'Have you met her?'
'Some time ago, a couple of years maybe. I dropped him off at home.'
'And?' Chris was aware she was scratching round in desperation.
'I went into the kitchen and met her. She seemed a normal mother to me.'
'Anything odd about him?'
'Nothing that comes to mind. By definition normality doesn't jump out at you. I can't be on intimate terms with all the staff. I simply don't know much about his personal life. I don't think there's much to know. He comes to work, goes home and looks after his mum. She's not too steady on her legs, from the little he's said. Spends all her time indoors. He's not talkative about it and I'm not inquisitive. That doesn't make him a criminal.'
'It doesn't,' Chris admitted. 'Who is Apthorpe? You have him down as an entomologist. What's his specialism?'
'Social insects.'
'You'll have to translate. Does it include ants?'
'Yes, but you must be joking. Apthorpe! If you met him. He's right out of it.'
'Does he have a motive? Is there anyone he doesn't get on with?'
'Apthorpe doesn't get on with anybody. He's a completely asocial being, works alone, lives alone.'
'We need to talk at more depth about that man.'
'This is stupid,' said Tom. He saw the slim window of opportunity to prepare for the lecture slipping away.
'What about Robin?'
'Now you're being ridiculous. He can't possibly be a suspect. He isn't even in the country. He was away when these latest killings took place.'
'I've told you before, leave the policing to me.'
After Chris rang off Tom dithered about while he turned the arguments of his Peterborough lecture over and over. All the time he was worrying away at the huge bank of his memories of Robin, from their many years of living and working close to each other. When Chris had gone the gaps in his knowledge began to eat away at him. When he arrived home later that night, he decided to contact Robin at the first opportunity.
* * *
The following day Tom was due to take an early train to attend a brief mid-morning research meeting at a hotel in central Newcastle. Instead of driving straight to the Station, he decided to call at the University at 8:00 a.m. and ask Jean to locate Robin while he was at his meeting.
It was seven fifty-nine when Tom reached the University. Jean was in on the dot of eight. Within a couple of minutes, she rang through from her office. 'Here's the number and address for where Robin's based. You don't need a local street map. He's linked with a local university and they will act as a conduit for messages during his fieldwork.' Tom didn't want the details. He left Jean with the task of chasing up Robin with a list of questions.
A couple of minutes later, there was a knock. Chris put her head round the door.
'I caught you. Your secretary predicted you'd call in early. I know you're busy. I'm in a hurry, too, on my way to work.'
Tom felt guilty about his impatience the previous day. 'I wanted to say –'
She held up a hand. 'Forget it.' She passed him a copied sheet. 'We've had this fresh note. I assume it's from our killer. It's strange but if all these notes have been written by the killer – and at present I'm reserving judgement on that – we know more about the killer than the victims.'
Tom studied the sheet. Chris continued: 'Morrison pointed out how the latest note is signed with a G rather than J.'
Tom shrugged. 'He could have two initials.' A thought struck him. 'I want to show you this in the first note from our mystery person.' He scrabbled for the file and pulled out the photocopied sheets.
'I've marked the lines.' He read in silence, making occasional marks with his pencil in a jabbing action. 'There,' he said, 'I've marked some phrases. " ... at which point I became the conductor". This man reached a turning point with the pig. We didn't find him before he killed again.'
'The notes were a cry for help? He wanted us to catch him in time?'
'Not quite or he'd have sent us a message about how to prevent him killing again. At present he only seems keen to inform us of his existence.'
'And his strange thoughts.'
'It's damn lonely, going mad on your own. Better to take the world with you, or that bit of it over which you can exercise total – life or death – control.'
'Hmm, could be.'
'Look at that line on the next sheet. "Don't pigeon-hole me." No, sorry, "Don't go pigeon-holing me as like the rest of them in here." Who are the rest? I don't think he means the office or the pub on the corner. More likely, he's been locked up – prison, mental hospital, special hospital perhaps?'
'Perhaps he's referring to a report someone wrote,' said Chris.
