So, dressed in a demure navy blue pant suit with a man-tailored white silk shirt buttoned to the neck, Ellie sat on a hard metal chair in the depressing institutional-green interview room, waiting for the Sunshine Slasher to be brought from his cell in the psychiatric wing. Thick metal latticing on the window increased her claustrophobia, and she checked her watch impatiently. Even Richards’ miserable presence would have been some support, but the bastard hadn’t shown up. Ellie would face the Slasher alone. She had just pulled out her notebook and pen when two burly uniformed guards ushered a flabby, pasty-skinned man into the room. Prison certainly hadn’t improved Hector Abbott; he looked even more unfit and overweight than Ellie remembered. His greasy hair hung over the collar of his regulation prison shirt, and his fingernails were bitten cruelly down to the quick. A fading bruise showed on his thick forearm. So the rumors were true—the serial killer was not being made welcome in the prison by the rest of the “lifer” population. Not even by his companions in the crazy wing.
But his hangdog appearance didn’t raise a rustle of pity in Ellie. When the shambling man finally turned his gaze on her his eyes still held the same cold, reptilian cruelty that had made her shiver when she had first seen him in a police station interview room, nearly two years ago. Ellie shuddered, remembering how he’d bragged proudly about his skills with the surgical scalpel. She stopped, chewing her lip as she remembered Brad’s reference to the antique scalpel and unease trickled into her mind. Only the stark facts that the killer used a surgical blade, and that a flower was left at the scene, had been brought out in court. Exciting enough for the Press, of course, but how could Brad know the exact details? This interview could help clear up that mystery, at least. Ellie turned back to the task at hand. She wanted this interview over.
“So, how are you today, Mr. Abbott?” she asked, forcing herself to be polite as the convicted killer subsided into the chair opposite her. Ellie offered up a little prayer of gratitude that the two muscular guards remained in the room with them, stationed on each side of the door and within easy reach of their charge should he misbehave. Ellie’s already stretched smile turned into a grimace of distaste as she imagined those soft clammy hands, with their short, stubby fingers, touching her skin.
“Oh, passable well, Officer Fitzpatrick. Or may I call you Eloise?” The man’s knowledge of her little-used Christian name shocked Ellie.
“No, I think we should keep this meeting on an official footing, Mister Abbott.” Ellie snapped.
Anger flared briefly in those flat brown eyes, and then Hector Abbott smiled. He knew her anger grew from fear, and his mad fantasies fed on that fear. Ellie sighed. The interview had not even begun, and already Abbott was psyching her out.
Crisply, determined to regain control of the interview, Ellie explained who she was and that she wanted to confirm a few details relating to the crimes for which Abbott was imprisoned. All the while she kept her eyes on her notebook, unwilling to look into his depraved face.
“Well, well, I bet you’re not that proper and prudish, out of that ugly uniform-type thing you’re wearing,” he murmured, prompting one of the guards to utter a brief warning. Ellie gave him a grateful smile, but held up her hand to prevent further interventions.
“I am not the focus of this interview, Mr. Abbott. You are. Now, can you cast your mind back about a year, eighteen months ago—back to when you did a series of interviews with a writer by the name of B.S. Anderson? Bradley Scott Anderson?” Cold flooded into the pit of Ellie’s stomach as she remembered how Brad had deceived her, but there would be plenty of time to deal with that later. Now she had thirty minutes with one of England’s most notorious killers, at the end of which time she would need to be able to make some accurate judgments about the truth of the answers he gave her.
“I never forget anything, girlie. That’s what makes me so good at what I do.” The words curled around Ellie like a caress, and she had to stop herself staring into the man’s mad eyes like a rabbit trapped in headlight beams. Because we all know what happens to rabbits that don’t get out of the way.
“That’s very good, Mr. Abbott. Because I want you to tell me just what you told this man about the murders.” Even as she said the words, Ellie knew her phraseology was wrong. Abbott’s eyes grew wide, and he began to spew out all his excitement about the experience of robbing four innocent young women of their lives.
“I think that’s enough, Mr. Abbott.” Ellie held up her hand, determined not to let him see the effect he was having on her. Prison had changed the man, peeled away a veneer of dullness and let an unsuspected evil intelligence shine through. Ellie again repressed a shudder. “I wanted to know if you told Mr. Anderson in detail about the killings—for example, did you tell him about taking a lock of each girl’s hair?”
“Ah, yes, my little keepsakes. Do you think, if I asked nicely, that the court would release those things so that I could have them again? It is my property, after all.” Abbott’s eyes had a bright, wistful quality, longing for his collection of bizarre souvenirs. Ellie felt sick.
“Did you talk about the flowers?”
“Ah, my little gifts of love. The newspapers loved that little touch, and the writer already knew.”
“And what did you tell him about the weapon you used?”
