by Max Manning
Psychopaths despise authority figures because they crave control themselves. They are drawn to jobs that will give them power over others and high status, such as lawyer, surgeon, civil servant, police officer.
Selecting Detective Chief Inspector Dan Fenton’s nanny shows a desire to up the stakes, increase the thrill of the kill. There is a common belief that serial killers take more and more risks because they want to be caught. This is false. The opposite is true. What actually happens is that they often have a superiority complex, sometimes even a God complex, and, as a result, believe they are invincible. They believe they will never get caught. This overconfidence can lead to mistakes and, in the end, to their capture.
She turned off her laptop, tucked it under her arm, and allowed herself a wry smile. No matter how much she loved it, profiling could never be a substitute for hard, forensic evidence, a confession, or catching the perpetrator in the act of murder. It was like explaining how and why a volcanic eruption had occurred, rather than predicting when it was going to happen.
Thirty-Eight
“It’s my fault she got killed, Dad. My fault.”
Fenton shook his head and reached out to console his sobbing daughter.
“No, Tess, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s just one of those terrible things. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people.”
As the palm of Fenton’s hand settled gently on the girl’s head, she shied away, sat on the edge of her bed, and pulled both hands up into the sleeves of her daisy-print pajamas. “You mean like Mum?” she asked softly.
Fenton nodded and swallowed the lump in his throat. “Exactly. She was a good person. The best.”
Every night since Marta’s murder, Tess had cried herself to sleep. Were all the tears shed for her nanny? Fenton doubted it. He’d confiscated Tess’s cell phone and banned her from using her laptop. The thought of a friend sending her a link to the photographs of Marta terrified him.
He stepped closer and sat beside her. She kept her head down but shifted a few inches farther along the bed. Fenton sighed. “What happened to Marta was terrible. But you’re not to blame. That doesn’t make sense. I won’t be going into work for a while, because I want to make sure you’re all right. Don’t worry, darling. We’ll catch the man who killed Marta. I promise.” He tried his best to sound as if he believed what he was saying. There was no doubt in his mind that taking him off the case had seriously compromised the investigation. For a start, his replacement, Detective Chief Inspector Norman Tobin, had a well-deserved reputation for being slow off the mark and even slower on the uptake. By the time he got up to speed, who knows how many more bodies would be out there?
Fenton had been told to stay away from the office and strictly forbidden to contact anyone on the murder team. It made no sense. He’d gotten under the killer’s skin. Rubbed him the wrong way. There was a clear link between them now, and that link could be exploited to lure the bastard in.
He edged closer to his daughter and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. This time, she didn’t shy away. Her frail body shuddered against his rib cage as tears spilled down her face.
“You don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you,” she said. “I’m scared it’s my fault that Marta’s dead. What if I could have saved her? We should have said something. It might actually be my fault. Actually, Dad.”
Fenton knew the pain of guilt and helplessness. He’d lived with it for months after his wife’s death, and even now, on some days, the bad days, it would resurface. “What do you mean, Tess? That’s just not true. If anyone’s to blame, then it’s me. The killer chose Marta because I was leading the team trying to catch him. He wanted to get at me. To show me how clever he is and how stupid I am.”
Tess shook her head, put both her hands on her father’s ribs, and pushed herself away. “You’re not listening. Please listen to me. We should have told you, I know that now, but it’s too late. Marta said the best thing for everybody would be not to say anything. We agreed to keep quiet about it. It was our secret, but it all went wrong. We should have told you what happened. You could have saved her.”
Fenton frowned, stood up, turned, and leaned forward to face his daughter. He placed his hands under her elbows and gently lifted her to her feet.
“Told me what, Tess? What secret?”
“About the man after school.”
“What man?”
“It happened about two weeks ago. On a Monday, I think. Marta was late picking me up from school. I wandered off, to teach her a lesson really, to scare her. I was being horrible. It was before I liked her.”
“What man, Tess?”
“He seemed nice. He asked me if I was lost. He had a nice smile. We talked for a couple of minutes until Marta came.”
“Why keep it from me? I don’t get it.”
Tess sniffed and wiped her nose with her pajama sleeve. “Marta was worried that you’d be angry about her being late. Frightened she’d lose her job. She didn’t say it, but I knew that’s what she was panicking about. I thought you’d be cross with me because I’d gone off on my own. We agreed not to say anything about it. We were friends after that, so I thought it was a good thing, you know, keeping the secret.”
Fenton couldn’t make sense of what he was hearing. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s this got to do with Marta’s death?”
Tess sniffed again. “I don’t know, but he talked about you. Said he knew you. He asked me to give you a message. What if he’s the one who killed Marta? We should have told you.”
Fenton’s gut twisted. He crouched down until his gaze was level with Tess’s red-rimmed eyes. “Can you remember what he said?”
Tess nodded. “I think so. It wasn’t horrible or anything. Something like tell you to take care of the little things.”
