“So it can be unnatural but still be normal? Acceptable?”
“It depends on how you define abnormality. What it really boils down to is social acceptability. Homosexuality has rightly, over a half century or so, made the transition from being an unacceptable and illegal abomination to a widely acceptable, legitimate form of sexuality.”
“Thomas made that point too. But he was trying to build a defense for sex with children. That child-sex would undergo the same public transformation, given time.”
“I can imagine. Pedophiles typically react to their crimes by trying to invoke a defense of that nature. But in cold, clinical terms, pedophilia is no different from any other sexual disposition that veers from straight, reproductive sex. It's just another variation of the basic sex drive, caused by genetic, pathological or socio-environmental factors; probably a combination of all three. That doesn't make it right or wrong. Right and wrong are matters of social morality, not biology. Of ethics, not science. Sexual dysfunction is an area of human nature we've barely begun to understand.”
“I'd never heard of it until a few weeks ago. Sexual dysfunction, paraphilia, auto-erotic whatever it was that killed Thomas. It's a whole new world.”
“Auto-erotic asphyxiation,” Ceri advised with a grin. “I live and breathe this kind of thing. It's been an obsession of mine, ever since I found some magazines in my dad's closet years ago. You know, I was snooping around, as kids do, and I came across them. Women dressed up in rubber suits, torturing naked men with whips and things. I thought it was hilarious at the time, but later, as sex became more defined in my mind, I started wondering what made a normal, ordinary bloke like my dad have such things hidden away. It was like he had a secret life. By day, a doting husband and father to two children, by night living out these bizarre fantasies.”
Ceri's eyes were distant, reliving her childhood memories. “I don't know if Mom knew. I guess she must have. The mags were just there, in their closet. Maybe if I'd searched further I would have found her rubber outfit and whips somewhere. Well, maybe not. Not Mom. But the idea that people would do that for pleasure, for sexual enjoyment, just never occurred to me. We had a Catholic upbringing. We were taught nothing about the reproductive process. The teacher wouldn't even explain how the school rabbits went from two to eight overnight. The kids all thought it was a miracle.”
She paused to fix the coffee. Claire waited patiently, not wanting to interrupt her reverie.
“Then at secondary school I learned about real sex for the first time. Well, I say real sex, but it was just about how babies were conceived and born. I was about thirteen, just going through puberty myself. You know, I thought How gross! My parents did that? Even then I couldn't comprehend they might still be at it. The way we were taught, if your parents had two kids then they'd had sex twice in their lives. It was inconceivable people did it for pleasure. It was another year before I made the connection between reproductive sex, intercourse, as taught at school, and the magazines my dad read. That was the day I started thinking about sex seriously.” She poured the coffee into the mugs. “And here I am.”
Claire grinned. “I can't help feeling I've led a sheltered life by comparison.”
“What I learned then, from my dad, was that ordinary people had extraordinary fantasies. I mean, how does anyone first realize that they'd enjoy being tied up and having their bollocks whipped by a women in a rubber suit? And from there, how does the real dysfunctional type first realize that they prefer sex with animals, or children, or whatever?”
Claire nodded. “What I've learned from meeting Thomas Bristow and Michael Bates is that sexual deviants aren't bug-eyed monsters with hunch-backs and steel claws.”
“Exactly. They're just ordinary people with a problem living by society's rules.”
“Is that what Uncle Tom is? Just an ordinary person?”
“No, Uncle Tom's more than that, Claire. He's an extraordinary person. But still a person. He's already made mistakes. A few more and the cops or FBI will have him. And if they don't, we will. Any milk?”
“There's a fresh carton in the fridge.”
“You know, this is something I really miss. Fresh milk. But there's just no way my landlady will get my fridge fixed. She's such a... say, you're diabetic?” Ceri held up an insulin pack.
“It was Rebecca's. Couldn't bring myself to throw it out. You know how it is. Silly little things suddenly take on enormous sentimental value.”
The phone rang. Claire took the call, holding back yet more tears.
