The next session will be on Monday at ten o’clock, James.’

  I grabbed my coat off the rack, opened the door and turned to look at her. She stared at me over those ridiculous glasses. ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘I’m sure you will, James.’

  I tried to slam the door, but it had one of those stupid door closers on it, and I merely hurt my hand. I felt ashamed. I swore I wouldn’t go back.

  ***

  I barged through the door of the incident room at eleven-ten. It smashed into the filing cabinet behind it. The pile of files on top of the cabinet wobbled dangerously. The chatter stopped. Everyone turned to look at me. I spotted KP talking to the Palton woman.

  I shrugged out of my coat and threw it over a chair. ‘KP, bring me up to speed.’

  She walked over to the incident board.

  The others reminded me of the rubbernecks outside Gillian Wilkinson’s flat.

  Glaring at them, I shouted, ‘Don’t stop for me.’

  There was a flurry of activity as they turned back to what they were doing. The chatter slowly started again.

  ‘Terri Holmes has completed the post mortem on Miss Renshall,’ KP said, scrutinising my face. ‘The report is on your desk. Same as the other two I’m afraid, same MO. No leads. I interviewed the staff at Darwins, nothing unusual.’ She pointed to a copy of the message left on Sally. ‘This is the third message. It’s as enlightening as the other two at the moment.’

  I examined the stream of symbols. ‘This looks like Arabic. He obviously likes ancient languages. It falls in with your observation about his neatness at the Gillian Wilkinson murder.’

  ‘Thanks, Sir.’

  ‘How’s the crypto’ woman progressing?’ I didn’t turn to look at KP.

  ‘Suzie is concentrating on the message from the Irene Stone murder at the moment. It’ll be easier if she tells you where she’s up to.’

  ‘You tell me.’

  She wasn’t having any of it. ‘Suzie,’ she called over to her. ‘Can you brief the DCI?’

  She came over, her black stylish high heels clicking on the wood. I noticed the black seamed stockings again. She wore a red and black striped skirt and a white satin blouse. I could see the intricate pattern of her white lace bra underneath. A woven gold cross hung around her neck.

  She faced me. ‘I’m working on the six-year old message at the moment. It has three levels. It would be better if I show you.’ She started back to her desk.

  I followed her. I knew when I was beaten.

  ‘The first level, as you know, was the Semitic script. The second is the substitution code. I’m using frequency analysis to find the plain text.’ She turned the laptop so that I could see the progress the software was making. It displayed thirty-six percent. Thirty-six percent of what, I had no idea.

  ‘So you’re not actually deciphering anything, it’s the computer software that’s doing it?’

  ‘GIGO,’ she replied.

  I looked blank. Maybe it was a techie swear word, I thought.

  ‘Garbage in Garbage out. The software is only as good as the person who puts in the data.’

  ‘Ah, of course.’ That’s how she justified her superior attitude, and probably her extortionate salary. ‘So what does thirty-six percent mean?’

  ‘The program is going through the alphabet based on the frequency of letters in the English language until it finds a solution to the whole string. E is the most used letter, then T, then A, and so on. It also analyses digrams and trigrams and works out the probability of word matches.’ She pointed to anoth
er box on the screen. ‘It’s produced this so far.’

  ?O??ANNOT?E??E?OT??O?AN??ONE?

  Grudgingly, I thought that it certainly appeared a lot more sensible than anything else I’d seen up to now.

  ‘As you can see,’ she said. ‘It’s beginning to make sense.’ She pointed at the screen. ‘That could be CANNOT and that could be AND. I should have the plain text by the end of the day.’

  ‘You mean the computer will. Thank you, Miss Palton. Let’s hope he doesn’t kill again before then.’

  She looked at me, but said nothing.

  I strolled back to the incident board.

  KP followed me. ‘That was a bit shitty, Sir.’

  ‘Get the tap taken off Miss Renshall’s work phone and put it on mine,’ I said, ignoring her. ‘The bastard might ring me again, now that he knows my number.’

  She scribbled in her notebook.

  ‘What’s happening with the CCTV footage?’

  She walked over to where Brian sat in front of three trolleys with televisions and video recorders. I followed.

  ‘Brian has an image, but it’s pretty poor,’ she said.

