Cold Kill

by David Lawrence

  Stella asked, ‘You read the book?’

  Kimber’s journal had been scanned into a computer and printed out.

  ‘I did. I’d sooner have seen the book itself. I’m not a graphologist, but there are certain signs that can’t be missed.’

  ‘He’s very neat.’

  ‘That’s one of the signs.’

  ‘He had a computer. Why would he write this in a notebook rather than use a word processor?’

  ‘More personal. Also it’s unique. I suspect he likes the process of writing these things down in longhand, likes forming the letters. Handwriting’s sensual. Here’s another thing: no one can hack in.’

  Anne Beaumont was a shrink; also a criminal-profiler. For a short time she had been Stella’s shrink, when a case had collided with Stella’s personal life with all the velocity and concomitant damage of a car-crash. That relationship was over, though Stella always used Anne as a profiler if she needed one and if the budget allowed. She liked Anne’s wryness and her sharp sense of humour; she liked the fact that her approach to life was on a nil-bullshit basis.

  ‘What can you tell me?’

  ‘Well, first off, he’s a collector. Trophy-hunter. In the days of washing-lines he’d’ve been stealing underwear. He puts the women up on the wall – on display – like the heads of buffalo or antelope in the trophy room of a man who shoots big game. He’s captured them. Same with the locks of hair.’

  ‘How did he do that?’ Stella wondered. ‘How did he get close enough to cut their hair?’

  ‘You think he did it after they were dead?’

  ‘There’s no evidence for that. Fifty locks of hair – fifty deaths, all unnoticed? It’s not possible.’

  ‘In the movies,’ Anne suggested. ‘Sitting behind them on a bus. In a crowded tube. Simply walking close behind in the street. The hair might not belong to the women he regularly stalked. In effect, he’s collecting two different kinds of trophy: a lock of hair – which is one sort of capture, a token – or else he’s stalking – when he gets not a token but the woman herself.’

  ‘People would see him do it: cutting the hair.’

  ‘You’d be surprised at how little people see. Ever see.’

  ‘What about the things he writes under the photos?’

  ‘Yeah… Twisted bastard.’

  ‘Is that a detached psychoanalytical assessment?’

  ‘About as detached as I felt when I read them.’ Anne paused. ‘They represent a slight problem, in that collectors are usually pretty harmless. They possess the item instead of the person. Of course, things can go from bad to much worse. This guy’s collecting is tied in with stalking and there are classic escalation patterns involved in that activity. I’m interested in the way he keeps talking about being up close, liking to be close, using binoculars and the long lens.’

  Stella mentioned what Kimber had said in interview: how the binoculars brought him almost nose to nose with his quarry; that he was the invisible man; the way a woman might look up as if she had sensed him watching.

  ‘Yes,’ Anne said. ‘It’s all about power. How are you? How’s John Delaney?’

  Stella smiled. In their patient–shrink days, Anne had often asked unprofessional questions; Stella had come to recognize it as professional trickery. ‘I think we’re okay. Lots of sex. Is that a good sign?’

  ‘Who cares? Have you moved in together?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I have a feeling that we’d need more space. There’s something adversarial about the way we joke with each other.’

  ‘Is there? God, Freud would have loved that.’

  ‘Is he a killer? Did he kill Valerie Blake? Has he killed others?’

  ‘I’m an analyst, not a crystal-gazer.’

  ‘Is it likely?’

  ‘It’s possible. Look, some stalkers set out to oppress their victims, they hang about, make a nuisance of themselves, they phone, they send letters, they apply pressure. Others begin by simply following. It’s a way of being intimately involved with someone without their knowledge, a bit like contact-free rape. Then they want to get closer. This guy talks about that all the time. When he says he’s the invisible man, he’s enjoying a common power fantasy. Where is he – the invisible man? He’s in the next seat on the bus, he’s breathing down her neck in the street, he’s slipping in with her when she enters her flat, he’s in the bedroom when she undresses, in the bathroom when she takes a bath. Ever had that sort of thought yourself?’