“Oh, yes.” Abbott’s eyes narrowed craftily. “I know the police wanted to keep that a secret so no one could copy my work and pretend to be me. That’s something I don’t want to happen, either. Killing is like a work of art—good technicians can copy the work, but they don’t have the original gift of creation. Their work merely devalues the work of the master. So in answer to your question, my dear, I did not tell that writer man that I gave my girls red roses, and I did not tell him I used a valuable antique surgical blade. However, he’s a passably intelligent man, and I did tell him I used a weapon left by my father, so perhaps he made his own deductions. For the less talented, I guess any razor would do,” Abbott said casually.
Ellie sat transfixed for a moment. What quirk of genes, what accident among the neurons of the brain, what hellish environment, could produce a human being who saw robbing innocent women of their lives as an art form? Ellie longed to take a deep breath, but was afraid to fill her lungs with the fetid scent of evil that clung to this man.
She gave herself a mental shake and got back to business. A few more questions, a few more excited answers from Abbott, and then the guards signaled that the interview was over. As he got up obediently to leave, Hector Abbott leaned across the table to Ellie, his sour breath tickling her face as he whispered, “They all had lovely blonde hair, like yours—and killing them was so exciting. Sexually, I mean.”
“The inspector doesn’t need to know that, Abbott,” one of the guards intervened, stepping forward. But Abbott’s hand snaked roughly around Ellie’s throat with amazing speed, stubby fingers digging into her neck as the other hand grabbed her shirtfront, grazing her breasts. The shocked guards grabbed their prisoner roughly by the arms and swiveled him toward the door.
“Sorry, Ma’am, are you all right?” One of the guards asked over his shoulder as he and his colleague marched a suddenly quiescent Abbott from the room.
“Yes, yes, fine. Just take him away,” Ellie gasped, shock making it difficult for her to breathe. The guard looked at her and nodded. Then she was alone in the dim, stuffy room which reeked of a serial killer’s evil.
Ellie gently rubbed her bruised neck, then quickly threw her things into her leather briefcase. A middle-aged woman in a prison guard uniform poked her head around the door. “I hear you had a bit of a run in with our star prisoner,” she said sympathetically. “He doesn’t miss a chance, our Hector. Do you think you need to see a doctor or file a complaint? There are some red marks on your neck that look like they’ll bruise up a bit, and you’ve lost a button on your blouse.”
Gratefully, Ellie assured the other woman that she was all right. She couldn’t see the point in filing a complaint agains
t a man doing a life sentence with no chance of parole.
“Okay, well, I think the guards will probably make the point to him when they get him back to his cell,” the woman commented darkly, but Ellie didn’t want to know the reality behind those shadowed words. The moment she was ready she fled to the nearest ladies’ room, where she threw up into the disinfectant pungent toilet bowl. But even as she retched, her mind was working on the problem of Brad and his knowledge of the murders. Was Hector Abbott really so determined to protect the “copyright” of his nightmarish art that he would hold back from boasting about the antique blade, a blade so worn that its cutting edge could be identified from the slashes on his victims? Hector Abbott denied revealing the details of his weapon—yet who could trust a madman?
And even if Brad had known that Abbott’s father was a cosmetic surgeon who collected antique medical tools, would he have made so accurate a guess as to the weapon?
The ordeal of the interview had left her no further ahead. She massaged her temples with her index fingers, trying to soothe the tension with light, circular movements. It didn’t work.
****
It was growing dark at the end of a long day and Reilly didn’t see her until it was too late. He stepped through the police station security side doors into the car park and almost walked right into Ellie as she headed toward the building. He sucked in a sudden breath and took another look as she walked toward him. The sight of her affected him just the same as ever. Ellie Fitzpatrick? Had his heart conjured her up from his longing? He didn’t want to speak, but his heart took over and he called her name even before he’d had a chance to make sure it was really her.
She stopped and looked over toward him as she heard her name called, but her expression changed as she recognized him. Dark feelings warred on her lovely face, and Reilly clenched his hands into fists to stop them from reaching out to her of their own accord. To do so, he knew instinctively, would bring down on himself all the bleak anger that flashed on her face.
Although what right did she have to be so angry? He asked himself as he moved toward her. Something akin to pain lodged in his chest as she backed away.
“Reilly?” It was barely a whisper, but enough to hit him like a punch in the gut.
His sudden appearance took her breath away. Even if the evidence of her eyes hadn’t told her, her own reaction to his nearness would have trumpeted that Liam Reilly was right in front of her. “I thought you’d have gone home by now.”
“Apparently not.” Even to his own ears it sounded sanctimonious, but he couldn’t think of anything else, not when she filled his senses and the awakening need for her was blotting out everything else. “How—how are you? How did the interview with Abbott go?” It wasn’t exactly sparkling conversation, but it was the best he could offer.
“I’m fine, and you’ll get my report of the interview tomorrow,” she said. With a smooth movement, she opened the door and slipped inside, the glass security doors wheezing shut behind her. But Reilly forced a casual smile and turned away from her, walking toward his black SUV and managing to look as if he hadn’t just been sucker-punched.
Ellie watched him go. Casually pretending his broad shoulders had no effect on her, pretending that her trembling was due to delayed reaction from the interview with Hector Abbott and had nothing to do with unexpectedly meeting the lover who’d walked out on her when the going got rough. Who’d walked away from loving her to protect his own career as hers had crashed and burned.
