by Stav Sherez
Geneva nodded as she wrote down the details.
Carrigan turned to Karlson. ‘The alley yield anything?’
The sergeant tapped his fingers on the table, black crescents of frostbitten skin covering the tips. ‘Nothing we can use. We’re still waiting to hear back from forensics on the vial. We did find two more eviscerated cats inside the dumpster as well as leftovers from the one Miller discovered in the alley. There were signs the vagrant was living in there, at least temporarily, and we can assume this was his dinner.’
Karlson smiled as everybody groaned. ‘Forensics have also cleared the tramps who were dossing down in the abandoned house. They found no traces of fresh blood on them and he’d definitely have blood on him.’
‘What about the hostel?’ Carrigan asked.
Karlson flicked through his notes. ‘Nothing much, what you’d expect – drugs and drunken fights, nothing that seems to connect to our guy.’
‘Did you look at the manager?’
Karlson nodded. ‘Max Duchowsky. Born London, 1958. No criminal record. His alibi checks out. Four residents said he was at the desk all evening.’
‘The abduction couldn’t have taken more than five minutes.’
‘You think he looks good for this?’
Carrigan shrugged. ‘He knows the hostel and had contact with both Anna and Madison.’
‘How did he come across when you interviewed him?’
‘He was forthcoming.’
‘But?’ Karlson had sensed something underlying Carrigan’s words.
‘But I can’t tell whether he’s shifty by nature or because he was hiding something.’
‘I’ll speak to some people and see what I can find,’ Karlson said.
‘Good.’ Carrigan ticked off several items in his notebook. ‘Branch has released a holding statement to the press that should keep them off our backs for a while. Some joker managed to film the body being taken out of the abandoned house and posted it on YouTube.’ Carrigan waited until the groans and catcalls had subsided. ‘We can’t keep this stuff hidden any more. That’s the way it is. Demons tend not to like going back into their bottles so we better get used to it. I don’t want you talking to anyone. By tomorrow, something else will snag the press’s attention and no one will care about this but us.’ He looked over towards Geneva. ‘Miller? I want you and Singh doing background on the hostel. See if anything raises flags, any complaints from women, you know the drill.’ He waited till she’d finished writing it down. ‘How did you get on with our ever-cheery pathologist?’
‘He sends his regards too.’ Geneva scanned her notes. ‘Cause of death was the incision on her neck. She’d been strapped down to something made of wood prior to her death. No indications of sexual assault.’ Geneva paused a beat. ‘But that may be misleading.’
‘You think this is sexual?’
‘There was no blood on her skin.’
‘That’s impossible.’ Carrigan remembered the tumult of blood arrayed across the room.
‘That’s what I first thought too. And it didn’t make any sense until I looked at her clothes. The clothes she was found in weren’t hers. They were two sizes too big.’
‘Maybe she just liked them loose?’ Karlson said.
‘You obviously don’t know much about women.’ A faint scatter of giggles. ‘It’s also entirely unlike anything else in Anna’s wardrobe. I think he killed her while she was wearing her own clothes then stripped her body and dressed her in these.’
‘That makes him sound like a serial killer,’ Singh said.
Carrigan frowned. That dreaded phrase again. Whatever clinical meaning it had once held was long gone in the obliterative rush of media. ‘A serial killer is minimum three victims, so let’s not start spreading that kind of language around. It’s far more likely someone she knew or came into contact with killed her – statistics bear this out. And we should be thankful for that. If he’s appeared in her life before then he’s left some trace and we will find it.’
‘I disagree.’
Carrigan looked up, startled by the unfamiliar voice.
He was sitting in the back row, by the door. He must have come in during the briefing. It only took Carrigan a brief moment but the recognition was there. He tried to control his expression but knew his eyes would give him away. He turned to face the monitor.
‘I think you’re wrong,’ the man at the back of the room said. He got up from the chair and introduced himself. ‘Ed Hoffmann. I’m a clinical psychologist. I was sent here to offer you my help.’ He had a slight stutter but spoke fast, overriding the defect, sometimes cutting off words or running them together as if he couldn’t get his thoughts out fast enough.