  Stella shook her head, then said, ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Everyone has at some time or another. Following is a physical manifestation of the fantasy. Obviously, you have to be disturbed to take things that extra step; and the real problem arrives when intimacy at a distance isn’t enough.’

  Anne’s consulting rooms were in Kensington Gore opposite the park, a first-floor room with high windows and lightly scented with fresh flowers. There were a few books but not textbooks; there were two big abstracts – planes of soft colour combined with harsh, white spaces; there was a small wire sculpture of a leaping hare. No trace of any influence in the room save hers.

  ‘Why has he confessed?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Because he did it?’

  ‘Well, he knows about her clothes – the jogging things, sweats, that she wasn’t wearing them, and he knows about the gold cross and chain she was wearing: actually, he says he took it.’

  ‘You’re not sure, though.’

  ‘It’s shaky; it’s not difficult to dispute. He hasn’t asked for a lawyer, so we haven’t been challenged on specifics yet.’ She paused. ‘I’d like to have him for it.’

  ‘I bet you would.’ Anne went out of the room and returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses. ‘I call it the Judas Syndrome,’ she said. ‘Confessing is also unburdening, isn’t it, in the Catholic sense? The religious sense.’

  Stella took the offered glass and sipped her wine. ‘What usually happens is that we get a few crazies calling in and owning up. Some are just nuts: we hand them over to social services. Others haven’t got the first idea how the crime was committed, or where, or when. A few are up to speed but shaky on small essentials. Now and then, we get someone who’s pretty convincing, which is why we usually keep back some detail or another.’

  ‘It’s a form of glory-seeking,’ Anne observed. ‘For a time, they’ll be the person they claim to be: the ruthless killer, the rapist, whatever, and they’ll get all the attention that goes with it, but they’ll hope to be found out. Generally speaking they retract, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, you never hear of anyone going to trial on a confession, not these days. If there’s no independent evidence, they’re likely to walk. Robert Kimber would have been shown the door a while back if it wasn’t for the fact that he seemed to know things he shouldn’t.’

  ‘And now you’ve got this stuff: the photos, the horror stories in silver copperplate.’ Anne got up and began to roam among the young women Kimber had snapped and captured, pausing now and then to read, her expression bleak.

  ‘Whether he did it or not,’ she said, ‘he’d be better off dead.’

  12

  John Delaney was trying to avoid patterns: patterns made him feel boxed in. He wasn’t used to someone coming home and he wasn’t used to this evening-meal routine and he wasn’t used to cooking it. He called Stella’s mobile and got her just as she was parking. He said, ‘We’re eating out.’

  The sky was clear and the pavements were slick with frost. London generates its own heat, but even that big city glow couldn’t keep the temperature above zero. The cold amplified sound: sirens three streets away, a store alarm, a little chorus of car alarms like the call-and-answer patterns of exotic birds.

  They went to a Chinese place just six doors down from Delaney’s flat. The waiters greeted him as if he’d been away too long. The restaurant was warm and cluttered and noisy. Stella told him about the trophy walls in Kimber’s flat and the locks
of hair taped to display boards. She was still worried about the technique involved in that.

  ‘On a bus,’ Delaney suggested. ‘At the movies.’

  ‘That’s what Anne Beaumont said.’

  ‘Who?’ Then he remembered: Stella’s shrink when she was having dreams of dead babies and drinking too much and seeing Delaney but still living with George Paterson.

  ‘She asked about you.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told her you’re a great fuck.’

  ‘Did she need to know that?’

  ‘She’s interested in my well-being.’

  ‘Which involves your orgasm count…’

  ‘Who’s counting?’

  ‘What did she say about your crazy person?’

  ‘Did I say he was crazy?’

  ‘He walked into a police station and confessed to a crime – how sane is that?’

