The Red Ribbon Girls

by Adam J. Wright

  Maybe the video chat she’s scheduled with Maya Cho in fifteen minutes will shine some light on the situation. Maya, a leading criminal psychologist who sometimes consults with the force, was sent the files on the Snow Killer’s four victims this morning after agreeing to look at the case.

  Dani gets out of the Land Rover and tries the front door of the cottage. It’s unlocked. Scowling, she pushes the door open and steps inside. “Charlie, I told you to keep this bloody door locked.”

  Charlotte, her nineteen-year-old daughter, is sitting at the kitchen table with her head in a textbook and a pen in her mouth. She looks up and smiles sheepishly. “Sorry, Mum.”

  Dani locks the door behind her and as she does so, hears the skitter of claws on the kitchen floor. She turns to face Barney and Jack, her two german shepherds, as they bound towards her. They crouch before her, tails wagging furiously, waiting to be petted. Dani strokes their heads and rubs behind their ears. She supposes the dogs would protect Charlotte if an intruder entered the cottage. They’re fiercely loyal to Dani and, by extension, her daughter.

  “Are you studying?” Dani asks, going into the kitchen.

  “Yeah, I don’t want to fall behind,” Charlotte says.

  She’s not going to tell her daughter to stop studying while she’s here on Christmas break but Dani thinks Charlotte is worrying too much. Her Chemistry degree is going just fine and she’ll probably be graduating with honors.

  “How long have you been hitting the books?” she asks.

  Charlotte checks the clock on the wall. “Most of the afternoon, I guess.”

  “How about we go out for dinner tonight?”

  Charlotte looks suspicious. “We never go out.”

  “I know but you’ll be going back to Birmingham soon and I’ll miss you. Let’s have some mother-daughter time.”

  Charlotte shrugs. “Okay, where are we going?”

  Dani wracks her brain. There aren’t many restaurants open in the evening in Whitby this early in the year. “How about the Captain’s Table?”

  “Okay.” Charlotte closes her textbook.

  “I just need to do something first; a Skype call with a psychologist. I shouldn’t be too long. Then we’ll go.”

  “I’ll get ready.”

  “Let the dogs out first.”

  Charlotte opens the back door. Barney and Jack run outside. The automatic security light goes on as the dogs run beneath it, lighting up the spacious back garden. The garden is larger than the cottage itself. After her husband’s death three years ago, Dani decided she had to downsize after realising she was unable to live any longer in the large house they’d lived in as a family. There were too many memories packed within those walls.

  She waited until Charlotte went to university in Birmingham, because she didn’t want the poor girl to have any more stress after losing a parent to cancer. Once Charlotte was settled away from home, Dani bought the cottage. It was small but had enough room for her and the dogs and Charlotte when she was home from uni.

  The one thing Dani refused to downsize was her garden. The dogs need space to exercise and play. They’re big animals and, as such, need a big garden.

  And Dani loves gardening. In the spring and summer months, she spends hours pottering about outside. She grows flowers in the borders and tends the large apple tree at the bottom of the garden. It’s her escape from the harsh realities she faces on the job and in her personal life.

  “I’ll take this call in my bedroom,” she tells Charlotte. “Don’t take all the hot water.”

  She goes into the room and closes the door. Her bedroom is small, like the rest of the cottage, but enough for her needs. Her bed is a double, the same one she shared with Shaun when he was alive, the one she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt she will never share with anyone else.

  Her laptop is on the bedside table. Dani opens it and places it on the bed, sitting cross-legged before it as she open up the Skype app and waits for Maya Cho’s call. Five minutes later, it comes and Dani answers it.

  The woman who appears on the screen is in her forties with a black bob hairstyle and blue-rimmed glasses. She has an air of confidence, but not arrogance, that is common to people at the top of their profession. “Good evening, detective.”

  “Please, call me Dani.”

  Maya nods. “And I’m Maya.”

  “Did you look at the case files?”

  “Yes, I went through them first thing this morning.”

  “And what can you tell me?”

  “I can tell you that these four murders were almost certainly carried out by the same perpetrator. He’s trying to create something, or should I say recreate something every time he takes a victim. It’s something from his past. I would say it’s something that occurred while he was a child, or in a crucial stage of his emotional development. And it’s something very visual. When he puts the red ribbon into the victim’s hair and places her into a body of water, he’s recreating a visual tableau.”

  “So this is something he’s seen in the past?”

  “Yes, it’s something that affected him deeply. He connects strong emotions to this image of a woman wearing a red ribbon floating in water. Sexual emotions, most likely.”

  “But there’s no sign of sexual assault or molestation,” Dani says.

  “No, there doesn’t have to be. The person who did this—” she holds up one of the crimes scene photos of Angela Rayburn floating in an icy pond, red ribbon frozen to her hair, “has a paraphilic disorder.”

  “Paraphilic disorder?” Dani asks, grabbing a notebook and writing it down. “I’m sorry, Maya, could you explain that to me in layman’s terms?”

