Deadly Obsession

by Michael Kerr

  “I think he lost the plot,” Jane said, closing the lid of her portable mini-mortuary and snapping the catches shut.

  Jack tasted bile and swallowed hard. “What can you tell me, Jane?”

  “That rigor hasn’t passed yet. That and her liver temp would suggest she died less than twelve hours ago. But that’s an on-scene guesstimate.”

  “What was the cause of death?”

  “I can’t determine that until I do the cut. There is no single obvious trauma. She died hard. Maybe due to shock and blood loss.”

  “The face?”

  Jane had bagged it after a CSI had got through snapping off what must have been hundreds of shots. She lifted it up from where it had been laying next to her box of tricks. “This took time,” she said. “He knew what he was doing. Maybe he read some manual. She was still alive when he started the procedure. The amount of blood tells me that. He made an incision at the back of the neck and up to the crown, and then just pulled back at either side like skinning an animal. The outer layer peeled away from the underlying muscle tissue. The only other cutting he did was around the eyes, nose, lips and mouth. As you can see, it came off in one complete piece.”

  Mike was visibly shaking. He looked as though he had Parkinson’s disease. Lisa had been holding up well, until Jane had lifted up the translucent bag. The sight of the displaced physiognomy was a bridge too far.

  Taking off like a rabbit, Lisa shot out of the room and down the stairs, almost knocking a uniform flying in her pell-mell dash. She made it to the ground floor, lurched through the door, down the steps, and threw up on the pavement. At least she hadn’t contaminated the crime scene.

  “It’s like one of those fucking latex masks that joke shops flog,” Mike said to no one in particular, his voice thick with emotion.

  “Why would he go to all that trouble, then leave it behind?” Jack said.

  “Don’t ask me,” Jane said. “I slice and dice. You’re the detective.”

  “Do we have the weapon?”

  “Yes, on the floor in the bathroom. Looks as if he showered. And there’s an empty bleach bottle in the tub. I reckon he worries about leaving DNA. Any hair or body fluids that went down the plughole will have been degraded.”

  “Was she sexually assaulted?” Jack asked.

  “A preliminary examination doesn’t suggest that. But a foreign body has been inserted into her anus and pushed up her rectum.”

  “What is it?”

  “Looks like a vibrator. I’d rather leave it in situ and take X-rays before removing it.”

  As Jane started to peel off her gloves, she looked back down at the body, stopped and knelt to reopen her case. She withdrew a pair of large tweezers and a penlight torch.

  “Could you take this and shine it on her forehead for me?” she said to Jack.

  Jack took it and sat on his heels again. Switched on the torch and played the narrow beam over the pulpy flesh.

  “Left a bit. More. Up. Stop,” Jane said.

  It was a small flap, high up over the staring orb of the deceased’s right eye. Jane used her finger and thumb to pull it back like a trapdoor to a cellar, to then insert the tweezers and extract a small blood coated object the size of a pea.

  She got to her feet and Jack followed suit. Jane held the tweezers up to the light, turning them to examine her find. She then took a powerful magnifying glass out of a compartment in the case; the type used by jewellers.

  “Nearly missed that,” she said, holding the glass to her eye. “It’s a piece of gravel, a pebble, small stone, or whatever you want to call it.”

  “Is it related to the crime?” Jack said.

  “Yes. The flap was purposely cut, and this was pressed into the tissue beneath it.”

  Jack frowned. It didn’t make sense. Neither did anything that had been done to the victim. But it was a solid clue. The lab boys could identify its structure and composition and may even be able to come up with the area it originated from. They were like magicians, given material to work with.

  “Thanks, Jane,” he said. “Will you―?”

  “I’ll reschedule and do the autopsy on her later today, Jack. Give me a bell about four-thirty and I’ll bring you up to speed with the COD and anything else that might be significant.”

  “You’re a gem.”

  “No need for flattery. Just catch this arsehole. He needs to be on my slab, and the sooner the better.”

