Deadly Obsession

by Michael Kerr

  Marion had been the third hapless schoolgirl in a period spanning nine months to have suffered a similar fate, and to also have been found in the proximity of a railway line. The media tagged the killer as the Railway Rapist, which was a misnomer. The girls had not been raped or murdered at the secondary crime scenes. The railways were just dumping sites; quiet‒ in between passing trains ‒ and unpopulated locations.

  Chambers had finally made a mistake by striking too near to home. Trace evidence found on all three victims’ bodies included fibres that came from carpeting exclusively used by Mercedes in their less expensive range of saloons. Even the precise batch had been identified, denoting that the car they sought had been manufactured in 2013. All owners of economy Mercs in the locality of the victims were highlighted as potential suspects. And they got the break they needed. Found a large sheet of tarpaulin folded up under a work bench in Chambers’ garage, that pieces had been cut from and were a match to the hoods used on his victims. The case was airtight. Chambers pleaded not guilty, but could offer no explanation for the damning evidence. It was during the trial that Jack realised how fickle people could be. The jury found it hard to believe that such an intelligent, good-looking and apparently religious young married man could have the capacity to rape and kill defenceless teenage girls. They wanted real life monsters to look the part, not appear like one of them. The jury of supposedly twelve good men and women took three days to arrive at a verdict. Thank God, Jack thought, that the case against Chambers was strong enough to win out over his continual denials, and his portrayal of a wrongly accused and innocent man. It was satisfying to reflect that only a few months into his full-life sentence, Tony Chambers did everybody a favour and hanged himself in his prison cell.

  Mike returned with three plastic cups full of vending machine coffee, put them down on the table and looked at Jack.

  “I take it he” – Mike inclined his head towards Kyle – “wants us to believe he didn’t batter Christine, strangle her to death, and then have it off with the corpse?”

  “That’s right,” Jack said. “Kyle here told me that he hadn’t contacted Christine since they split up in August. Then he remembered he’d pestered her on the phone a few times.”

  “You believe that crap?”

  “He says it’s the God’s honest truth.”

  “Does he have an alibi for when it happened?”

  Jack sipped his coffee, pulled a face at the bitter, gritty brew and lit another cigarette. “I haven’t got that far, yet.”

  Mike sighed. “So let’s start the tape and wrap this up.”

  Jack took two cassette tapes from his pocket, showed them to Kyle, then proceeded to rip the cellophane wrappers off and write up the labels. While he did, Mike turned his attention to Kyle.

  “If you killed her, we’ll nail you, Foley. That is guaranfuckinteed.”

  “I didn’t kill her. I loved her, for Christ’s sake,” Kyle whined.

  “So why did she dump you, son. Were you giving her a hard time? Did you slap her around?”

  “I never laid a hand on her,” Kyle said. “She said she needed space and didn’t want to be in a long-term relationship. I took it hard, but I...I didn’t do those terrible things to her.”

  Kyle’s face was as white as a swan. His voice was hitching, and his eyes were shiny with tears.

  “Let’s try another date,” Mike said. “Where were you on the evening of November the twenty-fifth?”

  “I’m not sure. I go out drinking most evenings, and then get a taxi home and crash out.”

  “We’re not asking you about a night two years ago, or even two weeks ago. We’re talking about a few nights ago.”

  Kyle’s forehead bunched in a frown. “Pandora’s. I went to Pandora’s nightclub in Fulham on the twenty-fifth,” he said. “I was with four or five other guys. They’ll vouch for me.”

  “Till what time?”

  “About one a.m.”

  “Then what?”

  “I went home, to bed.”

  “Who can vouch for that?”

  Kyle’s shoulders slumped. He shook his head. “I live alone.”

  Jack was ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain that the forlorn-looking man sitting at the other side of the table was not the killer they sought. If he was wrong, then the fourteen years he’d spent dealing with the worst of humanity had taught him nothing. He tossed the tapes onto the tabletop.

  Kyle jumped, startled.

  “You want to help us nail the pervert that killed Christine?” Jack said.

  “Y...yes, of course,” Kyle said, his voice charged with relief.

  “All right, Kyle. We don’t need to tape this. I believe what you’ve told us. Relax and try to think back and remember if anyone took a more than what would be considered a normal, passing interest in Christine. Did she ever mention that some guy was coming on to her, or phoning her at home? Think hard. Did she suffer any sexual harassment that you know of? The smallest thing that might have seemed unimportant at the time could give us some insight.”

  Kyle went into frowning mode again. Neither Jack nor Mike broke the pregnant silence that followed.

  “She once said that her boss had the hots for her,” Kyle said. “He didn’t say or do anything, just fussed around her too much, and sometimes brushed up against her.”

  “What’s his name?” Mike said.

  “Hooper. Dr Robert Hooper.”

  There was nothing else forthcoming. Kyle was only too happy to give a DNA sample, by way of an oral swab, to a forensic science officer, before Jack showed him out to the street and thanked him for his cooperation.

  Back upstairs in the squad room, Mike made Jack and himself a palatable cup of coffee.

  “You think Foley is whiter-than-white, boss?” he said.