“That was Matt. There's someone he wants you to meet, this afternoon. He'll pick you up at two-thirty.”
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“Danny, this is amazing! I love it!”
Ceri almost ran into the room, gleeful as a child in a toy shop.
As the door swung wider, Ceri's superlatives seemed quite inadequate. Matt knew Danny was no ordinary kid. But even so...
While other kids collected stamps or model cars, or signatures of famous sportsmen, Danny, he knew, collected autographs of notorious criminals. What he hadn't realized was that while other kids had pictures of footballers and pop stars on their walls, Danny had portraits of infamous law-breakers staring down. Al Capone; Jeffrey Dahmer; Ma Baker; Myra Hindle; the Boston Strangler; Gacy; Bundy.
“Where do you get these” Ceri was touring the room, picking up books on crime and criminals, examining models of weapons, darting from one thing to another like a wasp around a honey-pot. She gestured to a poster. “Aaron Kosminsky! So you don't subscribe to the Maybrick theory?”
“Not a chance. It had to be Kosminski. Jack was a Londoner, not a Liverpudlian. Begg's hypothesis.”
Matt looked utterly confused. “Is this a private discussion or will someone tell me what the hell you're talking about?”
Danny grinned at Ceri. “You'll have to excuse Matt. He's a novice.” To Matt, “Jack the Ripper. I reckon it was Kosminski. They say he confessed, just before he died.”
“At the Colney Hatch asylum, Ceri added. “Mind you, if -”
“Yeah, yeah,” Matt cut across them. “Danny, if I ever decide to write an article on Jack the Ripper I'll know where to come. But we're here for a reason. The list?”
Danny produced several sheets of paper.
As he glanced over the print-off , Matt’s heart sank. During the day he'd given some thought to the project and concluded it would be a relatively straight-forward task, with the aid of Danny's computer wizardry, to identify a half-dozen likely venues for Uncle Tom's next attack. There could only be so many towns and villages in New York state beginning with the letters U and V. He'd mentally ticked off a few at the time. Ulster. Union Springs. It was reassuring. If he could only manage two, could Uncle Tom do much better?
He ran his finger down the list of place-names. “Jesus, Danny, I didn't want a list of every single street name! I though you understood that. I need towns and villages. We're working on the presumption Uncle Tom is travelling to places he doesn't know. He'll be using a normal road atlas of some sort, not a computerized A-Z of obscure places nobody's ever heard of. Unadill? Upper Nyack? Are you sure you didn't make these up?”
“There are nine cities in New York state beginning with U, let alone the towns and villages. Every place on that list is big enough to appear in a bog-standard road atlas.”
“You're joking!”
“The Vs are worse. There's over twenty cities, plus the smaller locations.”
Matt flipped over to the Vs. Earlier he couldn't think of any.
“Jesus. Where do we start?”
“Look on the bright side,” Danny said. “When Uncle Tom gets to X he's gonna be seriously fucked. There's not a single place in the entire country beginning with X, let alone New York state. Not on any scale.”
Matt fell silent at the observation. That was four murdered children away.
“It’s a start,” Ceri said. “At least it narrows it down. Figure it from Uncle Tom's point of view. Whether he's driv
en from genuinely obsessive need to follow this pattern, or he's simply playing a game with us, he'll need to adhere to it so far as possible.”
“Agreed,” Danny said. “Do you think he's a Ted Bundy type? Or maybe Gerald Schaefer?”
“Worse than both, Danny. Some killers leave a symbolic calling-card, but Uncle Tom does it literally. Rather than wait for the media to give him some stupid moniker he's done it himself. He's calling the shots.”
“You can hardly blame him.” Danny glanced mischievously at Matt. “I mean, what kind of idiot came up with names like the Boston Strangler, or the Mad Bomber, or the Yorkshire Ripper? Journalists?”
“Sub-editors,” Matt assured him. They can’t do a proper job as a reporter so they sit at the office all day writing fancy headlines and then hope some news will come along to fit them.”
“I bet they get pissed off with the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nielsen then.”
Matt looked mystified. “Why should they?”