  ‘She mentioned something called the Judas Syndrome.’

  Delaney looked delighted. ‘She called it what?’ He took out a small notebook and wrote the term on a blank page.

  ‘It’s a piece, isn’t it?’ Stella asked. ‘You can see a piece in it. Well, you can’t have my profiler.’

  ‘I bet she’d be intrigued to meet me, knowing what a great fuck I am.’

  A waiter arrived and they ordered what they always ordered: both the food and the wine. Delaney recognized it as a pattern and it made him edgy. Stella called the waiter back and asked for water chestnuts.

  ‘You don’t like water chestnuts,’ Delaney observed.

  ‘They’re not for me, they’re for you.’ Stella could recognize a pattern as well as anyone.

  ‘Actually, it’s not your profiler I’m after, though she’d be good background. The piece would have to contain a Judas point of view.’

  ‘Dream on.’

  ‘If you release him, he’s free to talk to anyone, even me. If you charge him and he goes to trial, I’d have to wait, but I could do the groundwork – the investigation, the confession, the trial.’

  ‘It’s too close to home.’

  ‘Therein lies my advantage.’

  He smiled his off-centre smile, which normally did the trick but, just now, brought a little rush of anger.

  ‘You’re in possession of privileged information. I can’t come home every night and worry about what I should or shouldn’t say.’

  His smile faded and the words come home every night were strung out in the air between them. Stella could almost see them glow: her very own Christmas message.

  Their waiter returned bringing the wine. The muzak was seasonal selections; just at that moment, ‘Mary’s Boy Child’, a traditional Chinese favourite. Stella lifted her glass. She said, ‘Listen, we can work something out. We can have a few basic rules about things like that.’

  Delaney nodded. ‘Sure. Of course.’ He closed his notebook.

  ‘You’ve got very neat handwriting,’ Stella observed. ‘Very neat, very small.’

  ‘Sign of –?’

  ‘Sign of a great fuck.’

  They talked about other things and laughed together and ordered a second bottle of wine. Delaney mentioned Jamie and his certainty that Christ was on his way from celestial realms and would surely arrive on the anniversary of his birth, come to smite sinners and exalt the virtuous. Stella said she was all for sinners being smitten; she hoped they might get smitten shitless.

  They enjoyed their meal, though neither ate the water chestnuts.

  Later, Stella sat on a counter stool with what some people might think was a drink too far and read through the day’s reports.

  No matches had been found between any victims of recent attacks and the photos on Kimber’s wall.

  No matches had been found between those photos and any of the faces from the missing persons files, though that search was long and continuing.

  The superintendent’s custody extension on Kimber had expired, but a magistrate’s extension had been successfully applied for. This carried a note from Sorley, telling Stella to charge the man or let him go. He’d given a time-scale: it was brief.

  The text of a phone message from Davison at Forensics mentioned that he was on the case. It carried a rider from Sue Chapman letting Stella know that she hadn’t bothered to transcribe Davison’s request for Stella’s age, hair colour and cup-size, which formed the greater part of the message.

  Delaney switched off his computer, then got up and passed behind her to make coffee. She was still reading when he came round to stand in her eyeline, waiting for her to look up. He was holding a pair of kitchen scissors and a lock of her hair.

  ‘See?’ he said. ‘That’s how.’

  13

  Driving in London is a matter of attitude: face this guy down, cut that guy up, never give way, never look back. You can run a red light on a count of three but a count of five will get you sideswiped in the grid. When Stella emerged from Delaney’s flat next morning and looked up towards Notting Hill Gate, an ambulance, a tow-truck and a traffic patrol car were trying to solve just such a problem. She walked to work through the crowds of shoppers, office workers, winter-break tourists, beggars and lost souls.

