This time I could wander where I wished. I found myself in the science block. This time I gained entry to the area where they conducted experiments on insects, particularly ants. I spent more than an hour in that area. I took two reels of film.
Outside, in the corridor, I was intrigued by the notice-boards. There were postcards from staff on holiday in other places – Spain, France and Bournemouth. There were several pictures of adults and children. Were these members of staff? Which were the children of which staff?
When I reached home I found that by one of those flukes I had taken several snaps of what I assumed were academic staff explaining various experimental set-ups to visitors. I had plenty of material to feed into my search. But what was I looking for? I didn't quite know. I had a selection of the photographs enlarged. Those on which I eventually identified as the key people, through collecting brochures and prospectuses whenever I visited the University, joined the ever growing number on the big pinboard on one wall of my large farmhouse kitchen, which I dubbed HQ.
There was a time later when I used computer games to strengthen my expertise in the mass control of populations. I tried all the war games, from the ancient civilisations and the military campaigns of the Greeks and Alexander the Great through to Napoleon and the two great wars of the twentieth century. Nothing excited me like the ants, though.
While I studied the photos, I switched on the CD player. Not Mahler's First symphony. I wanted to save that for moments of consummation. I would take the third movement of the Second symphony. Every time I heard those woodwind passages, I imagined the formicidae in their convoluted tunnels, making their way up to the surface and bursting out into the sunlight. The urgency of the rhythm accentuated the frantic rush of the army. Then the fortissimo brass bursting out over the top of the strings as the soldiers advanced, their mandibles more than quadruple the size of the worker ants. Timpani and triangles now, as a small group of winged queens emerged, floating around the entrance as though in a daze before being gently coaxed back into the safety of the limitless darkness below ground. Then the restless rhythm starting again, as the urge to hunt and kill infected the host, and waves of excitement visibly moved half a million bodies in unison at the moment of advance. I did not heed the tears running down my face as the burst of sound faded into diminuendo strings and timpani, and they came to rest, sated with meat from fifty thousand insects – small mammals, injured birds and infant animals too small and slow to get out of their hunting field. As the contralto entered with the solo, I could hear nothing beyond the words Die elt ist tief - that surely was the superiority of the ants, to penetrate the depth of the world. Deep was the suffering and the joy. Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit – Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigheit. All manner of joys sought Eternity, the deep Eternity. I couldn't bear my own response to the words, in the face of the urge to seek to place the power of the denouement with the ants. To take the life of people back into the deep earth with them.
J
* * *
Chris finished reading the few lines on the last sheet and tossed it down on the low table between them. Tom picked it up and scanned it. She stood up and brushed her hands down her blouse and skirt, as though trying to cleanse herself of any connection with the man they sought.
There was a faint rumble, as though deep in the distant Pennines rock strata were moving along ancient fault lines.
'Damn,' said Tom. He glanced at the ornate Edwardian brass-mounted barometer in its polished mahogany case. It hung on the wall behind Chris, curiously out of place with the modern paraphernalia of filing cabinets and bookshelves stuffed with box files and books.
‘What's the matter?'
'Thunder. I've had a look at the weather reports. The main band of rain is still twenty miles away and thunderstorms are notoriously fickle in these parts. We may escape one altogether, while on the North Yorkshire Moors they're flooded out. We can't count on it, though. The pressure's down to twenty-nine and still falling.'
'Thunder doesn't bother you?'
'It's the ants I'm concerned about.'
Chris's mobile rang and she answered it. Even though she wasn't saying much, Tom could tell the call wasn't going well. She was tense when she came off the phone.
'That was Bradshaw,' she said. 'Sister Ruth's been found dead.'
All thoughts of the storm were driven from Tom's mind.
‘What the hell!'
'There's a man's body as well, but they're still trying to confirm the identity of that.'
'Do we have any idea –?'
'There are insects all round the body and mouth parts buried in it.'
'Do they know what insects they are?'
She shrugged. 'It hardly matters what they think. You and I can guess.'
'How did he find her so quickly after we interviewed her?'
'Perhaps he knew we were going and had time to plan.'
'He couldn't – that would mean an insider –'
She looked serious. ‘Who knew we were going? Bradshaw, members of the team, Morrison? Bradshaw's doing his nut and wants me back immediately.'
Tom shook his head, as though he found this incredible. Chris's mobile rang again. She turned to Tom. ‘We need to be at the scene of crime. Bring whatever you need to identify ants.'
‘What about the University?' Chris asked, while he was gathering his things and locking up. ‘Who knew where you were going?'
'Apart from me, in effect, nobody of any consequence.'
'Of any consequence,' she said. 'Thereby hangs the crucial tale.'
* * *
Ahead of them on the road from Beverley to Bainton, there were blue lights flashing. Chris's car slowed and an officer waved them off the road. She climbed out and Tom followed her. DC Morrison walked across to them,
'Boss, we found this in a canvas bag near the bodies.'
'That'll be so the ants don't get at it and destroy the paper,' said Tom. 'Leave me to read this in the car.' He didn't have the stomach for going any closer to the scene of the crime, unless she demanded it of him.