  ‘Hi, Gov,’ Brian said, turning round to smile at me. ‘Yeah, take a look at this.’ He pointed the remote and a picture appeared on the TV screen. It advanced frame-by-frame. ‘This was in the morning.’ The time-code displayed in the bottom right-hand corner showed five fifty-nine.

  The grainy picture was black and white. A person carrying a rucksack over one shoulder was clearly visible. They wore a dark coat with a hood. The face was completely in shadow.

  He pointed the remote at a second video. ‘And this was at six in the evening.’

  It appeared to be the same coat and bag. No face again.

  ‘I’m taking both tapes down to forensics now to see if they can work their magic to give us a face.’

  ‘OK. Good work, Brian.’

  He smiled. ‘Thanks, Gov. I was thinking, if we do get something we could put it on Crime Watch, or something like that. Eliminate them from our enquiries so to speak.’ He chuckled at his little joke.

  I wasn’t in the mood. ‘Let’s see if we get something first, Brian.’

  ‘Right you are, Gov.’

  I thought I’d take the initiative. I strolled over to John, but Pea intercepted me. They sat facing each other.

  ‘I’ve got one match on the arrivals and departures, Sir,’ she said beaming.

  ‘Go on.’ I leaned my backside against Jane’s desk.

  She seemed as excited as if she’d just bought a bargain in Harrods. ‘They had everything on computer, so it was fairly easy to do a database query…’

  ‘Is this leading somewhere?’ Stick to the facts woman, I thought.

  ‘Pieter Meintjes, a solicitor. He left on the twenty-second of October 2002. Irene Stone’s murder was…’

  ‘I know the date of the Stone murder,’ I said. ‘Get to the details.’

  Her face dropped.

  ‘He came back through Heathrow on the ninth of December this year. Eleven days before…’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘He’s staying at…’

  I sighed. ‘Not here, which country?’

  ‘Oh! Sorry. I thought you meant…’

  I clucked. She obviously wasn’t at her best this morning, but then neither was I.

  ‘Johannesburg, Sir.’

  ‘Did he now? Take John with you. Pick him up. Bring him in for questioning.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t want to come, Sir?’

  My patience was gossamer thin. ‘What do you think? Arrest him.’

  ‘Search warrant?’ KP queried.

  ‘Bit early yet,’ I said. ‘Where did you say he was staying?’

  Pea checked her notes. ‘The Mayfair Hilton, Sir.’

  I shook my head. ‘Let’s see what he’s got to say for himself first. Have we heard anything back from Interpol yet?’

  Pea was collecting her bag and coat. She looked blank for a moment. ‘Oh! No, still nothing, Sir.’

  The door banged as they left.

  ‘I found the mother, Sir,’ Jane piped up.

  I turned and looked down at her. ‘And...?’

  ‘Everything she remembers is in her original statement. She’s pretty old and frail now. She doesn’t live at Alvanley Gardens anymore, hasn’t done for five years. Lives in a supervised bungalow in…’

  ‘Skip the guided tour.’ Why can’t they keep it simple? ‘What did her husband do?’

  ‘Solicitor before he retired, a partner at Darwins.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I said shaking my head. ‘The first lead we’ve had and you’re keeping it to yourself.’

  ‘I told KP, Sir. It’s on the board.’

  I turned to KP. ‘Well, what have we done about it?’

  She looked flummoxed. ‘Done? What do you mean, Sir?’

  ‘Come on,’ I said, raising my voice. I stamped over to the incident board and jabbed my finger at Irene Stone’s photograph. ‘Father was a solicitor and partner at Darwins.’ I jabbed Gillian Wilkinson’s photograph. ‘Gillian worked at Darwins. Now, we’ve got this Meintjes, who’s also a solicitor. It’s not just about collecting facts until we eventually trip over the killer. We have to work with what we’ve got.’

  Those left in the room came to a standstill. They stared at me. I was sure I could hear cogs turning, and not well-oiled ones either.

  ‘We need to go back six years,’ KP said eventually.

  ‘Nearly right,’ I said. ‘Is there any coffee?’ I threw to anyone.

  I saw Jane get up and head for the percolator.

  ‘We need to find out who was connected to Darwins whilst Mr Stone was there.’ Ali shouted.

