The Murder Code

by Mosby, Steve

  ‘And the timing?’

  I said, ‘It was sent yesterday afternoon, between the lunch-time and evening collections. A five-hour period. The IT people are already pulling images for us. I don’t know how many we’ll end up with. Obviously it’s a busy area and he posted at a busy time. We’ll get something, though. It’ll be fuzzy, but one of those people will be him.’

  Scant consolation, but still true. We would have a photograph of the person who’d sent the letter—even if we wouldn’t know for sure which of the people he was.

  Young tapped a pen on his desk absently.

  ‘He posted it after the murders of Gibson and Evans.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Do we think it’s genuine?’

  ‘I don’t,’ Laura said. ‘Hicks isn’t sure.’

  Young looked at me. I shrugged.

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing in there that couldn’t have been gleaned from the news reports. But at the same, if it’s someone pranking us, there’s also a whole lot less.’

  Young nodded. ‘That’s what’s giving me pause too.’

  ‘I mean, he doesn’t even describe the victims, when he could have done. If it’s just some nut looking to troll us, he could have made it much more convincing.’

  ‘But if it’s real …?’

  ‘If it’s real, the contents still don’t make any sense. He claims to have written the letter before the first killing. He’s even pre-printed it and written my name on by hand. I don’t know how to explain that.’

  ‘Well try, Hicks.’

  ‘The only thing I can think is that he wanted to emphasise the … randomness. Because it’s a challenge, isn’t it? The way it reads, he wants to test us. So perhaps it’s important to him that we’re in on it from the very beginning. That we know he was planning it long before he started killing.’

  ‘And that he genuinely doesn’t know who his first victim will be.’ Young rubbed his chin, considering it.

  Laura leaned in. ‘Assuming this is him, I’d add that it’s very worrying. There’s every indication that he intends to continue. It’s not clear what exactly he’s planning to do next, but he seems confident that we’re not going to catch him.’

  ‘That is why it’s going to work.’ Young nodded. ‘A code even you won’t be able to crack. But why?’

  He looked at me again.

  ‘I can’t work out what it means,’ I said. ‘Presumably he’s bragging that he can get away with the murders, and challenging us to stop him. But it’s like he has some reason above and beyond the killings themselves. The way it reads, they’re almost secondary to him.’

  ‘Yes. There’s certainly a degree of intellectual egotism there, isn’t there?’ Young was still looking at me. ‘Do you know what that means, Hicks?’

  ‘I do, sir. Thank you.’

  ‘I thought you would. Forget the letter for the moment. Do we have any indication of how he’s choosing his victims?’

  ‘Right now,’ I said, ‘it seems more like they’re choosing him. He plots up somewhere isolated and waits. We haven’t found a single connection between any of the victims. Or the places themselves. So far. It seems …’

  ‘Random.’ Young nodded to himself, then sighed heavily. I knew from experience that that meant a conclusion was imminent. Sure enough, a moment later, he placed his hands flat down on the desk. ‘We sit on the letter for now. Right? Let’s see what prints come back. In the meantime, we keep it between ourselves. No press mention.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Just briefly, how do you feel about it, Hicks?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Are you okay, is what I’m asking. Beneath all that irritating bluster?’

  I blinked at him for a second—and then realised what he was talking about. If the letter was from the killer, he’d addressed it to me personally. Which meant he had my name. Perhaps he saw himself as communicating with me directly.

  ‘I’m fine, sir. Obviously I very much appreciate your concern.’

  ‘It’s not concern. Just watch yourself. If he’s interested in you for some unknown reason, then there’s a chance he might try to establish contact some other way. Keep an eye out, is what I’m saying.’

  ‘I will, sir. And for the record, I’m happy to consider myself as bait.’

  ‘We all are. Now go.’

  Outside, Laura and I waited for the lift

  ‘He’s right,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  I thought there was another question below the surface. Because you’ve been a bit weird recently, haven’t you, Hicks? Like this investigation is getting to you.

  And yet actually, in an odd way, the letter had put me back on steadier ground. It didn’t make sense right now, but if it was real, it at least indicated that the guy had a motive. A basement one, perhaps—and a fucking odd one at that—but a motive nonetheless. There was something vaguely settling about that.

  And if he wanted an intellectual game, then he was going to lose. Not because I personally was smarter than him, but because collectively we all were. There were too many things for him to think of, and he only had to get one of them wrong: just like Mr Streetview, he’d mess something up eventually. Maybe he already had and we just needed to figure out what.

  A code even you won’t be able to crack.

  Yeah, well. We’d see about that.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘I’m all over it.’ The elevator pinged to announce its arrival. ‘I’m just getting started.’

  Sixteen

  ‘IT’S BEAUTIFUL,’ THE MAN says.

  ‘Thank you,’ Levchenko tells him.

  The man’s name is Enwright, and he only just made it to the shop in time to collect his order. Levchenko’s wife, Jasmina, was at the door, in the process of locking up for the night, when he arrived, breathless, and rapped on the glass. It is half past five; Enwright has rushed to get here—a businessman, just finished for the day—and his neat grey suit is fit for work, not running. Levchenko can see beads of sweat in his hairline as he leans over the counter and peers into the box.

  ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘I’m glad you like it.’

  The candle he prepared is inside, with its random sky-coloured arrangement of thin spread petals, as unique as the clouds in the sky. It sits snugly in the centre of the box, surrounded by scrunches of tissue paper.

  ‘I’ve packaged it as carefully as possible,’ Levchenko says, ‘but obviously it is very fragile. You will need to take care in transportation.’

  ‘Oh, I will. Don’t worry.’

  Levchenko suspects he will. Nevertheless, he always makes a point of showing these special candles to customers before they leave the shop. That way, there can be no complaints or disappointments later on, when the buyer arrives home and finds damaged goods.

  Because the candles are very fragile indeed, and that is part of their charm. They are of their moment, and moments by definition are fragile. All things that occur in the world are the result of countless invisible processes, the removal of any one of which would alter the outcome beyond recognition. This candle, cast at a different moment, in different eddies of water, would not be this candle—and the candle that it is can never be reproduced. In wax, just as in the moments of life itself.

  This is one of the reasons why Levchenko, despite the depth of his religious faith, has never been quick to discount certain types of supposedly lesser superstition. The I Ching, for example—he understands and appreciates that. On the face of it, reading messages from a pattern of thrown yarrow stalks is madness. And yet that pattern, much the same as his candles, is distinct to the moment of casting. In a different set of circumstances, tossed at another moment, in a varying breeze, the stalks would yield a different result. The pattern is unique, as is each of his candles.

  Perhaps many customers do not think of them in this way—though he knows many do—but the fragility appeals nonetheless. T
hese are not candles that can be sold far and wide. They cannot be mass-produced and shipped overseas. No, Levchenko sells only locally, only to a specific order, and always by hand, like this. Cynically, he knows there is a market for authenticity, and if Enwright regards himself as slumming it somehow—as buying something with a stamp of poverty to it—then Levchenko does not blame him for that, and at any rate is not in a position to mind.

  ‘I’ll tell my friends about this.’ Enwright is peeling bills from a thick wad he had stuffed in his baggy trouser pocket. ‘I’m sure I can send some business your way.’

  Levchenko nods once. ‘Thank you.’

  He looks at Jasmina. She is busying herself tidying the displays on the far side of the shop, but she shoots him a quick, secret smile, which he returns. Even at fifty years of age, with so much suffering shadowed behind them, they remain playful with each other. They are happy. But yes, they are poor, and so he does not mind Enwright’s attitude.

  Levchenko unravels more tissue paper from the roll he keeps on the shop counter, then carefully packs it around the candle, as tightly as he dares, and fits the lid in place.

  ‘If I may ask …?’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’ Enwright smiles brightly. ‘The answer was yes.’

  Levchenko smiles in return—although of course if the answer had been no, he doubts the man would be here now. On the lid of the box he has hand-written a label that gives the precise time and date the candle was cast, as requested by Edward Enwright when he placed the order. The date and time correspond to the moment, two nights before, when Enwright proposed to his girlfriend.

  Levchenko has no idea whether the couple will ever burn it. That does not matter to him. Not many people are as perfectly suited as he and Jasmina have been, so it is more than possible that time and life will burn it for them. In some ways, an engagement gift of this kind is a hostage to fortune.

  But then, he thinks, many things are.

  So many things.

  ‘I’m very happy for you both,’ he says, pushing thoughts of his daughter from his mind.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Very happy. All the best to you, Mr Enwright. Indeed, all the best to you both.’

  It was thirty years ago, now, when he died.

  Lying beside his wife in their small, threadbare bedroom, he remembers—as best he can, anyway, because thirty years is a long period of time. When marking out the life of a man, that is a significant block, so much so that it often feels like his death occurred in the life of another man entirely. He was twenty then, a different person in countless ways, and the memory itself is hazy. He knows he was a driver, and that his work consisted of transporting goods from the city to elsewhere and from elsewhere back again. He knows he worked long hours, slept in his cab in bays, and saw too little of Jasmina and his baby daughter Emmeline, and he knows now that the money he made was too little to compensate for that lost time.

  Sometimes now he looks around at the city, at men such as Edward Enwright, and thinks that money is the only value anyone has any more. What will it earn? they ask. What is it worth? Questions of worth and value should have more than financial answers; they should not be composed entirely of currency. But as a younger man he did not understand that, so he worked those long hours, thinking that was what it took to be responsible, to be a good husband and father, to wring chance and success from the dirt-scrabble hand he’d been dealt.

  One night, he crashed his truck.

  Nobody could ever say for sure why it happened. Levchenko had never remembered the minutes leading up to the accident, but that did not, he was told, mean he had fallen asleep at the wheel. What happened to him was so dramatic that memory loss was to be expected regardless. A mental blank, in fact, might have been the minimum lasting damage anyone could have hoped for.

  Despite his inability to recall the accident, certain things were a matter of record. For some reason, close to midnight, his truck left the road on the Esther bypass, which was normally empty at such a time. The cab clattered swiftly down an embankment, cracking through trees, overturning as it went, and came to rest in a subsidiary of the Kell, three feet underwater on the driver’s side.