Chris saw him about to open the bag. 'Don't touch it,' she said and ran across to a group of officers in protective clothing. She returned with a pair of gloves in a packet and tossed them onto his knee. 'You'll get me shot,' she said.
Chapter 31
Colleagues: It's my privilege to let you into my secret.
The ninth symphony of Mahler occupies the high ground between individual entities and the larger reality. Through it, I enter a dream state with the entrance of the dance motif at the start of the first movement. The swinging rhythms of the violins creates a lullaby, in which I imagine being swung gently in a hammock by my mother.
Within five minutes, of course, all is loudness and disturbance. I am tipped out and the timpani with some brass and muted woodwind and strings impose their sinister echoes on my attempted relaxation. An even more subversive plot is hatched in the awesome shadow of this steadily darkening dance. The harp still accompanies, but an irresistible burst of harmonies reminiscent of Richard Strauss makes it ever less likely that the warm, sandy surface of the soil will stay quiescent.
I delicately pull the remote and the hole which forms the main entrance to the nest opens a few millimetres. A cascade of ants surges through the tiny gap, which I quickly close.
Now the music is louder as the first movement gains velocity, the few straggling themes surfacing louder than the dark accompaniment to the plot.
The foragers soon lose their extreme excitement and slow to a more deliberate quartering of their territory, criss-crossing each other's path repeatedly in their search for prey.
Suddenly there's a person there, a living body, tightly bound. A woman. I check and double check that her hands and legs are secured and that the gag is in place. Only just in time, for the second movement is beginning. I have so much to say and can't risk her interrupting.
This lyricism in the music always takes me back to a childhood which repeated itself – the danc
e-like motif which recurs in light and darker sound tones reminds me of the picture in my head of walking on open heathland, with sandy banks running alongside the track and isolated clumps of gorse. The heather is scattered on the banks, by no means covering them. The most striking feature to me as a young child was the brilliant orange and black colouring of the large ants darting among smaller black ones, along the length of the bank. I know now these were the workers of Formica Sanguinea, known as the slave-making ant for its habit of raiding nests of the smaller, matt-black Formica Fusca, carrying off grubs and pupae to rear as “slaves” in its own nests. In fact, these so called slaves do no more than add to the labour force of the colony, in contrast with the continental Polyergus Rufescens which still raids other nests but has degenerated to the point where it is totally dependent on being fed by the captured workers from these raids – an invidious situation to be in. It's the sharpness of the remembered emotion, though, to which I'm drawn repeatedly: a hypnotic mood, almost of exaltation in the sunlight drowning out all emotions other than rustic happiness at the complex simplicity of the unending activity and drama of the ants. It means to me the lost world of childhood, a fiction to which I feel entitled, but know I've been denied access.
The fourth movement. The victims never know, but when the movements change I respond to the change of mood. The start of the movement brings me down to the lowest point of my emotions. Underneath the slow rhapsody of strings with its modulation to darker keys, I sense the untellable story of the composer touching my own unspeakable memories. The tears run momentarily down my cheeks as I recall the tragedy of my mother dying too soon to protect me from the subsequent abuse of my body and mind. Only the music pushing onward past that awful stretching emotion saves me from weakening. A sudden jolting out of it. Sideways, into what the other adults call the real world.
You have to harden up or succumb. I won't say die because in everything outside this music and these ants I died long ago, at the hands of those who should have cared for me.
I kill at the point of the first theme growing into its successor. This coincides in my head with the budding of the new colony from the old. It marks the establishment of the queen in the skull of the victim. I call this the temple of wisdom.
But the harmonies cripple me. They continue unstoppably, to the point of that extended pianissimo passage which for me is the eye of the storm. The music both confirms and undermines any capacity for thought, feelings and action. It reaches where no person has touched me since she left me alone, unable to defend myself. As the strings turn inward and over I'm pulled apart by my own unsatisfied love, grief and longing. I lie on the ground, motionless with emotions with no resolution. I can only wait and hope for Mahler to bring me back up, with the swelling resolution. But this time the music comes and passes unnoticed, fading into the unending pianissimo of Mahler's heaven, which for me is the silent, airless void beyond the Earth and Universe, leaving me gasping for breath, unable to rise beyond this kneeling position, racked with guilt and self-hate at what I have done. It's touch and go whether the instruments will drag me through this torture towards continuing life.
G
* * *
'Okay?' he asked, as Chris got back into the car. She was carrying a plastic bag and she tossed it onto his lap. He peered at its contents.
'Hmm, definitely ant body parts,' he mused. 'I'll let you know later more about which species.'
She looked pale. 'I don't want to talk about it at present.'
They drove some distance in silence, towards town.
'I'll drop you back home,' she said.
'Don't bother, your office will do. My car's in your car park, if you recall.'
Clouds were bubbling up.
'The sky looks a funny colour,' she said.
'An antman's Nirvana, in the normal course of events,' he said.
She gave him a puzzled glance from the driver's seat and he explained.