“Are you certain, Tess? Those were his exact words?”
“I think so, yes… ‘Tell him to look after the little things.’”
Fenton dropped to his knees and gently gripped her shoulders. “What did this man look like? Would you know him if you saw him again?”
Tess’s bottom lip quivered. “He was very tall, but he was wearing a hoodie and a cap, like a baseball cap, under the hood. It made it hard to see his face. He sounded kind though.”
Fenton pulled his daughter into a hug. “Don’t worry, darling. You’re not to blame,” he whispered.
She burrowed her head into his chest and squeezed tighter.
He left a still sniffling Tess sitting cross-legged on her bed, reading her favorite book, Charlotte’s Web. Her mother had given it to her a month before her death. Tess had read it so many times, she could recite big chunks of it word for word.
Fenton made himself a coffee and sat at the kitchen table, the stranger’s words bouncing around inside his head. Was this the man who beheaded Marta? His stomach churned. The only little thing that needed taking care of was Tess. It sounded like a harmless message but felt like a serious threat.
He drained his cup, strode quickly into the hall, and skipped downstairs. He had a sudden need for fresh air and to reassure himself that the day shift uniforms had turned up. He stepped outside in time to witness the changing of the guard. A freckle-faced female constable acknowledged him with a nod as she took her place beside the front door. Fenton watched the night shift drive off. “Where’s your partner?” he asked.
The constable smiled. It made her look even younger, far too young to be in uniform on the streets of London. “Just me today, sir.”
Fenton shook his head. “I’m not going far. Just up the road for a few minutes.”
The mid-October sky, heavy with cloud and streaked several shades of gray, pressed down hard on the city. Fenton stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and walked east along Risinghill Street. The air was heavy with moisture but not enough to form a mist.
Parked cars lined both
sides of the road, except for a section where his had been on the day he found Marta’s head. That part of the street was still cordoned off with white tape, even though the forensic team finished their work days ago.
Fenton knew what he should do. It was the opposite of what he wanted to do. The right thing would be to telephone New Scotland Yard and tell the new senior investigating officer exactly what Tess had told him. All his life, he’d done the right thing, but for the first time, the lines were blurring. Right for who? For the force, his bosses, for society? What about doing the right thing for himself and for his daughter? If he did the correct thing, Tess would be taken in and questioned for hours, maybe even days, until they squeezed every detail of the encounter out of her. She’d handle it. He had no doubt about that. She was tougher than she looked.
Still, she’d been through so much trauma, he didn’t want to put her through more if he didn’t have to. It wasn’t as if she’d gotten a good look at the man’s face, and there was no guarantee that the new senior investigating officer would draw the right conclusions or do anything sensible with the new information. There was no hard evidence that the man at the school gates had been the killer, but gut feeling and the threat implicit in the man’s words told Fenton all he needed to know.
He wanted the killer caught and caught soon. He also wanted to be the man to nail him. Wanted it more than anything. As things stood, that wasn’t going to happen.
He was off the case officially, but what was stopping him from going after the killer unofficially? Well, for one thing, he’d probably be kicked out of the force. Fifteen years of loyal service and all pension benefits down the drain. Fenton shrugged the thought away. Tess’s safety was his priority. Nothing else mattered.
The knowledge that the man who’d spoken to his daughter might have been I, Killer sent a chill through his body and triggered a thought that had hovered in the back of his mind for days. The killer knew where he lived and had probably followed Marta and Tess to school on more than one occasion.
Like most senior police officers, Fenton’s personal details, address and telephone numbers, were kept off all the commercial and public databases available online. At the junction with Penton Street and Chapel Market, Fenton spun one hundred and eighty degrees and started back the way he’d come. This time, his stride was longer, his pace more urgent.
The killer must have found his personal details on the police computer system. He was either a computer geek who hacked into the network from a remote terminal or a civilian support worker at New Scotland Yard. Or a police officer.
Thirty-Nine
Fenton had his key in the lock of his front door when the press pack arrived. A convoy of four cars screeched to a halt at the curb, each delivering a reporter and photographer onto the pavement.
A tall woman in a tan pantsuit got to Fenton first, thrusting a digital recorder in his face. “What’s the real reason you’ve been taken off the case?”
“No comment.”
“Is I, Killer targeting your family?”
“No comment.”
The other reporters gathered around, all waving recording devices. “How did you feel when you found your nanny’s head on your car?”
“Is this the end of your police career?”
“Is there a message you want to send to I, Killer?”
Fenton held up both hands, and the journalists fell silent. “All questions must go through our press office,” he said. “I’m sure you know the telephone number.”
The woman in the pantsuit tried again. “What would you like to say to all the people out there who are sharing the I, Killer posts?”
From the back of the pack came a barrage of camera flashes. Fenton held up a hand to obscure his face, stepped back over the threshold, and slammed the door shut. He gripped the handle, his knuckles white. The sensible thing to do would be to ignore the last question, keep his mouth shut, and let Partington handle the press.