  “That sounds a little extreme, from you.”

  “It’s how I see it. Anyone capable of this mindless savagery should be in a body bag.”

  Jack gave her a look. She saw unspoken concurrence in his expression.

  Lisa came back into the room as Jack and Mike skirted the body and headed for the bedroom.

  “You look a little green around the gills,” Jane said to her.

  “I don’t often see more than crime scene photographs,” Lisa said. “Usually by the time I’m asked to give some input, other investigative strategies have been exhausted.”

  “What exactly is it that you do?” Jane said.

  “I’m a criminal psychologist. I study the motivational aspects of killers’ minds. I’m sometimes able to get a fix on how they think, and what their next move might be. Even psychos are governed by patterns. They can be profiled, and in some cases their actions lead us right to their doorstep.”

  “Have you profiled Jack Ryder?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I caught the way you looked at each other, Lisa. Be careful. Jack is a dangerous man to be around.”

  “In what way?”

  “He’s as obsessive as most of the scumbags he tracks down. He enjoys the hunt and needs to be pitting himself against the worst adversary he can find. Being a copper isn’t a job and salary to him, it’s a vocation. I’ve never met another detective as possessed by what he does. Jack makes normal dogged determination look like apathy.”

  “You sound as if you’re trying to warn me off.”

  “Maybe I am. Just don’t let your heart overrule your head. He’s a ‘Terminator’ kind of guy, not a homebody who’d be happy to sit around wearing slippers in front of the box, or to potter about in the garden.”

  “Thanks for the advice, Jane. But safe isn’t always the way to go. Some people need a little excitement, danger and unpredictability in their lives. No good getting old and grey, and then looking back over your shoulder and finding that all you did was not much more than nothing at all.”

  Jane lifted up her heavy box and smiled. “On second thoughts, you might be just what he needs,” she said, and headed out the door.

  Lisa tried to avoid looking at the obscenity on the floor. But her eyes were pulled to it. She focused on a small tattoo of a butterfly on the right hip. Anger overcame the nausea. No one had the right to do this. It was mocking the sanctity of life. People should be able to choose to live in relative peace and safety and not wind up being little more than fuel to a madman’s uncontrollable fantasies.

  Jack and Mike were standing in front of the dressing table in the bedroom. Lisa went to Jack’s side and read the message that had been written in blood on the mirror. ‘The treatment to restore a lack of good sense!’

  “Mean anything to you?” Jack said to Lisa.

  She shook her head. It was cryptic, as were the other messages left for them to find, so would in all likelihood have some connection to one of Bosch’s works.

  Jack said, “While you were getting some fresh air, Jane found a piece of gravel in the victim’s forehead. It had been put there by the killer. Do you see any significance in that?”

  Lisa closed her eyes; mentally brought the book she had studied on the artist to the forefront of her mind and searched inwardly for a connection.

  “Got it!” she said after almost half a minute had passed. “For treatment, read cure. And for lack of good sense, folly. The Cure of Folly is a painting by Bosch, and is also known as The Stone Operation. It depicts a surgeon extracting a stone
from a man’s head. There was a fifteenth century saying, ‘to have a stone in the head’, which meant to be mad.”

  “Have you got a photographic memory?” Mike said to her.

  “Eidetic, Mike. I can recall images very clearly. As if they were actually visible.”

  “Spooky, but useful,” Mike said.

  “It can be a curse. In ten years time I’ll be able to see the remains of that woman on the carpet through there with the same clarity as when I was just standing over her.”

  Jack hadn’t known that Lisa possessed such capabilities. It hadn’t come up in conversation. He thought the facility was a gift. If she could use it selectively to pull up just what she wanted to see again in perfect clarity, then there was no downside. Memory was a perfidious faculty in most people, in that it could become cloudy, or be reconstructed with subtle omissions and additions. He had found throughout his career that witnesses’ memories of events could be extremely unreliable. Show five people the same thing, and you would be sure to get five differing accounts.