‘We weren’t looking for help,’ Carrigan said. Geneva glanced over at him, unsettled by his tone. Carrigan tried to process what was happening. Why was Hoffmann here? Did the profiler recognise him?
Hoffmann laughed, an easy garrulous chuckle that spilled out the side of his mouth. It was easy to see why he was such a hit on the lecture circuit despite his appearance. He was short and round and almost completely bald, with a monk’s tongue of hair circumnavigating his skull. His arms seemed too small for his body and his clothes were mismatched and frayed as if a blind man had picked them out at random from a charity shop. When he smiled, his teeth glinted an unnatural white. He was one of three or four profilers the Met used on big cases – his day job was lecturing on behavioural aberration at UCL. ‘That’s as may be, Mr Carrigan, but both you and I answer to those above us and this is the decision they’ve made.’ Hoffmann took short, fast strides, nodding at the gathered detectives as he made his way to the front. ‘I understand how you may feel. I know bringing in someone from outside presumes a lack on your part – but that’s the wrong way to think about it.’ He was addressing the entire room now, standing only a few feet away from Carrigan. ‘I’m more like a computer application you download to help you with one particular task.’
‘It’s nice to know you think so highly of your talents,’ Carrigan said and, as soon as he’d said it, he wished he could take it back but it was too late. ‘We’re doing perfectly fine as it is.’
Hoffmann placed both hands in his jacket pockets. ‘With all due respect, I very much doubt that. What you’ve just told your team proves it. We are looking at a serial killer, regardless of how many he’s killed so far. It’s not about quantity – it’s about pathology and the pathology fits. I’ve had a quick look through the case files and nothing in there makes me doubt that conclusion.’
‘What makes you think this is a serial crime?’ Carrigan forced himself to make eye contact with the profiler. They were standing just two feet apart. He tried to read Hoffmann’s expression. Did Hoffmann know? Did he know that Carrigan knew?
‘Everything I’ve read makes me think that. The way he positioned her body, the blood shower, the drugs. It’s a ritual, a set of steps he needs to take to make this fulfilling for him.’ Hoffmann paused. ‘You’re expecting me to tell you he’s white, intelligent, a loner, working a manual job he resents, but you know all that already. Of course he is. You can pretend you’re normal for a few hours but not for a lifetime.’ Hoffmann rubbed his knuckles across his forehead. ‘What we do know about him is that he’s extremely organised. The abduction, the snipping of the passport photo, the fact he hasn’t left behind any forensics. It’s done with an almost military precision. Which, to me, suggests you’ve got a hunter on your hands.’
‘Aren’t they all?’ Singh said, trying to make her tone light, but nobody laughed.
Hoffmann turned towards her. ‘This is a special designation of serial killer. They get their kicks as much from stalking their prey as from the actual kill. Like a lion on the Serengeti they pick off the weak and strays, sometimes spending weeks tracking them, savouring each moment of the hunt. They tend to be males in their late thirties to fifties, older than usual for serial killers and, like this guy, are very organised. He enjoys the hunt. That’s what’s gettin
g him off. He’s also displayed quite pronounced sadistic tendencies. Anna was strapped to a tortureboard. We know he didn’t rape her but we don’t know what he did do to her. She went missing on Friday night but, according to the autopsy, wasn’t killed till Sunday. That means he needed that time to do something to her – but what? The answer will be as much a part of his signature as his MO.’
‘What’s the difference?’ Jennings asked.
Carrigan was about to reply but Hoffmann cut him off. ‘His MO is how he commits the crime. His signature is what he needs to do to satisfy his urges. The MO adapts as he becomes better at evading us. The signature never changes. The blood shower is certainly part of it – it’s a very intimate act, someone’s life emptying out over your body. He could have cut her neck all the way across – it would have been quicker – but he didn’t. He made the smallest puncture he could. He closed her eyes, tidied up her dress. I agree that he must have swapped her clothes afterwards but I don’t know why, only that it’s important to him.’ Hoffmann paused. ‘He won’t be sitting around gloating. He almost definitely has the next one in his sights now he’s claimed Anna.’