****
Dusk was already hugging the streets of terraced houses in central Leeds when Reilly arrived home. The home he hardly saw these days. He sat for a few minutes behind the steering wheel, rubbing tired neck muscles and massaging the bridge of his nose where an incipient headache lurked.
He gloomily contemplated the street where he’d grown up—such a contrast to the wilds of County Antrim in Ireland, where his mother’s family had been farmers for generations. He wondered how she’d coped here, a young widow too proud to return to her roots with her two young sons in tow. The cobbles were slick with rain from a sudden shower and the streetlights cast a dull yellow light on the scene. The arm where he’d been shot, only a flesh wound really, still itched and ached at the end of a long day. Ireland and its troubles had been as unwelcoming to him as it had been to his mother.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, he thought as he watched two young children letting themselves into an unlit “gentrified” house farther down the terraced row. The old mill cottages were much pricier than when he was a child, the area now considered desirable by the semi-professional, two income families who had moved in and prettied up the rows of back-to-back, red-brick houses.
But the stresses and strains remained the same. Families still had to pull out all the stops, working long hours just to maintain the status quo. And children still came home to empty houses, “latchkey kids” just like he and his brother had been, years ago. Too many years ago.
He watched a few minutes longer, until the youngsters were safely inside their house and the dull glow of lights backlit the curtains. Then he let himself into his own empty house, wishing as he’d done often as a child, that there were someone there to greet him and dispel the gloom.
Instead, he was met by the musty smell of a house closed up. He’d been away for the weekend at a security conference in Toronto, then plunged into a workload that left little time for being a homebody. He quickly reset the security system before opening a few windows to let in the mild summer air.
Tired and restless with that unsettling feeling of decisions to be made, life paths chosen, the past challenged or let go, he gathered letters up from the doormat and, after a cursory glance, tossed them onto the table by the door. The message light on his answering machine blinked impatiently but he ignored that, too. The headache started to hammer at his temples, and he poured himself a large whisky before flicking on the small gas fire and settling down to read a stack of reports.
But he’d barely got settled before the telephone shrilled and the desk sergeant at the other end of the line told him he might be needed for a briefing on new evidence in another case the task force was handling. He put down the whisky, untouched, and went out again into the soft misty night.
****
Jay Richards also returned to an empty house, a small, semi-detached box on an estate of crisp new homes for the upwardly mobile on the outskirts of the city. A perfect suburban family home, he thought wryly to himself, pondering his perfect suburban family and how it had all gone wrong. He knew Sumra was considering leaving him for good but he had agreed to let her and their son visit her family in India because he needed space—needed time to do things without seeing the questions in her eyes. He’d get things sorted out, and when it was all over, when he had made everything safe again, then he would go after Sumra and, if necessary, he’d plead with her to come home with their son.
Resort to Murder
CHAPTER NINE
Ellie’s office was so small she’d dubbed it the “broom closet.” It did, indeed, look as if the janitors had just moved their equipment out before the regulation gray metal desk and filing cabinet had been wheeled in. Tucked away in the nether regions of the Special Crimes Task Force space, the tiny windowless room was airless at the day’s end, and mild claustrophobia teased Ellie’s nerves as she completed her report on the Abbott interview. The report had to be on Reilly’s desk by morning. She would not be accused of failing to carry her weight on the team. Her eyes were gritty with exhaustion. Besides, working on the case was better than dwelling on Brad’s deception. Or on Liam Reilly’s sudden reappearance in her life.
Tossing her notebook on the desk, she shook her head to clear it. Abbott was still an enigma to her, full of a savage intelligence so different from the malicious village idiot that he’d portrayed at his arrest. Was the man a true psychopath, able to pull on camouflage at will to avoid detection? She suspected that Abbott’s world was fabricated i
n his own mind and that, out of touch with reality, he no longer knew what was truth and what was fiction. That made judging the honesty of his replies an almost impossible task. Which brought her back to worrying the problem that was never far from her mind. She wanted, desperately, to believe that the killer himself had told Brad about the “special effects” he’d used. Because if he hadn’t, then that might mean that B. S. Anderson, her friend Brad Scott, was involved in murder.
If Brad had learned about the facts from Abbott, he would go to the top of Reilly’s list for the copycat killing. She massaged the tender skin of her neck, wincing a little as her fingers touched bruises now hidden under a silky scarf she’d bought on leaving the prison. Heaven knew, her colleagues had little enough confidence in her without knowing she’d let her guard down long enough for the man to attack her in the bleak prison interview room, and she doubted she would find much sympathy in their eyes.
Finishing the report and setting her computer to print, she surrendered to the luxury of a yawn, stretching her arms above her head to ease stiff muscles. Ellie signed her name and placed the report in a folder destined for Reilly’s desk. Still on her desk were files for the current case; on the floor a large box contained the files for the review.
She knew she was going to be busy, between her work on the review and on the task force team investigating the copycat murder. Which was fine, because she didn’t want free time to think, free time to deal with Brad’s marriage proposal, to face Brad and wonder what other secrets lay behind his eyes. And she felt oddly calm.
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