  “Of course. A paraphilia is when someone has an abnormal sexual desire. It usually emerges during adolescence, when a person’s sex drive is beginning to develop. The drive can sometimes become attached to something inappropriate. Have you heard of toonophilia?”

  “No,” Dani admits.

  “It’s a slang term for when a person is sexually attracted to a cartoon character they might have seen on TV while they were developing emotionally and sexually. The attraction carries on into adulthood. Instead of a cartoon character, the perpetrator in this case saw an image that resembles this—” she holds up the photo of Angela Rayburn again, “and attached emotions to it.”

  “So he was young at the time?”

  “I’d say he was between twelve and seventeen years of age when this emotional attachment was formed.”

  “But we’re looking for an adult,” Dani says. “Why has he waited so long to go from seeing whatever he saw that caused the—” she consults her notebook, “paraphilia to acting out on it?”

  “It may have lain dormant inside him until something happened to cause it to surface.”

  “A trigger,” Dani says.

  Maya nods. “The paraphilia may have manifested in subtle ways throughout the perpetrator’s life—sexual fantasies for example—but once the trigger occurred, his emotions would have forced him to act. The fantasies wouldn’t be enough anymore; he’d have to try to recreate his desire in real life if he was to continue deriving pleasure from it.”

  “So this trigger,” Dani says, “is something that awakened his desire.”

  “Inflamed it would be a more accurate description. The desire would always have been there, just at a lower level, something that he could deal with. And the trigger was probably something simple, like seeing a blonde-haired woman wearing a red ribbon. He could have seen that same woman every day with no effect upon his psyche until the day he sees her wearing a red ribbon in her hair. Then he’s triggered. And the result is in the case files you sent me this morning.”

  Dani makes more notes, feeling she has a better understanding of what she’s dealing with. She’d already guessed that the killer was constantly trying to create a particular scene and that some sort of trigger had set him off—she’s seen enough Wire In The Blood and Criminal Minds to understand how these things work—but to hav
e her theories confirmed by Maya lets her know for certain that she’s on the right track.

  “What about the snow?” she asks. “He always strikes during a snowstorm. Is the weather a trigger as well?”

  “Many killers have an environmental trigger such as the weather or phase of the moon,” Maya says. “This man has been dubbed the Snow Killer for a reason. He seems to only strike in winter and only during a heavy snowfall. The snow itself isn’t necessarily a trigger, although it might be, but is probably an element he needs to complete the visual scene he’s trying to recreate. So the first time he saw a woman in the water with a red ribbon, it was probably snowing heavily. Now, he needs that to be a part of the tableau, to make the scene he creates match his memory of the initial encounter.”

  Dani scribbles more notes on the pad. “Could he evolve and carryout the killings without the snow?”

  “That’s very unlikely. He has a script he needs to follow. If he carried out a killing in the summer, for example, it wouldn’t feel satisfying to him because it wouldn’t be close to what he remembers of the initial encounter, the encounter to which he attaches so much emotion.”

  Dani nods, glad that at least the bastard is restricted by certain weather patterns. If he was able to kill all year round, there’d probably be a lot more murdered women. “What else can you tell me about him, Maya?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “His name and address.”

  Maya smiles. “I’ve put together a brief profile but I’ll need more time to make it more complete.”

  “Anything you have could be invaluable.”

  The profiler consults a notebook offscreen and says, “He’s probably a loner. He has trouble maintaining long-term relationships, especially emotional ones, because of the paraphilia. If he had girlfriends in the past, the relationships would have been short-lived. He may have displayed deviant sexual tendencies, probably involving suffocation, strangulation, or drowning.”

  “Would he have a record?” Dani asks. She knows that killers sometimes evolve from minor offences to the act of killing. “If I search through old cases of flashing or rape, am I going to find him somewhere in those files?”

  “That’s unlikely. He’s fixated on a very particular thing and flashing or rape wouldn’t come close to what he wants. You’d be better served to look at complaints to the police by women who say their boyfriend or partner has tried to strangle or drown them. The partner might have tried to laugh it off as some form of sexual exploration that went too far when questioned but it could be that he was rehearsing his eventual crimes.”

  Dani notes that down. Some members of her team aren’t going to be very happy tomorrow when she asks them to trawl through old complaints going back years.

  “If he has a job, it’s probably something he can do alone,” Maya says. “You’re not going to find him working as part of a team or in a job that requires a lot of social interaction. He probably drives a vehicle that is utilitarian rather than flashy or expensive. It may be an SUV or something that has a four wheel drive capability, since he often visits remote places during bad weather. He also uses this vehicle to abduct his victims during a heavy snowfall so it has to be able to fulfil that purpose.”

  Dani writes the information on her notepad.

  “As far as age goes, I’d guess that he’s in his twenties or thirties, no older than that. If not athletic, he’s at least very strong. All of his victims were sedated. Assuming he sedates them to control them when he first takes them, he may have to carry them to the body of water in which he drowns them.” She looks up from her notes. “Regarding the sedation, it shows that for him, the act of killing isn’t the aim here. It’s merely a means to an end.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Dani asks.