  “Does it mean anything?” Jack said.

  “What?” Mike said.

  “The cryptic shit and symbolic stuff. Is he just misdirecting us with all of it?”

  “I would think so,” Lisa said. “You know he’s game-playing.”

  “S’cuse me, guv. You might want to take a look at what we’ve found in the kitchen,” one of the techies said from behind them.

  As the rest of the flat, the kitchen had been searched. Cupboard doors hung open, and drawers had been pulled out and emptied; the contents left on the floor, littering it. Even cereal boxes had been upended. Some people thought, mistakenly, that a cornflake box was a safe place to stash jewellery and other small items. They were wrong.

  “Thorough,” Mike said. “He knows how to turn a place over. Maybe he’s done time for burglary.”

  Jack agreed. “We can cross-reference anyone with a history of both sexual offences and burglary and see what we get.”

  The forensic science officer hunkered down and pointed up inside the carcass of a unit.

  Jack bent down and looked in and up. Four brackets had been screwed onto the chipboard underside of the granite effect work surface, and a piece of plywood rested on them, forming a crude yet effective shelf. Penny, or whoever had installed it, was smart.

  “What I found at the back of the shelf is on the counter,” the techie said, pointing to it.

  Jack straightened up and studied the evidence. There was a passport, a building society pass book and a few letters held together by a rubber band. After opening the passport and familiarising himself with how the young woman had looked in life, he untwisted the band, pulling it off the bundle of envelopes. They were generic white business envelopes, six in all, addressed to: MISS PENNY DOUGLAS in bold caps, with the flat number and address in lower case. Each of them had the same postmark; Mount Pleasant. Was it these half a dozen letters that were so important and had instigated the search by the killer? Jack felt a surge of expectancy. They were in chronological order. He removed the first letter from its envelope, unfolded the A4 sheet of copy paper and read the crowded single-spaced type. There was – not surprisingly – no sender’s name or address. It read:

  Dearest Penny,

  How are you keeping? You may not remember me, but we have met. My name is Jerry Aken. First off, I cannot find the words to impress on you just how important it is that you read this letter and take heed of what I have to say.

  You went out of your way to attract my attention, Penny. And now you’ve got it. I could tell by the lascivious look you gave me that you were more than interested.

  Maybe we can meet, by and by. But for now I just want you to know that I’m watching over you like a guardian angel. DON’T stop reading, Penny. You need to know and understand the rules of this relationship. If you show this to anyone, especially the police, then I will know and be offended. This is our secret. Remember, Penny, I know everything about you. I know where you

  live. I know where your parents live. I know where you work, and who your so-called friends are. I know where you shop. Which tubes you catch. I know that you are a vegetarian, that you like going to the movies, and that you frequent the British Museum regularly. I know which dentist and doctor you visit. I KNOW YOUR LIFE!

  Do you get the message, my love? I watch you and care for you. I need for you to know that and respect the sanctity of what we have and what we may become. Do not fail us both by doing anything silly. I make a very good friend, but a terrible enemy.

  Do you know what frotteurism is, Penny? No? I’ll tell you. It’s pressing your groin up against an unconsenting, unsuspecting person in a crowded place. I did that to you on a tube during the rush hour. We were both standing. I was behind you, and every time the carriage lurched I thrust myself against your soft, beautiful, well-formed bottom. I think you knew and pushed back. You pretended not to know, didn’t you? How could you not feel the hardness of my erection. Have you ever had anal sex? Does the thought of it excite you?

  I must sign off now, dearest one. I’ll write again, very soon. And remember, I’m never far away, and am always watching. Don’t make me do anything that we would both regret. If not for yourself, think of the safety of those that you care for. Do not put them in needless danger.

  Goodnight, angel.

  Jerry xx

  Jack handed Lisa and Mike a couple of the letters each to read. He gave Lisa the one he’d finished.

  “This must be the first one she received,” he said. “His initial contact with her. See what you make of it.”

