by Michael Kerr
For the next thirty minutes they both tore slices of bread into small pieces and fed a dozen milling ducks, and two majestic swans that had glided across the lake like windblown galleons in full sail to see what they were missing.
“That’s the birds sorted, now let’s go and feed ourselves,” Amy said, getting up and brushing crumbs from her lap onto the jetty, before carefully walking back along the aged and probably unsafe structure.
Mark drove to a thatch-roofed pub only a couple of miles from the lake. They ate a traditional Sunday lunch, comprising thick slices of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings, to wash it down with a glass each of the house red.
They had only been back at the flat for twenty minutes when the landline phone rang. Mark had been pouring freshly brewed coffee, with Amy standing behind him, up close with her arms around his waist. She planned on them spending what was left of the afternoon in bed.
Mark turned into her, kissed the tip of her nose, then broke free, went through to the lounge and picked up, feeling slightly apprehensive, hoping that nothing had happened at the clinic to necessitate him having to go in.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Dr Mark Ross?”
“Speaking.”
“Detective Superintendent Clive Pearce. You once―”
“I once advised you on a case,” Mark said, his interjection caustic and abrupt. “I also told you that it was a one-off. You’re going to ask me to get involved with what I’m reading on the front pages, and the answer is no.”
“Tell me that you haven’t been following the case, Dr Ross,” Clive said. “Give me your word that your profiling instincts didn’t cut in and start coming up with theories on this, and that you didn’t consider motive and...”
Mark held the phone away from his ear, almost ended the call, but then just stared at it as his mind raced and considered what the copper had said.
Clive Pearce closed his eyes, listened to the snake hiss of the line, but said nothing, knowing that cogs were turning in the other man’s mind. If he pushed too hard, he would get nowhere. He would wait and see if the psychologist talked or thought himself into joining the team before he tried to reel him in with a hard sell.
“You know Amy, don’t you?” Mark said, breaking the silence.
“Er, yes, of course. She was a damn good detective. How is she?”
Mark ignored the polite, patronising comment. “I’ll talk it over with her and call you back,” he said. “Don’t be optimistic.”
“Then I’ll just hope, Dr Ross. We need to stop―”
“No sales pitch,” Mark said. “I know the position. I also know that you have one or two very good consultants who you could utilise.”
“They’re not in the same league as you,” Clive said. He was not above using downright flattery, if that was what it took.
“Later,” Mark said, and hung up.
Amy had faced more danger than ninety-five percent of crime fighters would be unfortunate enough to come up against during their entire careers. Both she and Mark had found themselves drawn, as if magnetised or in some way tuned in to the same wavelength as the worst examples of humanity.
In Mark’s case, his personal impressive record of being instrumental in running down serial killers – while with the FBI – had undoubtedly been responsible for the prevention of an incalculable loss of life. Was it his fate? Could it in some way be preordained that his life be somehow interwoven in a symbiotic existence with that which he hated? He felt as though he were one side of a coin, forever separate, yet still the obverse face of evil, having to live in the same pocket of small change with no choice in the matter. He was no Don Quixote intent on jousting at windmills and putting devotion and honour before his personal needs or aspirations. He had joined the bureau to be part of something noble, to make a difference, and had found that he had a talent for being able to ‘see’ and feel the nature of the beast. At first it had felt like a blessing, as though he were some kind of modern-day dragon slayer. But looking into the abyss became a curse, not a gift. Evil did indeed look back at you from the depths of the pit, to overwhelm the spirit and consume the soul. The final conflict that almost robbed him of sanity, and then his life, began to escape from the mental vault that he kept it locked away in. He forced it back, returned to the kitchen, picked up his coffee and sipped it.
“Who was it?” Amy said, stubbing out her fourth cigarette of the day on the presidential seal that was embossed on the bottom of a small ceramic ashtray.
Mark chewed absently at the inside of his right cheek. Went over to where she was sitting in the nook and settled opposite her. “That cop, Pearce.”
Amy forgot about the cigarette end between her finger and thumb. She was transfixed. It was obvious to her why Clive Pearce had phoned.
“Did you tell him to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine?” she said, looking down at the ashtray and letting go of the crumpled Superking filter.
“I said I’d get back to him, after we’d talked it through.”
“What is there to talk about, for God’s sake? You know what it can do to you. Why would you want to go down that road again?”
“It’s not that easy to run away from what you are, Amy. I love you, and I value your point of view above anyone else’s, so give it to me. Pearce knew that I would have studied the case, and wants to know what I think. That’s all.”
“If you want to do it enough, then you will,” she said, crossing her arms and glaring at him; her body language unmistakable. “It’s your call. But if you give him a little, then he’ll want a whole lot more. You’ll be sucked in up to your neck.”
“I know if I don’t help, and others die, I’ll feel that I may have been able to make a difference and didn’t. It’s Catch-22.”
Amy got up and went over to a shoulder-high corner unit, opened the leaded-glass door and withdrew a bottle of Three Barrels. Neither of them said a word as she poured large measures of the brandy into crystal tumblers and set them down on the tabletop.