‘How do you know that?’
Hoffmann gave Jennings the briefest of glances. ‘Because there’s always a next one.’
20
‘You need a favour?’
Geneva was halfway to Berman’s desk when his head shot up. He’d been burrowed in front of his computer and she hadn’t realised he’d heard her coming. ‘Now, why would you think that?’
Berman swivelled his chair away from the desk. She always forgot how tall he was, most of the time she only ever saw him sitting. He stretched out his legs and rubbed his left knee. His black trainers were large and square and looked exactly like the hard drives on his desk.
‘You’re smiling,’ he said. ‘And you’re smiling in that way I’ve seen you smiling at suspects. Not the way you smile when you think no one’s looking and you’re lost in your headphones.’
She pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘And there I was thinking you were just another autistic geek with no interpersonal skills.’
He laughed and she’d rarely heard him laughing and was surprised by how carefree he sounded. The briefing had ended twenty minutes ago and Geneva had snuck out for a cigarette and gone through her lists of things to do. She would start on the hostel tomorrow. It was too late to go to Anna’s cleaning agency tonight and that too would have to be done tomorrow. She needed to borrow money from her mother to pay this month’s rent – it would mean a visit rather than a phone call and she should have done that right after the briefing but there was something she needed to check first.
‘So, this favour?’ Berman tapped his pen against the table, the frayed tassels of his prayer shawl peeking out from beneath his shirt like a petticoat.
Geneva zoomed back to the present. ‘Anna was trolled on Twitter. Bad enough to make her cry, apparently, and often enough to make her delete her account.’ She watched as Berman’s body snapped into focus. ‘You find that interesting too?’
‘Very much so.’ Berman swung back into place, his legs completely disappearing under the table. ‘And you were wondering if I could get into deleted Twitter accounts?’
Geneva held up her hands in mock surrender.
‘An eight-year-old can do that. What I can get you is that . . .’ He started to type, a series of fast and rhythmic strokes. ‘. . . and a record of everyone who ever interacted with her on Twitter, both publicly and by direct messaging.’
Geneva tried to conceal her smile.
‘That’s more like it,’ Berman said. ‘That’s the kind of smile I was talking about. Your little private smile.’ He turned back to the computer, one hand pounding keys, the other rotating the shawl’s tassels between the tips of his fingers. The computer pinged. He scanned it and a broad grin cracked his face. ‘Here we go.’ He tilted the screen towards Geneva and moved his chair out of the way. ‘It’s all yours. I also ran a check on other sites – Facebook, Pinterest, etc. – but she wasn’t active on those. Need any help, just text me; I’m off to get a burger.’
Anna Becker hadn’t tweeted much. In the last six months she’d posted only 613 tweets. Her account name was her own name and she’d used the photo of her and Madison as an avatar. She had 89 followers and followed 321 people. Geneva cut and pasted and printed out a list of both, then scrolled back to Anna’s first tweet and began reading.
Anna had only started tweeting on her arrival in the UK. The tweets were in English and most consisted of terse exclamations of delight and wonder. Geneva read of Anna’s excitement at seeing the Globe for the first time, the lights smearing the river outside the National, burrowing through markets filled with strange smells and even stranger languages. Anna spoke of the bustling life of a city after the dry cow fields of home. Of how much she hated the grey drizzle but loved the bookshops, couldn’t stand the Tube but spent entire afternoons riding the top decks of buses.
The day grew dark, long skinny fingers of shadow spreading across the table and freckling Geneva’s face. Phones rang in empty rooms. Thunder rattled the window frames. She drank Coke, made lists, charted repeat conversations and constructed a timeline.
Anna interacted with a small circle of friends, Madison most of all, and Geneva winced as she read through their dialogues, revealing their every step – where they were going to meet up and when, planning their evenings on Twitter rather than by phone or email. They made it so easy. Orwell had been wrong in thinking governments would need to install apparatus to spy on the daily lives of their citizens – we’d already done it on our own, gladly and willingly and without a thought to consequence.