'Yes, a psychiatrist, could be. Someone's videoed this man during assessment, so now he's using video for his own purposes.'
'To get his own back.'
Tom shrugged. 'Who knows? Further down that same page, see where I've highlighted laboratory.'
'Can't be many of those.'
'Over the page. Makes him sick. See that? Look at the language. This isn't your average Alf. He's been where they observe and describe.'
'A research institute.'
'My thoughts exactly. Somewhere where they do research. He's either done it or watched people doing it. Turn over again. Bottom of the page. See where he talks about the next stage. Can't do more to a pig than kill it. The next stage was starting to kill other people.'
'This stuff about vomit.'
'So what?'
'He doesn't like what he's doing.'
'Put in for effect. Don't be fooled. This man shows no signs of any sensitivity to the feelings of others, including his victims. He's almost certainly a psychopath.'
Tom raced back from Newcastle on the 1:00 p.m. train. The rest of the day was blocked out with university work. He divided a typical week into research-development days and administration-catching-up days. This afternoon was meant to be an admin day. It should be an opportunity to clear the paperwork that was cluttering up his desk. He was anticipating the police work would eat into large chunks of whatever time he had at his disposal. Somehow he couldn't achieve the usual trick of cutting himself off from distractions and doing the mechanical job of clearing his desk.
At three-ish, Tom had a few minutes break. He took a walk round the campus, encountered Luis Deakin and chatted for a while, reviewing the latest run of experiments. These were being run under Dr Deakin's direct supervision, though Tom, as director, was grant holder.
Tom detected a mood of disgruntlement on Luis's part. He knew Luis was tense. It was rare for Luis's calm to be shaken. The strain of the investigation going on all around was beginning to affect all of them in the department.
He decided to take Luis into his confidence and show him a sheet he'd typed himself from one of the notes, without telling him where it was from.
Luis read out loud for several minutes.
The question is how do driver ants communicate. There has been a fair amount of work done on the fact that although they don't hear, ants tune into vibrations and are particularly reliant on scent. These senses make a major contribution to the psychological and social glue binding ant society together. I can recall reading rather off the wall speculations by the philosopher Maeterlinck about the so-called mental powers of ants, as well as termites. He is impressed perhaps by their creation of huge, columnar colonies as high as houses, from reconstituted soil cemented with bodily secretions so hard that it takes explosives to destroy them. He is more overawed by their ability to co-ordinate their efforts towards a common goal. The only way he can explain this success at achieving a unity of aim and function is by reference to the theory of the composite being, to consider the termitary as a single living organism made up of sixty million or so cells.
'You're hesitating,' said Tom.
'I can't take any of his mysticism on board from that point on. He goes off into speculations about whether the termite has tapped into the vital force of life itself, what
Schopenhauer refers to as the Will, Claude Bernard the Directing Idea, Providence, God or what have you. Anyway, I'm not reading any more of this, I'm thirsty. I'll brew some more coffee.'
Tom changed the subject. There was a link between these ideas and the growing tally of bodies, but it bothered him he couldn't put his finger on it. He had a sudden thought. 'I found this article, hang on.' He crossed the room to the bureau by the window and rummaged through the pile of papers cluttering the available spaces round the word processor. 'It's here somewhere. In a recent copy of Nature I think. Or was it New Scientist. This is it.'
He handed the journal to Luis. The article was headed 'Composite Beings or Chaotic Individualists? What political scientists can learn from the social insects.'
Luis scanned the paper. 'Garbage.' He made a contemptuous sound.
'Why do you say that?'
'It's the kind of anthropomorphic nonsense that gives science a bad name.'
Luis tossed the journal onto the table, gulped his coffee down and left the room.