  Lisa read it twice. Through the written word, she attempted to put herself in the mind of someone who remorselessly pursued and terrorised his chosen prey, before finally inflicting horrific violence upon them. She was privy to the workings of a twisted brain, and remembered what the American psychotherapist, neuropsychologist and neuroscientist Dr R Joseph had written in his book The Right Brain and the Unconscious. In it, he made comparisons between the mind and a tree. His view being that as a sapling grows, the young tree that it once was never disappears, but that older layers subsequently became superimposed on its core. He inferred that the tree that it had been remained alive, and that the forces acting on it; the twists, turns, bends and breaks caused by the elements, humanity and disease, all determined the shape that the tree would eventually assume with maturity. His opinion was that it could never outgrow what befell it as a sapling. If the now older tree was cut down and its interior examined, then what it had been would still exist at its heart. What it was it will always be throughout its life. The foundations govern what it will become.

  Dr Joseph’s analogy had deeply impressed Lisa and had given her insight into the making of a man. Just as with the tree, each person is still the child they once were. She came to understand that psychological damage and emotional and physical abuse during formative years is a cocktail that can spawn a human being with little in common to the society he may eventually come to view as prey.

  She looked up from the letter to find Jack and Mike staring at her, waiting for some insight. She had one thing. “Does the name the Mimic uses ring any bells with you two?” she said.

  Mike shook his head.

  “Should it?” Jack said.

  “Jerry Aken is another symbolic clue,” she said. “Jeroen Anthoniszoon Van Aken was Hieronymus Bosch’s given name.”

  “Tricky,” Mike said. “Shows how fanatical he is about the guy.”

  Jack smiled. “And if he has a primary target, or is in contact with other women and calling himself Jerry Aken, then all we have to do is find one of them.”

  “How?” Lisa said.

  “Give what we know to the press. Let these women know that ‘Jerry’ won’t stop at stalking. They’re scared of him, but have been groomed to believe that he won’t harm them if they comply with his demands; his rules as he calls them. Once they realise that he will eventually kill them, they’ll come out of the woodwork.�
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  “And?”

  “We use them as bait, Lisa. We’re chumming for a shark with a bloodlust.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “I think it’s too great a risk,” Lisa said when Ken looked up from Jack’s crime scene report and suggested strategy, and raised his eyebrows, inviting her to offer an opinion. “If you release the pseudonym he uses, then any woman he is victimising will be in immediate danger. I believe that among other things he’s a paranoid schizophrenic, and that he will eliminate any perceived threat to his anonymity. You would be putting an unknown number of women’s lives on the line.”

  Ken nervously chewed at the soft flesh on the inside of his cheek. “What do you reckon, Jack?” he said. “Does the prospect of collateral damage alter the way you want to go with this?”

  Jack sighed. “I don’t think we have a choice. All we’ve got is a name he used. It could turn out to be a dead end, but I choose to believe it won’t. And as for collateral damage, Aken obviously isn’t his real name. He’ll keep killing whatever we do. We have to go with what we have.”

  To an extent, Lisa could appreciate the logic. Her mind conjured up the sight of what had once been a pretty young woman. She mentally bit down hard and dismissed the Technicolor image. It broke up into a million separate pixels and evaporated into some dark cavern of her psyche, ready to reform and emerge whenever her guard was down. Too late, she saw the eyes; light dancing off blind orbs set in a glutinous, formless mass of bright poppy-red flesh. Penny’s physical identity had been stolen. Was that another symbolic act? And had the removal of her breasts been an attack on her womanhood? She believed that the unknown assailant may actually hate women with unbounded passion, whether he knew it or not. “Jack’s right,” she said, doing a U-turn. “He won’t stop. We need to put him on the defensive and undermine his confidence. I doubt he will be very good at handling pressure. The publicity will almost certainly panic him. And the loss of being in total control of the situation will increase his state of paranoia tenfold.”