Danny shared a conspiratorial glance at Ceri.
“He’s hopeless, Ceri.” To Matt: “They picked off loners. Homeless men, mainly, so most of their victims were never even reported missing. The media only give silly names to killers when they're big news before they're caught.”
123
“Danny's spot on, Matt,” Ceri agreed.
Danny beamed at Matt, licking his forefinger and chalking up an imaginary notch on an invisible scoreboard.
“It's just another example of how Uncle Tom is demonstrating his expertise,” Ceri said. “He's in almost total control. But he’s nothing like Nielsen and Dahmer.”
“Even I can see that,” Matt nodded. “They were necrophiles.”
“True, but that's not what I meant. Uncle Tom is an Organized Non-Social.”
“A what?”
Ceri exchanged a smirk with Danny. “The FBI recognize two types of lust-killers, Matt. Organized Non-Social and Disorganized Asocial. Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, in Britain was a typical Disorganized Asocial.”
“Meaning?”
“A loner.” Danny jumped in. “Uneasy with the opposite sex, even though he was married. Doesn't plan in any great detail. Leaves the body more or less at the scene, with very little effort to cover up the crime. Typically uses any weapon that comes to hand.”
“And this other type? Organized something or other?”
“Organized Non-Social,” Danny said with a smirk. Matt wanted to strangle the brat.
“Jack the Ripper is the classic,” Ceri explained. “Hostile towards people, but you wouldn't know it to speak to him. He'll come across as a very sociable type, adept with people of either sex. Manipulative. Often a commuter killer, hence the Maybrick theory. Typically he'll mutilate for a trophy, then dispose of the body with meticulous care. That's Uncle Tom all over. The bodies are deliberately placed where they will be found, but not too soon. He has to balance the risk of getting caught against the pointlessness of the body remaining undiscovered. The last thing he wants is anonymity like Dahmer or Nielsen. He craves the attention. He has a massive ego problem.”
“And he uses his hands as a contact weapon,” Danny said. “It's a power thing. Personally I'm thinking we might see ritual mutilation next.”
Matt cast a nervous glance at Ceri. “Ritual mutilation?”
“Agreed. Uncle Tom is a control freak, but self-control only goes so far. Take Jack the Ripper. Began by killing and mutilating at his own pace, in his own time, each one planned and calculated. Then as the compulsion grew be became less careful, more impulsive. An attack was interrupted by a passer-by. Hours later he attacked again, mutilating his victim there and then on the pavement, so strong was the compulsive drive. Strong enough to make him abandon his usual, meticulous planning and risk being caught in the act.”
“And you think Uncle Tom is heading that way?”
“You can be sure of it. I'm convinced the Saranac attack is an early symptom of break-down. But I wouldn't rely on him making a big mistake and getting caught just yet. He's still in control. The calling cards are a sign of supreme arrogance, not the suicide complex.”
“Well it would solve a lot of problems if he topped himself,” Matt agreed.
Danny couldn't help but laugh. “That's not what she means, Matt. Killers that start out with a specific aim, like a revenge attack or a need to prove something or other, often end up killing again just for the sake of it. Once they've achieved what they intended, that's it. There's no thrill to the kill. No purpose. It doesn't matter what happens to them after that. Hence the suicide complex.”
“Elliot Leyton argued the case for the resentful killer quite persuasively,” Ceri added. “Revenge is a powerful emotive force. Even the sanest person will curse his car when it doesn't start, or stare accusingly at the sidewalk when they trip. It's just an extension of that, taken to an extreme.”
“You're telling me someone might end up a killer just because they stubbed their toe? Be serious!”
“Peter Sutcliffe became the Yorkshire Ripper because a hooker ripped him off for a few pounds,” Danny said.
Matt glared at him. Smart-ass brat.
Danny grinned back. “My guess is he'll go into suicide mode when he reaches X.”
“That's another four kids killed. Let's not think the unthinkable.”
The room fell silent.
“Danny, you said earlier you had a few ideas of your own?”