After Luis had gone, Tom sat in the easy chair in his office and brewed a further mug of tea. He regretted showing Luis now. The material was confidential to the inquiry. He was flustered, having just dropped the kettle, fortunately only full of cold water at the time, on the corridor floor on his way back to his office. It was a message, he told himself. 'You're stressed,' he said out loud to himself. The future of your Centre is on the line – down to the perennial struggle for funding; your marriage is on the rocks; and someone, somewhere may have purloined valuable, research-sensitive equipment from your department, enabling the pursuit of research which competes with yours. It could be one of the technicians or, heaven forbid, Robin, who had acquired it, intending to declare unilateral independence in some secret deal to become impresario of entomology at some South African university, in association with a well-endowed university-based research centre somewhere in the Western world.
* * *
Chris had gone to work after calling in on Tom. She walked in at nine-thirty a.m. The team was assembled, more or less. She decided to take no notice of the flurry of activity near the rear of the room.
'I've three items to bring to your attention. Has anyone else a constructive comment to contribute?'
Three hands went up, one after another.
'Depending on what you say,' someone muttered. She ignored this and began.
'First I want to share with you the stage we've reached with the forensic investigation of the bodies. Before I do that, any news from the checks on males in the region, Sergeant Brill?'
'Seven thousand completed. No positive news as yet.'
'As for the trawl at the University, I've been coordinating that,' said Chris. 'We've no result as yet. So, let's look at the bodies.' Her audience stirred. She picked up the wooden baton and indicated the several overlapping flip chart sheets pinned on the wall behind her, with their three columns, headed Body 1, Body 2, Body 3.
'We have the pigs and the young woman and another possible. There are similarities with this investigation, but we're not positive yet.'
Chris inwardly cursed the officers at the back of the room. She ploughed through her notes from the pathologists, leaving no detail untouched. At last there was silence. During the description of the injuries to the body orifices, someone at the back had a coughing fit and left the room. Got to you at last, Chris thought triumphantly.
'Any questions?'
She paused.
'Second, we've had a number of communications, if I can call them that, which are possibly from the killer, one or two roughly coincident with each of the deaths. The pile is growing daily. I've copied them.' Chris picked up an envelope folder. 'They're in here for anyone wishing to read them. Third, we have to work out a strategy and decide how to pursue it.'
'I'll start with the forensic reports on the bodies. We have reports on the first two. We're waiting for the results on the latest. I've persuaded a member of our pathology staff to attend this meeting and brief us about the delay, if that's what it is. Dr Tim Rathbone.'
'Bloody hell,' said Mander in a stage whisper, 'he's only a teenager.'
'We shall also have a report shortly from our regular forensic psychiatrist Dr Mary Threadgold whom some of you know already. I hesitate to use the term offender profiling because it's been so misused. However, Dr Threadgold's first task includes giving us a view on the significance of these killings, including any light they throw on the possible mental state of the killer and the likelihood that this person has killed previously and may kill again.
'It is rare for a killer to leave notes in this way. Sometimes murderers have been known to ring the police or contact the media. Doctors Rathbone and Threadgold have both suggested we have these notes analysed and after discussion with them we invited a graphologist, Angela Santer, to join us today and make some preliminary observations. I should point out that her formal report has been submitted to Dr Threadgold who has agreed that the unusual nature of this case necessitates you having the benefit of these comments at the earliest opportunity, hence Angela's presence at this meeting. Tim's going to begin.'
The youthful Rathbone began to speak. 'Not a lot I can say. Basically, we haven't had cases of insect damage like this before, so there's nothing in our local experience with which to compare the situation. We've been talking to DCI Winchester and to the head of pathology here and we've had advice from colleagues at the University. This also may be one for the forensic entomologists. We need new ideas about possible leads in a case like this. And quickly.'
'Thanks, Dr Rathbone. Any questions?'
'Okay, the path. Reports should be with us within forty-eight hours.'
'Hopefully,' added Dr Rathbone.
'I turn now –'
'Hang on, boss,' Mander interrupted. 'You're motoring a bit quick. I want to ask Dr Rathbone a question.'
'Go ahead,' said Chris.
'You mentioned forensic ento –'
'Entomologists,' said Rathbone.
'We seem to be in danger of being over-run by experts in this investigation.'