  Levchenko, unconscious, was pinned in place by his seat belt, submerged wholly in the ice-cold water.

  It was luck that saved him.

  Luck that someone had been driving along a short distance behind him and seen his vehicle swerve off the road in the manner it had. Luck that the man driving was a paramedic. Even before the cab had hit the water, the man had been radioing the emergency services. Then he had parked up and come down on foot, slipping and sliding down the embankment, and somehow managed to pull Levchenko from the cab and on to the riverbank.

  Levchenko was dead; his heart had stopped beating.

  The paramedic worked on him ceaselessly, refusing to give up, pressing down on his chest, thump, thump, thump, pumping the water from his lungs, breathing air into him, thump, thump, thump on his breastbone. Over and over. For seven whole minutes, Levchenko, dead, did not respond.

  And then he did.

  But he was dead for that time.

  Far more than the moments immediately before the crash, Levchenko wishes he could remember those lost seven minutes—that he could see what, if anything, might have been there. He is a religious man and always has been, and the blankness taunts him. After all these years, the question remains. Does he remember nothing from those minutes of death simply because there is nothing to recall?

  Because of what happened to Emmy, he does not want to believe that.

  There is one saving grace for his faith: the matter of how random his survival was; the fact that on a road never normally heavy with traffic, the right man happened to be the right distance behind him. His present existence—all the good and bad of it—rests entirely on that coincidence. That coincidence, in turn, rests on many others before it. And so everything he does have feels inordinately precious. Every single moment since the accident—even the worst of them—has been a gift of sorts, and he accepts each as graciously as he can.

  But there is a flip side to that:

  He is living on borrowed time.

  What happened can sometimes make him feel lucky, but a part of him wonders if there is more to the clockwork of the universe than that. When you have faith, you can see the unlikely as fragments of a larger plan: one that belongs to God, and is only ever revealed to you piecemeal, if at all.

  So he is in a spiritual quandary. He wants to believe in God for the sake of Emmy. He wants to believe that on another plane of existence, a young woman of almost ephemeral beauty is existing, smiling. He wants to believe that God sees all images of her simultaneously, a flipbook of pictures of a little girl’s beautiful smile and an older girl’s delightful laugh, and that He took her to a better place where she is laughing and smiling still. Part of His plan. Smelling in heaven of the honey-flavoured perfume she always wore.

  But if that is true, what of Levchenko?

  Why has his life been allowed to continue?

  If his survival is part of some unseen plan, it has never been revealed to him. He has achieved nothing special with the years since, beyond fanning soft, quiet happiness into the embers of his life with Jasmina after Emmy was taken from them. Surely God would not have kept him alive simply to endure the agony of living to see his daughter die?

  No. There must be something more.

  He rolls over, resting the side of his face on his forearm. Jasmina is snoring gently beside him—a comfortable, comforting lump beneath the covers.

  It is foolish, of course, to think of these things. If God has a plan, then any revelation—or not—of its purpose is out of his hands. If there is anything he is meant to understand, he will do so at the right time.

  Sleep gradually unravels upon him, pulling its misty blanket up to cover his restless thoughts, patting itself gently down over his mind.

  His eyes flicker open briefly as he goes under.

  The l
ast things he sees before a dream is the nightstand. He sees the photograph of Emmy. And beside it he sees the old candle, its petals frail and dusty with age. It is purple and blue and red—but he knows there are tears and more besides mixed into its waxen randomness, for this is the candle he cast eight years ago, in the hollow hours after his daughter’s murder.

  Part Two

  IT WAS LATE. AFTER midnight, I think.

  And so the boy begins his story.

  He is in the bedroom he shares with his older brother. It would be cramped with just one of them; with two, the room is rendered impossibly tiny. It is the length of the bunk bed and only twice as wide. All their clothes are piled under the lower bunk. The only other furniture is a battered wooden bookcase filled with cheap paperbacks and a row of tatty comics, stuffed in so tight that the paper has bunched and torn. There is no window.

  The door opens directly on to the dim corridor running along the centre of the small house. It is shut, but—suddenly—outlined with light. Their mother has been in bed for hours. This is their father arriving home.

  The boy holds his breath in the dark. Lying on the bed above him, he knows his older brother is doing the same.

  Together but separate, they wait.

  The boy is used to judging the world, on occasions like this, by noises. When his father is whistling, there is a chance everything will be all right. When he is talking to himself under his breath, it means someone has annoyed him at the pub: someone larger than him with whom he cannot pick a proper argument, so that he now needs to find someone with whom he can.

  The little boy knows that his father is a bully, just like the children at school. When he told him he was being bullied, his father tried to teach him how to box. He took him out front and kept yelling at him to keep his hands up as he slapped him.

  There is a clatter from the hallway, a stumble, and a thud against the wall. Tonight, his father isn’t making any other sound at all, and the boy’s heart is like a frightened bird trapped in his chest. That is always the worst. It means his father is very drunk indeed, that the bitterness he carries inside him will be tight against the surface. Every time he thuds drunkenly against the wall, it will feel instead like someone shoving him. When his father is this drunk, everything feels like a shove to him. Everything is against him.