He yanked the door open and stepped onto the doorstep. The reporters, chatting among themselves as they strolled to their cars, scrambled back, excited by the thought that they were about to get a spicy quote, a new angle to keep their news editors happy.
Fenton took a deep breath. “Anyone who goes online to search out images of people about to be murdered and photographs of their mutilated bodies simply to satisfy some sort of twisted, morbid curiosity should be ashamed of themselves. They should take a moment to think about the victims and their families, then go and take a long, hard look in the mirror.”
The reporters surged forward, shouting over each other as they fired off new questions. Fenton stepped back and slammed the door shut.
He was sitting on the sofa, his head in his hands, when his cell phone rang. He snatched it out of his pocket, thinking it could be Daly with important information before he remembered he’d been taken off the case.
Leah Bishop’s voice was low, and he had trouble hearing what she was saying. “You’ll have to speak up,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Detective.”
For a second, Fenton considered suggesting that she should call him Dan but decided against it. “I’m sorry, but I can’t answer any questions about the investigation. You need to contact the incident room at New Scotland Yard.”
“That’s not why I’m calling. It’s about a friend. A friend who wants to speak to you.”
Fenton remembered giving his private number to Leah and assuring her that she could call him for updates on how the investigation was going. “I’m sorry, Miss Bishop, but I’m no longer part of the team investigating your sister’s murder.”
“I know all about that, but it’s you my friend wants to talk to. It’s important.”
He considered claiming the signal was poor and cutting her off, but curiosity got the better of him.
“Who is this friend?”
“It’s someone I’ve asked to look into my sister’s murder. All the murders. You know, a fresh mind examining the facts. It’s not that I don’t trust the police to do their job properly.”
I’m not sure I’ve got as much faith in them as you do, Fenton thought. “Are you talking about a private investigator? Do they know what they’re doing?”
“It’s Adam Blake. He’s not being paid. He wants to help.”
“Blake? You’re kidding.”
“I’ve never been more serious.”
“You know he’s still considered a possible suspect?”
“I do. He’s been questioned again and released. I trust him completely. He wants to talk to you. It’s important. He says you’d be a great help, a valuable asset to have on board.”
“He does, does he? I’m glad somebody thinks so.” Fenton paused to weigh the situation. This was an unexpected turn of events. By all accounts, Blake had been a formidable journalist. Maybe, with expert guidance, he could dig something up that could be useful.
“I need to think about this,” Fenton said. “I’m not ruling it out, but I’ve got to tread carefully.”
“That’s great. I’d be so grateful. We’d be so grateful, if you could spare the time to talk. I understand you’re in an awkward position.”
Fenton had hoped that his suspension would be short-lived, but after his performance on the doorstep, that was unlikely. “I’ll let you know, one way or the other, in a couple of hours,” he said, pressing the End Call button without waiting for a response.
He liked Leah Bishop; she seemed intelligent and trustworthy. Blake was clearly as smart as a razor but harder to read than hieroglyphics. He gave off a dangerous energy that reminded Fenton of some of the more volatile criminals he’d dealt with over the years. But you never know, Fenton thought. Maybe it could work.
Forty
There is nothing like death to make you feel alive. I was pretty attuned to my surroundings before, but now I’m seeing, hea
ring, smelling, and feeling on a higher plane.
The world is obsessed with my exploits, and now Inspector Clueless has been suspended. New Scotland Yard’s finest investigator found himself up against a far superior intellect and crumbled.
Time is passing faster every day. I need to focus on my mission. I’m close now, but I don’t want to rush. That’s how mistakes are made.
Ninety-nine point nine percent of the population couldn’t do what I do. They don’t have it in them. I see weak people all around me, living a life of ignorance and defeat. This is why my following increases day by day. Through the medium of the internet, they can get a little taste of what it means to be me.
As you can tell, I’m in a philosophical mood. Maybe analytical is a better word. It’s probably the news that the police have engaged a psychological profiler that’s got me thinking this way. What a joke. I know exactly what will be appearing in the report, and it annoys me that someone thinks they know what’s going on inside my head.
What really gets to me is the personal, family stuff this shrink is going to be guessing at. Falsely claiming an intimate knowledge of me to inflate her ego.
I can’t abide the idea of some woman with a few letters after her name judging me, judging Mother. I don’t behead people because I lost my father. I’m not impelled to spill the blood of innocents because Mother did what she did.
I kill because I can.
Forty-One
Detective Constable Ralph Ince watched his target leave the Victorian town house in High Holborn.
Seven hours ago, he’d had no problem spotting the psychologist amid the commuters streaming out of Holborn Tube station. It took her four minutes to walk to her consulting rooms, and he’d followed at a safe distance. Her first patient, a tall, elegant woman wrapped in a black leather coat, arrived at two minutes to nine.