  “Nobody is whiter-than-white. But I don’t believe he’s the guy we’re after. He didn’t have the composure or arrogance that the killer will display. Whoever murdered those women is a planner who will leave nothing to chance. Foley didn’t even have an alibi.”

  “Not having one can be one,” Mike said.

  “I know. But if we look at a scenario in which he murdered Christine, maybe in the heat of the moment after going round to her place and begging her to give him a second chance, and being told to go away, what have we got?”

  “A crime of passion.”

  “Exactly. Almost a domestic murder. So why the message in blood, and the knife between her legs?”

  Mike sucked at his teeth. “Maybe to throw us off the scent.”

  Jack shook his head. “That would make him the killer of Emily as well. The handwriting was a match. And we haven’t released those details. He’s either an innocent man, or a pattern murderer. If he was the latter, then do you believe he would draw attention to himself by topping an ex-girlfriend?”

  “I suppose that would be too good to be true,” Mike said.

  “Right. The type of nutter we’re looking for is drawing attention to the signature aspects of what he does, not to his identity.”

  “What about this Doctor, Hooper?”

  “That would be audacious. Do the deed, then be the one to discover the body. It’s a long shot, but not without a certain perversity that would give a psycho an extra thrill. If Hooper fancied Christine, as she allegedly told Kyle he did, then he has to be a suspect. But for now I’ll hold on to the view that whoever is doing this is a stranger to his victims. We’ve got a predator out there that fixates on individuals, stalks them, menaces them, and then kills them.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHANGING into sweats, Lisa made herself a chicken salad sandwich, poured a glass of white wine, and then spent over three hours absorbing every word of the reports appertaining to the murders of Emily Wallace and Christine Adams. Only the whisper of turning pages and the solemn tick of a pendulum wall clock broke the otherwise heavy silence. Lisa was consumed with grim fascination. The mass of information was set down in matter-of-fact copspeak, dispassionat
e and, if it were possible, more chilling for being clinical in its phraseology. It was almost midnight when she went to her work station in the lounge and booted-up the computer. She opened a new file, tapped in the case number and the initial underlined heading: Preliminary Victimology, followed by all known personal details on Emily Wallace who was thus far the first known victim.

  As Lisa typed and built up a word picture of the single, twenty-one-year-old nurse, and the modus operandi employed to murder her, she glanced up repeatedly to the cork board on the wall behind the small desk, to which she had tacked the 8x10 crime scene shots of the deceased woman.

  When she had filled four pages with double-spaced writing, she took a break, poured another glass of wine and replaced the photographs of Emily with those of Christine Adams and repeated the procedure that she always adhered to.

  It was almost three a.m. when she felt ready to start in on the process of developing a profile. Another hour, she thought, and then she would have to grab a couple of hours’ sleep.

  No more wine. She made coffee, knowing that the caffeine would boost her concentration level and keep her awake. The case had got hold of her. If she had not arranged to meet Jack Ryder at the flat in Harringay that morning, then she might have worked through until seven or eight, then crashed out till ten or eleven a.m.

  Lisa worked in a set way, dividing the profiling process into seven steps, which was a method devised – and as far as she knew still employed – by the Behavioural Science Unit of the FBI. She had been there once at the invitation of an agent/instructor in Applied Criminal Psychology, Bob Webster, who was now retired from the bureau but still consulted on cases for various law enforcement agencies throughout the United States. Bob had interviewed many of the most notorious convicted serial killers in the country, and understood, as far as is humanly possible, what their motivational triggers were.

  Lisa had learned much in the warren of underground offices that were located at the world famous academy, set on the U.S. Marine base in Quantico.

  She sat back and yawned. She had fully acquainted herself with officer-on-scene reports and crime-scene photographs, autopsy photos, protocols, pathologists reports and all other known aspects of the two murders.

  By six a.m., Lisa was drained both physically and mentally. She had worked on an evaluation of the criminal acts perpetrated, studied the specifics of the crime scenes and analysed the victims, based on what information she had to work with. She stopped short of developing a profile with critical offender characteristics. The profile would be the penultimate step, and from its construction she would no doubt formulate investigative suggestions to aid Ryder and his team. That was the theory.

  Plodding upstairs, Lisa undressed, set the alarm for eight-thirty, and was asleep within thirty seconds of snuggling down under the duvet.

  Jack stayed on it till eleven p.m. They got a break, of sorts. It was a step forward on what he always thought of as a journey into the unknown.

  DC Phil Jennings had found no worthwhile references to the messages scrawled on mirrors in the victims’ homes until, using initiative, he put a spin on The Final Decree, changing the word Final to Last and Decree to Judgement and putting it into a search engine to look for The Last Judgement. That scored a few hits, and among other things led him to the work of an artist: Hieronymus Bosch. He typed in the strange name and was almost instantly given a large selection of sites to choose from. He chose one at random, was presented with multiple choices, and opted for a full list of the artist’s works. Bingo! The Last Judgement. He clicked on it and was rewarded with the picture of a triptych – a painting on three panels – that to Phil depicted scenes that only a madman could dream up. There were two versions of the painting, both different. He studied each in turn, not in the least confidant that he was on the right track.