“Official meeting,” she said, retaking her seat. “Let’s discuss it.”
Mark readied himself for a verbal onslaught as he mulled over what he already thought of as a foregone conclusion. Only if Amy actually said ‘no, please do not do this’, would he be able to withhold any assistance.
He watched as she downed half the neat spirit before replacing the glass on the tabletop with the force and report of a high court judge’s or auctioneer’s gavel.
“OK, let’s discuss it,” he said.
“If you do it, then you don’t step into that world alone,” she said. “You take me on board, and we help each other through it. I will not sit back and watch you withdraw into a shell. If you want to be the Lone Ranger, then I’m going to be your Tonto, along for the ride.”
“You’d look good in buckskins. Maybe if I wore a black mask we could really get into the roles.”
“I should have pushed you in the lake when I had the chance.”
They smiled, and their hands met across the table. A decision had been made without the need to argue or actually mull over the subject at great length.
“How about using my place as a base,” Amy suggested. “It’s nearer the action.”
“Sounds good. I’ll arrange to take a couple of days off. Can you?”
She nodded. “I have one client that I might need to see on Tuesday morning. Everything else can be handled by my operatives.”
“Is that what you call your two guys, operatives?”
“That, or security specialists. What would you call them?”
“I know them, so I’d call them Petra and Jon. That’s their names.”
“If you’re going to be pedantic, then Petra isn’t a guy, she’s a girl.”
“Calling everyone guy is a long-term habit of mine. Women understand.”
“Yes, they put it down to you being an uncouth Yank who doesn’t know any better.”
“Whatever.”
&nbs
p; They looked at back copies of the newspapers that Mark kept stacked in the small utility room and only threw out about once every three months, when the pile began to mimic the leaning tower of Pisa, assuming a dangerous cant that somehow defied gravity. Three hours later, with copious notes in front of him, Mark phoned Clive Pearce back.
“Yes, Dr Ross,” Clive said, physically crossing his fingers, wanting the American to agree to assist them, and knowing that he could well be their best hope of bringing the case to an early and satisfactory conclusion.
“Call me Mark. You get two for the price of one on this. Amy and I will look at the book and work out a profile.”
“The book?”
“The file, Clive. What I call the murder book. I need the whole nine yards. I want to see the crime scene reports and photographs; autopsy protocols and evidence analysis reports. I want every scrap of documentation. And I also want you to remember that in reality many serial killers remain at large, or take a long time to bring down. Don’t expect miracles.”
“Thanks, Dr, er...Mark. I’ve been in this business too long to expect divine intervention by way of a miracle. I just need to do everything that I can to give us an edge. Can you drop by the Yard and have a word with the squad that are investigating the case? I want them to have a game plan.”
“Get the paperwork to Amy’s place tomorrow morning. We’ll go through it before I face the troops. OK?”
Mark gave Pearce Amy’s address and phone number, then rang off. The old buzz was back. He felt like a kid with a new toy. He could hardly wait to study the case in depth. His new-found enthusiasm frightened him. He had always tried to believe that what he did was not who he was, but the boundaries seemed to blur and merge together too easily.
CHAPTER SIX
Clive delivered the files personally, and reacquainted himself with the profiler and the attractive ex-cop. He stayed for coffee, leaving his driver outside the smart Georgian terrace house adjacent to Richmond Park. He was a little envious of the property. Security companies were obviously raking it in, and he wished that he’d had the balls to quit the force and move into the private sector decades ago.
After Clive left, Mark and Amy sat in the oak-walled study – which Amy had subconsciously modelled as a near replica of her father’s, only becoming aware of what she had recreated when it was almost completed – and set the document wallets on the large walnut desk.
“Plenty to look at,” Amy said. “I’ll go pick up a few groceries while you start in on it.”
Mark nodded. The challenge before him was one that would necessitate facing personal demons he had thought to be vanquished. He was about to enter territory that he knew would both repulse and excite him in a strange unexplainable meld that only a very few people could appreciate, or even begin to understand.
Amy bent and kissed his bristly cheek. “I’ll see you later,” she said. “And if you go for a leak, have a shave. Or is that designer stubble?”
After she had left, and with only the solemn ticking of a large Victorian clock on the mantel of the Adam fireplace to break the silence, Mark found the resolve to confront the horror; to examine properly the fine details of the unsolved murders.
It was over two hours later when Amy re-entered the study. Mark had not moved from the chair since she had left, and his concentration on the paperwork, which was now strewn across the desktop, and even next to his feet on the carpet, was total. Thieves could have ransacked the house around him; such had been his intense focus on the mass of information.
“You ready for a cup of coffee?” Amy said.
No reply.
She went to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
Mark grunted, startled, the spell broken, and said, “You could give a guy a heart attack, creeping up like that.”
“Just trying to get your attention. Next time I’ll whistle Dixie, or ring a bell. Do you want coffee?”
“Uh, yeah. I could use a break,” he said, stretching his arms and yawning.