'Thundery weather creates the conditions for breeding. Scientists like to study the procreation of insects. It gives clues about their ability to survive natural disasters and pesticides. Unfortunately, it can also make social insects more aggressive. Ask any beekeeper whether it's safe to approach a hive in a thunderstorm.'
* * *
Chris and Tom were back in the office at Wawne Road. He hadn't driven off straight away. They sat one each side of her desk with a pile of documents between them, struggling with the gruesome reality of the latest deaths. Conversation was hard going. Neither of them wanted to focus and this made it hard to share what they already knew and discuss what to do next.
'The latest papers from our presumed killer are pretty disturbing,' he said, putting the envelope whose contents he'd read in the car down on the desk. 'Have you had much back from your forensic psychology colleagues on the previous ones?'
'They tend to talk about mental conditions and disorders.' Her voice was flat, as though it didn't interest her. 'They mention bipolar disturbance and possible intermittent psychosis. It's a very complicated way of saying he's killing people. Why does he go to such extreme lengths?' Even as she uttered the words, the question was rhetorical. She was tired of these endless intellectual discussions, the speculation which went nowhere.
Tom mused. 'The fact is, he does go to these extreme lengths. There are far simpler ways of killing a person. You just do it. Think about the time he takes, setting it all up, running with all the technical problems, maximising the part played by the ants. All the writing and associated paraphernalia. Why the complications? It's almost like junk mail.'
Chris sighed and made an effort to engage. 'I thought being an antman yourself, if anyone could make the connection between the ants and the killing, it would be you.'
'I hope that's a compliment,' said Tom.
‘Perhaps there is some merit in looking at the complications. We haven't been sitting on our hands at this end.' She leaned across the desk, pointing to a box file on the low table behind him. 'Pass me that file.'
Inside the box was an Ordnance Survey map of the area, with transparent overlays. She pushed some of the papers back and laid the items flat on her desk.
‘We have Morrison to thank for this,' she said. 'He's marked the location of one body on each of these.' She laid them one by one over the map. 'This top one,' she indicated a further overlay, 'is a line drawn round the perimeter of the area within which the bodies have been found. That shape is a bit irregular, more like a sausage than a circle. As you can see, it's a few miles long and about a half mile wide. The idea is to compute half an hour's driving time from the scene of each crime and search in the centre of the resulting area.'
Tom looked puzzled. He was struggling with the relevance of this. 'I've never really gone along with mechanistic theories about behaviour, insect or human.'
Chris was annoyed – with Tom, with Morrison's ridiculous theories and with herself. 'To hell with this. I've got Bradshaw on one side ridiculing every effort we make and you on the other, pouring cold water on our detection attempts. All right, he could be living anywhere. He could be a rally driver and be commuting from Lincoln or Cambridge.
‘But is it likely? We have to start with what's reasonable and likely, for God's sake. People impose so many barriers to us making progress with the case!' She pushed the map with its extra sheets angrily to the far edge of the desk, crumpling them up.
Tom was unperturbed. 'I suppose it's possible.'
Chris shouted at him. 'Stop being so bloody calm!'
There was silence. She was red in the face and breathing hard. Tom was silent, pensive.
A few minutes passed and she calmed down somewhat.
'How many laboratories are there in the UK with research facilities for the study of ants?'
'That's a difficult one. On social insects in general, ten or twelve at the most.'
'Too many. How many specifically are geared up for research into communication among ants?'
'A much smaller number I'd sa
y. London, Peterborough possibly, Hull.'
'To come back to the question as to where he's operating from. How the hell do we find out where his base is?'
‘We could wait for him to reveal it, in what he sends to us.'
'That could take weeks, months even.'
'You're very pessimistic.'
'Perhaps we need to take stock. We have all this mass of disparate information. It would be helpful to put it all together and hope that a few odd jigsaw pieces will start to form a larger pattern. That's the message behind the work Morrison's done. I feel strongly we need to go back to our psychiatric colleagues.'
'Working with Bradshaw, it wouldn't be hard to feel an episode coming on,' Tom joked.
'How did you guess? Seriously, we need specialist input on the possible personality disorders this man could be suffering from.'
'Bradshaw might disagree with you. He sees the killer as bad rather than mad.'
'Then it's up to us to ensure Bradshaw doesn't have the last word.'
Chapter 32
Tom didn't expect Chris to take up his off-the-cuff suggestion that it would be useful for all those primarily involved in the murder investigation to meet on neutral territory. He had envisaged one of the University's several conference venues as suitable, but sensitivities around the University connections of both victims and suspects ruled this out.
Almost thirty people crowded into an annexe of the Eppleworth Manor Hotel on the Wolds above the sedately respectable community of Cottingham, reputedly England's largest village. It was a beautiful building, a former Victorian manor house, standing in its own grounds within sight of the preserved windmill at Skidby. The nearby car park was a forest of police cars. Caterers from the Hull Police Training Centre had been brought in for the day. A small contingent of uniformed officers patrolled outside to ensure no non-approved personnel came anywhere near the proceedings. The ACC was adamant about confidentiality and a complete media blackout, and Bradshaw willingly followed his orders to the letter.
Antman Page 30