  “Yeesss!” he exclaimed seconds later in surprise and jubilation.

  Jack and DC Eddie McBride were the only others in the room. They were both startled by Phil’s outcry and went over to see what he was so excited about.

  “What have you got, Phil?” Jack said.

  “The Vienna version of a painting titled: The Last Judgement. It’s by some bloke called Bosch.”

  Eddie shrugged. “The point being?”

  Phil brought up a small section of the painting on the screen, and Jack and Eddie stared at the detail that now almost filled the viewing area. The scene was of torture and death: a man hung down from a giant bell, and beneath him was a partly observed human figure lying prone with his or her legs either side of the huge, blood-streaked blade of a knife.

  “The Final Decree. The killer’s play on words?” Jack said.

  Phil nodded, worked the mouse and brought up another area of the painting. Two grotesque cooks were in what could only be hell’s kitchen. One was roasting a man on a spit, the other frying body parts in a large pan.

  “My Devil’s Kitchen,” Eddie said.

  “Good work, Phil,” Jack said, gripping the DC’s shoulder and squeezing it. “Now we know that he staged the crime scenes to conform loosely to individual atrocities in this guy’s painting.”

  “Does it help us?” Eddie said.

  “It gives us what Lisa Norton would term as critical offender characteristics,” Jack said. “We know more about him now than we did a couple of minutes ago. He’s obviously obsessed with Bosch’s work, to the extent that he uses it to express himself symbolically. It’s an insight into what makes him tick. He might have prints of the artist’s paintings on his walls, or books about him. He may even be a member of some Bosch society, if there is one. We need to target whoever specialises in marketing this sort of stuff. If he’s on their books, then we’ll weed him out.”

  “Could be a red herring, boss,” Eddie said. “He may be trying misdirection.”

  “We go with what we’ve got, Eddie. He has to be familiar with the artist’s work to play these games. I don’t think it’s stuff that average punters would know much about.”

  “You want for me to download these pictures, boss?” Phil said.

  “Yeah, plus all the hard copy you can on Bosch, and then you can both make more copies of it. One for every member of the team. We’re all going to know as much about him and his paintings as the killer does.”

  Jack called it a night. The Sierra started grudgingly at the fourth turn of the ignition key. He needed a new motor. It was only rust and dirt holding the old banger together. He had the cash, but wasn’t into cars, and never seemed to have the time to walk around a forecourt and be fed shit by some slick salesman trying to make top commission.

  When he arrived home, Jack emptied the last two fingers of a bottle of Jim Beam into a tumbler and went through to the lounge to sit on the couch and chill out. His mind was a jumble. Aspects of the case – that was now priority over the numerous others being worked – came to mind. And Lisa Norton was in the mix. He was looking forward to seeing her in the morning, and that was disconcerting. He lifted a dog-eared Mickey Spillane from the nest of tables next to him, opened it to where a strip of cardboard from a cereal packet was now employed as a bookmark, and picked up from where he’d left Mike Hammer getting beaten to a pulp by some gangster’s goon. The diversion didn’t work. After reading a dozen pages he put the pot-boiler down. He’d started to drift off to see himself as Hammer, and Lisa Norton as his secretary-come-girl-Friday. The thought of the psychologist chewing gum and wearing a tight tank top, too-short skirt and laddered nylons, was unsettling. He sighed, stood up, left the empty glass where it stood and went to bed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LISA was already there when Jack arrived. She was leaning back against her midnight-blue Lexus and studying the exterior of the house where Emily Wallace had been murdered.

  She looked different to him, in a good way. A thigh-length sheepskin coat and tight blue jeans were less overbearing than a power suit. He parked next to the kerb, got out and walked towards her. She smiled, and the coffee in his stomach
lurched like oily water in the bilge of a rolling boat.

  “Been here long?” he said, stopping in front of her and staring long and hard into her umber eyes.

  “A couple of minutes,” Lisa said, not breaking eye contact. It was psychological arm wrestling. They both grinned.

  “Are you trying to play mind games with me, Ryder?” she said.

  “What hope would I have of winning in that department, Doc? You’re the ‘trick cyclist’, I’m just a plod.”

  “Humility doesn’t suit you. Most coppers are, by the very nature of what they do and the type of person they deal with, constantly evaluating. You pick up on vibes and translate them.”

  “True. But a lot of the bad guys are able to conceal what really makes them tick. It’s like a cloaking device they wear to appear to be something they’re not. They can even fool the people closest to them, who live with them and think they know them inside out, when in reality they don’t know the dark side of them at all.”

  It started to rain, suddenly and heavily.

  “Let’s get inside,” Jack said.

  They went up the small flight of stone steps. Jack pressed the bell under the cloudy plastic strip. Printed on the slip of paper beneath it was: Flat 1. I. Chandra. They heard footsteps. The door opened and a silver-haired, copper-skinned man of Asian origin gave them both a disinterested look. He was the live-in landlord.

  Jack opened his wallet and let the old man have a glimpse of his warrant card. “We arranged to have a look inside the flat that Emily Wallace lived in,” he said. “I understand the new tenant has no objection.”