“Nothing earth-shattering. I expect Ceri's already sussed it anyway.”
“Sussed what?”
“The way Uncle Tom is modeling himself on Brit killers like Black and Duffy.”
“Duffy?”
“The Railway Rapist.”
Ceri looked uncertain. “Remind me.”
Danny couldn't hide his glee. He had the edge on Ceri for the first time. “Just a sec'.” He reached down under the bed and extracted a pile of scrapbooks, each filled with cuttings on notorious crimes.
“The red folders are the sex cases. I’ve sub-divided into rapists, paedos, homophobic attacks.”
“But who's this Duffy?” Matt demanded.
“The UK, back in the eighties?” Ceri ventured. “Wasn’t it one of Canter's early successes?”
“You got it!” Danny produced the relevant scrapbook. “Here he is.”
“I can just about keep up with American killers. What’s Britain got to do with it”
“John Duffy, the Railway Rapist,” Danny said, looking at Matt. “So-called because he attacked and raped his victims, wait for it, near railway lines.”
“I told you. Sub-editors. The Brits are as bad as our lot.” He scanned the pages Danny had handed him. “But these are all attacks on adults. What's the connection with Uncle Tom?”
“The way he killed his victims. Strangulation.”
Matt shrugged. “I admit I'm no expert, Danny, especially in present company, but I'd say strangling is a pretty common form of murder.”
“With a tourniquet?”
Ceri sat forward. “Of course. Yes, Danny!”
Danny had a huge smile on his face.
Matt looked none the wiser. “And?”
“The Duffy case was the first time that particular method of strangulation had been used in the UK. What kind of crime reporter are you anyway?”
Matt glared at him. “I covered normal crimes in my day, Danny. Proper criminals. Cops and robbers stuff. Not this serial killer business. It's a new phenomenon. And I don’t follow crime abroad. We have plenty enough here.”
Danny beamed. “Jack the Ripper is new?”
“Oh, fuck off!” God-damned brat had an answer for everything.
124
Ceri stepped in to break the tension. “What Danny's saying, Matt, is that Uncle Tom may be deliberately emulating the MO of other killers.”
“So how many ways can there be to strangle somebody?”
“Loads. There's ligature , there's manual, there's -”
“It was
a rhetorical question, Danny.”
Danny hesitated, unsure what rhetorical meant. “Anyway, I reckon Uncle Tom is copying the method used by the Railway Rapist, John Duffy, just as he appears to have copied Robert Black.”
“And why would he do that?” If the kid wanted to debate in the adult league he'd make him sweat for it.
“I don’t know why Britain particularly. Maybe he lived there at some stage? But what’s pretty clear is that he's studied these sorts of crimes and is selecting methods and ideas from his idols. He wants his own place in criminal history.”
Matt turned to Ceri. “Are we taking this seriously?”
“Sure. I'll go with it. The calling cards are a sure sign he wants publicity.”
“Then there's my combo theory,” said Danny.
“Your what?” asked Matt and Ceri in unison.
“My combo theory. That it's a bloke and a woman together.”
“Don't be ridiculous,” Matt retorted.
Ceri was more welcoming to the proposal. “You know something?”
“Not really sure. There was a case a few months ago where a woman lured a child into a white van. A little girl. She wasn't killed or anything. Just indecently assaulted. It hardly rated a mention in the press. Just local news. I suppose I remembered it because it was unusual, having a woman involved. I mean, sure, woman molest children. But it struck me as unusual. Sex attacks by women don’t usually take place at the roadside.”
“I like it, Danny,” Ceri said, shaking her red hair loose, sending it cascading down over her shoulders. Danny's eyes lit up. He'd hardly taken his eyes off her this past ten minutes. A fact that hadn't gone unnoticed by Matt.
Danny asked, “Do you think he's trophy hunting?”
“It's a safe bet. All the girls so far have had items of clothing missing. Including the girl in the trunk of the car.”
Matt said, “If you mean he's got a fetish about little girls' underwear, just come out and say so.”
Sugar & Spice (US edition) Page 24