'Too many bloody chiefs,' came a voice from the middle of the room.
'Aye, thought you were the experts,' said somebody else.
Tim Rathbone nodded and replied disarmingly:
'These are understandable questions. In pathology, we have certain forensic knowledge and skills. But there's no way we can be experts in all fields. A murder investigation of this kind generates many questions and possibilities. At this stage, we have to follow up as many as possible. We can't afford to narrow down the inquiries because it's too early to be certain about the nature of the person we're looking for. We need the widest possible span of advice, from everyone. That includes friends, relatives, neighbours of the deceased, work colleagues, yourselves, all of us in pathology and anyone who we think can possibly throw any light on any aspects of our forensic investigations. It's all hands to the pumps I'm afraid at this early stage. As far as the entomologists are concerned, it's essential to ask for views about the role insects may have played in bringing the bodies to their present state.'
'You think they were killed by insects,' someone called out.
'Not killer insects, if that's what you mean. But it's possible insects contributed to these deaths in some way. Or that they attacked the bodies after death from other causes.'
Chris interrupted. 'We'll call a halt there and move on. Thanks, Tim. I'll deal now with the notes the killer, or someone, may have sent us in relation to the different bodies found so far.'
Tim Rathbone gathered his papers and left the room. Chris nodded to the administrative assistant who had come in bearing a pile of papers.
'Yes please, Vanessa.'
Vanessa started to work across the room, giving one sheaf of papers to each person.
'These are slightly edited, numbered copies. When you've read them, Vanessa will collect them again. They aren't to leave this room under any circumstances. Any inf
ringement will be a major disciplinary offence. Is that clear?'
Chris looked round the room. One by one, as they felt her gaze settle on them, people nodded.
Ms Santer looked at least as young as Julian Rathbone and was slight and strikingly elegant. When she stood up, her quiet delivery had a presence which gave her instant command over the audience.
'Thank you. With two colleagues, I've had a good look at the documents from J, G, or whoever. That could be a ploy to confuse us. We are unanimous that most of them were written by one person. But we also suspect that in places they weren't. Our reasons for this observation are spelt out in detail in this report.' She held up a slim folder. 'We'll leave it with you, Chris. I could go on at length about our observations on the possible mental state of this person. Suffice it to say we believe he – we are pretty sure the writer is male – is neither a youth nor very old and may be suffering severe distortions of perception which affect his ability to record. These are typical of those experienced by people with severe psychoses, for example, though we aren't able to comment at all on the precise nature of any mental health problems in this case.'
'Thank you, Angela. Any questions about that?'
'Can you look at this letter from my girlfriend? I think she's two-timing me.'
A gale of laughter swept the back of the room.
'Come and see me after this session,' said Angela, keeping a straight face.
A muted ooohh rose from the back of the room.
'Anything else of relevance to this investigation?' asked Chris.
There was no response from anyone.
'Okay, our third task this morning is to address where we go from here,' she added. 'The main unknowns are who we're dealing with, what prompts him to kill, how likely it is that he'll kill again, if so, how soon, and how best we can catch him, preferably before he does any more damage. The priority, therefore, is to concentrate our resources on searching for him. I appreciate the reservations some of you feel about experts. But, like my colleagues here, I have no difficulty in admitting I can't do everything myself. I intend to enlist the continued help of the forensic and graphologist experts you've met today, to whom we can refer any further material. You've heard our pathologist suggest that the unusual circumstances of the deaths require advice from an entomologist, and I don't mean the forensic entomologist they'll be in touch with. I've been following this up locally as a matter of urgency. Because of the particular nature of the insect remains found with the bodies, we may need even more detailed help with the specific insect species we're facing. I shall be grateful if you can continue to maintain a complete embargo on discussing these details with any other person. And I mean anyone at all, including best friends, lovers and spouses. Unless anyone else has anything to raise – no? – that's it. We meet again tomorrow at 9:00 a.m., to review progress. Thank you, one and all.'
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