The girls discussed bars and clubs and which cinemas were the cheapest. They talked about how much they hated the weather, the rude people and astounding prices, but Geneva saw nothing which might have focused a stalker’s interest. Not that you needed much – a casual glance in a crowded cafe, a chance encounter on the Tube, your avatar reminding him of the one that got away. If someone was determined enough they could find out everything about you from the web, every hidden fold of your personality and taste so that when you met them in a crowded bar they’d say all the things you’d always dreamed a man would say before they took your hand and led you out of this world.
A door banged shut in the corridor. Geneva heard the lift doors opening but no one got on or off. Lightning forked the sky. She drained her Coke and continued reading. The world telescoped down to 140 characters and the parameters of her computer screen.
Anna went to see a production of Ghosts in February and it provoked her most sustained burst of tweeting, complaining that the director had completely misunderstood Ibsen’s play, the actors delivering their lines as if they had no idea what they meant. Anna tweeted considerably less in March and wasn’t interacting much with her friends. Geneva looked up their separate accounts and saw they’d still been going out and carrying on as usual in her absence.
The first abusive tweet came at 9.37 p.m. on Monday, 5 April.
It was just one word.
FAILURE.
It was cruel and simple and effective.
The tweet was sent from a ‘Paul Smith’, the avatar was the default Twitter egg. The profile was blank. Paul Smith had only tweeted this one tweet. Anna had immediately blocked his account. She probably thought it was a mistake or one of the many spiders and sex bots that crawled across cyberspace.
The next tweet came two days later. The account belonged to a ‘Doug Mantle’ and said: TRY HARDER NEXT TIME. It coincided with the one veiled reference Anna had made to a part she didn’t get. There could be no pretending it was a mistake or random spam now.
She hadn’t replied, and Geneva respected her for that, for not rising to the bait, knowing what trolls wanted most was to goad others into the kind of shrivelling they felt in their own souls. But Anna had simply blocked the account and made no reference to it in subsequent tweets.
Three days l
ater, she received the next one: YOU WILL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH.
A pigeon collided against the window, the sound huge and sudden. Geneva jumped almost straight out of her chair. She looked over and saw flapping wings and blood zigzagging the glass. She shook her head and stared at the words onscreen. There was something decidedly sadistic about the timing of the tweets. The gaps just long enough to lull Anna into thinking it was over before the next one appeared. The pattern repeated for the next two weeks. The tweets were becoming increasingly more personal and vicious. Every time Anna blocked one account, a new one would appear. Then everything changed.
On the morning of 24 April, Anna Becker received 436 abusive tweets from 67 different accounts in the space of two hours. It continued the next day and the day after and the one after that. Then it stopped and for a week there were no more tweets.
The photos came next.
The captions accompanying the photos were saccharine endearments: THINKING OF YOU – WITH YOU IN MIND – THIS REMINDED ME OF YOU. The images below the words were of diseased penises. Colour and hi-res and pretty much the most disgusting thing Geneva had ever seen. Graphic close-ups of pus-bubbled membrane, cracked skin, mushrooming growths and pulsating red wounds. The photos were sent every hour for the next two days, all from different accounts.
There was only one more tweet after that. It contained no words, just a photo of a tropical beach at sunset. Geneva stared at it. It was an odd coda to this sustained campaign of harassment. There had been no activity on Anna’s Twitter since the photo. A couple of days later, Anna deleted her account. 9 May. Seven days before she disappeared.
21
He’d spent an hour sitting in the dark room, thinking about Hoffmann’s surprise appearance and watching his mother lost so deep within herself she could never find her way out again. He’d talked to her, told her about Louise and the kids and what they’d got up to on the weekend. He drank hospital coffee and read two chapters of The Great Gatsby. The appalling sense of squander and decay struck him hard. Despite having exactly the same text, it was an entirely different book from the one he’d first read when he was fifteen.