Amy stepped forward and tipped out the contents of a large brown paper bag, which she had held concealed behind her back. What seemed like a thousand hazelnuts cascaded over his lap; the noise akin to gravel being dumped off the back of a truck.
“What the hell?” Mark said, shunting back in the chair.
“I called in at my local deli, and the owner looked at me as though I was a hod short of a brick when I asked about the current situation over hazelnuts. He seemed to think that the Balkan hazel weevil infestation was the product of a bad trip on acid. I said a friend had told me about it, and he gave me that ‘You must have strange friends’ look.”
“He just hasn’t heard about it, is all. These must be old stock,” Mark said, grinning as he thought that if he were a squirrel, he would most likely believe that he had died and gone to that big tree in the sky, at the sight of so much expensive sustenance.
“While I make the coffee, you do penance for your fib and pick up all these disease-free nuts.”
“Deal,” he said.
“And don’t think I don’t know how many there are.”
“You mean you’ve actually counted them?”
“No. But I know exactly how much they weigh.”
“You’re one sneaky broad.”
“Once a cop, always a cop.”
By midnight, Mark had a sketchy profile written out. Amy had spent half the evening reading through the files, while Mark tried to find and then think his way into the personality of an individual who would commit such blatantly shocking acts on women who were almost certainly strangers to him.
They talked it over, and Mark found Amy’s views, as both a woman and a prior law enforcement officer, constructive and well thought through. He was ready to give the police a preliminary word picture of the type of psycho he thought they should be looking for. He had a tenuous, unexplainable sense of the man as an individual, which was taking shape at the edges of his mind.
Clive introduced Mark to the DCI handling the case. Amy had decided against accompanying him to the Yard. She preferred to stay in the background, and Mark had requested not to be named to the press. That had been his only stipulation, and Clive had assured him of anonymity.
The squad room was too quiet. All eyes were on him as he stood next to Clive and Barney and studied the impassive, sceptical faces of the team.
“Looks like a fuckin’ ginger,” DC Gary Shields whispered to DC Eddie McKay. “What does he know about real-life crime?”
Mark flicked a lock of long black hair back from his forehead and gave the coppers a broad Colgate smile. “Good morning,” he said, well aware that the group regarded him with a mixture of suspicion and animosity, and no doubt thought that he was an unnecessary civilian presence in their midst. “I realise that you are the professionals who run down and apprehend the bad guys for a living. I’m not here to teach my grandma to suck eggs. But I may just be able to give you a little assistance; an insight into the type of person that you’re looking for. Are there any questions before I begin? I’d rather clear the air before we get to it.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, standing to address the now clean-shaven and immaculately, if casually dressed doctor. “What exactly is it that you do? Are you a profiler?”
“I was a criminal psychologist,” Mark said. “I studied felons, and the patterns and motivational causes for their antisocial behaviour. A lot of these scumbags work to a pattern that can be anticipated. There’s a ritual element to what they do, and many follow a predetermined blueprint. I attempted to get a handle on what made them tick, and to predict what their next move might be. If I can give you even one small lead or aspect to look at that you may not have considered, then it could conceivably help to identify the perpetrator.”
The atmosphere lightened. He had put most of the cops at ease.
“And the answer to, am I a profiler, is,” he continued after a pause. “I used to be. I was a federal agent working out of the Behavioural Science Unit at Quantico. An
ything else?”
There were a few grunts and shaking of heads, but no further questions.
“OK, let’s start with what we’ve got,” Mark said, turning to the large wall-mounted whiteboard behind him, on which he added notes with a black marker pen as he talked. “Both vics were murdered in approximately the same location. And the bizarre methodology employed makes it reasonably safe to assume that we are dealing with the same deranged individual. The fact that the two women were young and had auburn hair is without doubt a factor. The light was poor, and I am convinced that rather than them just happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, they had been stalked. They were selected prey. This guy is redirecting anger from someone else, and venting uncontrollable urges on similar looking strangers.”
“Have you any idea what type of person we’re looking for?” DC Louise Callard said.
“It’s early days,” Mark said. “But at this point in time I would say a white male in his twenties or early thirties. He will almost certainly be single, with a pronounced personality disorder. He may well be a loner who avoids as much social contact as possible. His condition will determine what work he does, if any. He is apt to be employed in a field that affords him a certain level of isolation; apartness. Although I would imagine that he is of above average intelligence. This type usually blends well. He will probably keep himself in good physical shape. It is not a stretch to see him as a game player. The press and TV coverage of his actions will amuse and excite him; an added bonus. Rather than trying to conceal his kills, he chooses to leave them as a statement of what he is capable of. The grandstanding could ultimately be his downfall. His reason for killing is not apparent. I can only speculate at this stage that he is motivated by a real or imagined grievance. He has satisfied some inner need, and repeated the process for the emotional reward that it gave him. As I’ve already stated, this is anger, which is being channelled into revenge attacks. Vulnerable, similar victims are being targeted. The only problem at this stage is, that types can overlap. His disorder is not completely evident, yet.”