  “He isn’t doing this for the thrill of the kill. Many serial killers enjoy the act of watching their victims’ lives ebb away. In this case, the act of killing is just something he has to do to get the result he wants. That’s probably why he sedates them: so they’ll die without a struggle. He doesn’t need to see fear in their eyes as they die or anything like that. He enjoys the fact that they’re drowned rather than the fact that he drowned them. Does that make sense?”

  Dani nods.

  “That’s all I have for now but I’ll look at the case files again and call you if I have anything else to add.”

  “Thanks,” Dani says, “This is really helpful.”

  “I hope you catch him,” Maya says. She ends the video call and disappears from the screen.

  Dani rereads her notes, crossing out and rewriting words that had been too hastily scribbled to be legible, and closes the laptop. She puts the notebook on the bedside table and sits back on the bed, waiting for Charlotte to finish in the bathroom so she can go in there and have a shower.

  Today has not been a good one and she needs to wash away the grimy feeling she has on her skin.

  But she knows that no matter how much she washes herself, the images of four dead women lying in icy water will cling to her forever.

  Chapter 13

  The Captain’s Table is a quaint little restaurant overlooking Whitby harbour. When Greg and I arrive, Terry and Marcia are already seated and waiting for us. Greg introduces me to Terry, a jovial-looking, balding man in his sixties.

  Terry then introduces us both to his wife, a pleasant grey-haired lady who seems to have made much more effort than her husband regarding her appearance. Her hair is delicately pinned up on top of her head, her makeup subtle yet perfect, and her black dress is elegant.

  Terry, on the other hand, is wearing a dark green blazer and a cream shirt which could be smart but the shirt is untucked from his trousers and the blazer looks a couple of sizes too small.

  I feel a slight pang of guilt for noticing such things. And I’m hardly one who should be passing judgement; I had to squeeze into my best trousers, which I haven’t worn in about a year, and my blouse feels tight around the shoulders. Nia’s description of me as “curvy” might actually have been a kindness.

  We sit and the small talk begins. I smile and nod at the appropriate places and even contribute every now and then. Yes, the weather is bad but it could be worse at this time of year. Of course I wish Greg didn’t have to commute an hour each way every day but no, we aren’t interested in moving to Middlesbrough. Yes, we’ve fallen in love with Whitby already and yes, the news regarding “that missing girl” is terrible.

  But my attention has been caught by something else. From my seat, I can see the other diners in the restaurant and I find my gaze drawn to a fair-haired woman sitting at a table near the door with a dark-haired teenager. Something about the woman seems familiar but I’m having trouble placing her.

  “What do you think, Kate?” Marcia asks, looking in my direction.

  I have no idea what she’s asking. I lost the train of the conversation a couple of minutes ago.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Could you repeat that?”

  Greg shoots me a look but Marcia seems unfazed and smiles. “Of course. I was just saying that if local restaurants like this one were turned into chains, they’d probably fail because they’d lose their character. What do you think?”

  “Oh, yes, I agree. It’s the local charm that makes these places so successful. You can’t just package that up and ship it all over the country.”

  Everyone seems satisfied by that answer so I go back to staring at the woman by the door. Where the hell have I seen her before?

  Then it hits me. I saw a photograph of her taken only this morning. But in that photo, her hair was scraped back into a pony tail, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her long coat. Now, her hair is worn down, reaching to her shoulders. She’s wearing a white sleeveless lace blouse and slim-legged black trousers with a pair of ankle boots. She looks a million miles away from how she looked at the Amy Donovan crime scene.

  A waiter comes over to our table and asks if we’re ready to order. I haven’t even looked at m
y menu yet but everyone else at the table seems ready so I quickly scan the main dishes and when it comes to my turn, I order the seafood linguine. Terry asks for a bottle of the restaurant’s best white wine and the waiter disappears.

  I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. My head is all over the place. Well that’s a lie. I do know what’s wrong. Now that I’ve seen Detective Inspector Summers, I want to ask her what the police were doing at Northmoor House after Stephanie Wilmot went missing. I want to know if there’s a reason they questioned everyone in the flats.

  Ivy said Rob was out when the police came to the house and that they said they’d return later. What if they never followed up on that? What if they ignored what Ivy told them because she’s an old woman and they thought she was being dramatic? It’s little, seemingly innocuous mistakes like those that allow people to slip through the net.

  So now you’re saying Rob is a murderer?

  I shake my head against my own mental question. I’m not saying he’s a murderer, not even thinking such a thing. It’s just that if anyone in Northmoor House should be questioned about a missing woman, it’s him. What if the police weren’t thorough in their investigation? They obviously went to Northmoor House for a reason. I just hope that reason didn’t get lost somewhere in the course of the investigation due to laziness or incompetence.

  DI Summers gets up from her table and heads for the Ladies loo. This could be my chance to get some answers. I wait a couple of minutes before excusing myself from the table and following her.

  When I get inside, she’s standing at the sink, washing her hands. She looks at me and smiles but the smile transforms into an expression of wariness when I approach her.