  ‘Yes. And that will be longer than six years,’ I said.

  Jane brought me a mug of coffee.

  ‘Thanks, Jane,’ I said and took a swallow. It was bloody awful.

  ‘I can do that,’ Paul said. ‘I checked the whereabouts of the weirdo’s. They had alibis, and getting a list of mental health patients who have been released from high security hospitals is going to take a couple of days.’

  ‘You’ve explained to them that we have a murderer killing young women?’

  ‘Yes, Sir, they just don’t have a central database. Each hospital produces data for the Department of Health in terms of numbers, but not names. The DoH must contact each hospital if it wants names, they’re paranoid about confidentiality.’

  ‘Sounds bloody inefficient to me. OK Paul, find out how long Stone was at Darwins and then start compiling a list of clients and staff who were connected to them at the time.’

  ‘Sally Renshall doesn’t appear to be connected to Darwins, Sir,’ KP pointed out.

  ‘What do we know about her background?’ I asked. I didn’t wait for a witticism. ‘Jane, see if you can tie Miss Renshall to Darwins.’

  She nodded.

  I turned to the incident board. ‘What else have we missed?’ I thought aloud. ‘What about the locations?’

  They all looked blankly at me.

  I pointed to the small maps on the incident board. They were just pieces of London from an A-Z. The details of each murder had been located within its own space on the board. ‘They’re out of context,’ I said. ‘We have three murders that are all connected by one killer. They’re not three separate murders.’ Jane seemed to be sat there doing nothing. ‘Jane,’ she jumped, spilling coffee on her desk. ‘Go and get a large map of London from the map store.’

  She shot out of the door.

  Whilst we were waiting for her to return, I said to Ali, ‘Contact the Johannesburg police. See if they can shed any light on this Meintjes.’

  Jane returned with the map. It took three of them, with some supervision from KP to pin it up. How many coppers does it take to pin up a map? I thought.

  I sipped my coffee whilst Jane and KP located and plotted the addresses on the map. Eventually, we had three small crosses. They stood back and admired t
heir handiwork. The remainder of the team gathered round.

  ‘What we want to know,’ I said, ‘is whether the killer chose his victims because of who they were, where they lived, or both.’

  I scanned the faces peering at me, but didn’t see anyone at home.

  ‘If he chose the victims because of who they were, it’s unlikely we’d see a pattern emerge. On the other hand, if he chose the victims because of where they lived, there ought to be a pattern.’

  ‘We know that two of them are connected to Darwins,’ Paul said, ‘so wouldn’t he have chosen them because of who they were, not where they lived?’

  ‘Possibly, but let’s make sure.’

  ‘I hope it’s the first one,’ Jane said. ‘Getting killed because of where you live would be crap.’

  ‘Thanks for that pearl of wisdom, Jane,’ I said.

  ‘Draw lines between the crosses,’ Ali said.

  Jane helped herself to a ruler and a pencil off Brian’s desk. She plotted a line between Windsor Way and Anchor Street.

  ‘It’s a straight line,’ Paul said.

  KP said, ‘It’s like being at play school.’

  She then drew a line between Anchor Street and Alvanley Gardens.

  ‘It could be a triangle,’ Ali mused as if it were the breakthrough we’d been waiting for.

  Jane drew a final line between Alvanley Gardens and Windsor Way, completing the triangle.

  I smiled.

  ‘What’s so funny, Sir?’ KP asked.

  ‘You’ll always be able to draw a straight line between two points. Having three points, should produce a triangle. It tells us nothing.’

  ‘It was your idea to do this, Sir,’ Jane reminded me sounding aggrieved.

  Suzie Palton’s interest had obviously been stimulated. She stood between Paul and Ali, and put her twopenny worth in. ‘The killer might not have finished yet.’

  I opened my mouth to tell her to mind her own damned business, and get on with what she was meant to be doing, but KP came between us.

  ‘What do you mean, Suzie?’ KP asked her.

  Paul and Ali made way for her. She edged forward. If it wasn’t for the fact that I disliked her intensely, I might have been interested. ‘Looking for patterns is what I do,’ she said. ‘If the addresses do form a pattern, maybe you haven’t got all the points to complete it yet.’