  Sadie was playing the penny whistle outside a shop that sold cards and cola and the sort of brightly coloured gewgaws that bought Manhattan from the Delawares. Jamie lay alongside her on his bag, asleep. Most druggy panhandlers had a scabby-looking dog and Sadie was thinking that Jamie was no substitute – she’d made three pounds in two hours. Robbing was a better bet: she’d finally got last night’s fix by rolling a drunk, but those were scant pickings.

  Stella went by, thinking of other things.

  Mike Sorley lit a cigarette and tossed the pack down on the desk. The government caution reminded him that SMOKING CAUSES A SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH. Stella saw that someone had underlined the large, black type in red pen. Second wives are often younger wives and carry certain responsibilities.

  Sorley said, ‘They’ll be putting health warnings on prostitutes’ arses before long.’

  ‘Or the kite-mark,’ Stella said. ‘I think we charge him. I think there’s enough.’

  ‘It’s not against the law to take pictures of people in the street.’ Sorley’s job was to be devil’s advocate. ‘Or to write obscene stories on your own walls.’

  ‘The journal –’

  ‘Okay, say you’re his brief. What’s your line on that?’

  ‘Fantasy.’

  ‘Exactly. He’s made up the names, hasn’t he – alphabetical order? So he made up the rest.’

  ‘But all of those together, plus his confession, and knowing about the sweats and the cross and Valerie Blake being one of his trophy snapshots –’

  ‘The sweats were given over the air, weren’t they? One of the SOC guys.’

  Stella had checked the transcripts. ‘Yes, they were.’

  ‘And Kimber’s got a state-of-the-art scanner.’

  ‘The sweats but not the chain.’

  ‘As soon as he decides to appoint legal representation, the confession’s out the window, you know that. The Crown Prosecution Service knows that. He’s never signed a statement. Blake being among his snaps and knowledge of the chain – that’s more helpful, but one is entirely circumstantial and he could have known about the other, about the cross, from following her.’

  ‘But not that the killer took it.’

  ‘Guesswork. Imagination. It’s little enough.’ He added, ‘Why did he wait?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To tell us about the cross.’

  Stella remembered Kimber’s excited smile, the way he’d tempted and teased her with it… My keepsake. Something new to offer, something he’d decided to hold back… or something he simply hadn’t thought of before. It made her uneasy, but she wasn’t sure why.

  ‘How long before I have to charge him?’

  ‘You may as well make a decision now as later. Nothing useful on his hard disk, I suppose?’

  ‘Straight porn. No paedo
.’

  ‘Okay, well, it’s your call.’

  ‘Let’s take it to the wire,’ Stella said. ‘I’m waiting on Forensics.’

  Two hours later Harriman picked up a call and patched it to Stella’s line.

  Davison said, ‘I asked around. People say you’re hot.’

  ‘They don’t know me.’

  ‘A significant number ratified the black thong with silk panels.’

  ‘I’m afraid I made that up, Davison.’

  ‘Please! That thong is at the centre of an entire dreamworld.’

  ‘It doesn’t exist. What do the tests show?’

  ‘It’s not him.’

  Stella closed her eyes as if to concentrate better. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m a scientist. I have certificates.’

  ‘I need detail.’

  ‘The pathologist – it was Sam Burgess, right –?’

  ‘Sam, yes.’

  ‘Okay, Sam had gone over the body very carefully, he’s meticulous, always does a thorough job. We looked at the scene of crime findings, DNA on her jogging clothes mostly, because the open nature of the scene meant that there would have been more individual traces than stars in the sky. So, we’ve got the SOC traces and we’ve got the traces that Sam picked up from her in the morgue. There are significant rogue traces, that’s for sure: on the sweats and on her body, especially in her hair.’

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘Other hairs. Hairs not her own. We shed hair all the time, not least during exertion.’

  Davison went silent. Stella said, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Drinking coffee,’ he said, ‘sorry. Now, you can pick up a DNA trace through any normal human contact, so in a case like this we look for a preponderance. We found one, but it doesn’t marry with the swab you took from Robert Adrian Kimber.’

  ‘Not Kimber.’