by Andrew Lowe
The rain was easing. Sawyer’s ear caught a hint of engine noise on the road outside. ‘Right. So, what’s the link with Owen?’ He stood up. The cat dived off the sofa and slid under the coffee table.
‘Owen Casey’s name didn’t come up in the gym investigation, but Ryan is Owen’s uncle. Ryan’s brother Billy died a few years back.’
Sawyer walked to the window and peered out through the edge of the blind, without moving it. A large white Mercedes was wedged up on the far side pavement with its lights off, engine running. ‘So do you know if Owen is still with us?’
‘No word either way. But I’ve got an address. Round your manor. Bonsall?’
‘Matlock. Not far.’
‘I’ll text it. Do I get a gold star now?’
Sawyer smiled. ‘You can have the whole sticker pack, Max. Thank you.’
Reeves slurped a drink. ‘Best of luck, my friend. I hope you get some joy with this. And take it easy. These fuckers might not be too friendly with coppers.’
‘I can look after myself.’
The car turned on its lights. It pulled out into the road, spun its tyres in a patch of rainwater, and drove away.
26
Simon Brock directed the taxi into the drive of his stone-built cottage on the edge of Hollinsclough. The driver parked in front of the single-storey annex and got out to retrieve the luggage from the boot. Simon sighed and looked out of the window at the former farmhouse: a rugged construction of charcoal-grey stone with incongruous refitted windows. The building shimmered in the morning mist. Home, sweet home.
It was too large for one man, even one who had grown as large as Simon. But he filled the space with regular—and legendary—‘soirées’. Mostly gatherings of local literary types, old colleagues and students from Cambridge, and friends from his previous life, when the house had been the ideal homestead for a couple in early retirement.
He had bought the place ten years earlier, after his agent had sold the TV rights to his first series of five novels. In the end, only two of the stories were filmed, but the money funded the restoration, and the publicity had boosted his profile. He now enjoyed a comfortable life on sales royalties, with a new title added to the mix every year.
With difficulty, he climbed out of the car and looked over the annex building, catching his breath. He had converted the old calf shed into a writing workshop, and had settled into a rhythm of bashing out his first drafts in there over winter. It was a womb-like haven of splendid isolation, with blissful underfloor heating. He often worked deep into the night, usually ending the sessions with a short stagger from his chair and a flop down into the double bed. His son had pestered him to rent the place out on Airbnb over summer, but the very idea was a violation, and he was in no need of either the company or the money.
Simon took his small case from the driver, paid him—including a generous tip—and shuffled towards the main house. He was a conspicuous figure, always impeccably dressed in tailored suit and Paisley tie, Full Windsor. He had a vast bald head with a grey beard tightly trimmed around a bear-trap jaw, and stood at six foot five, with immense, jutting shoulders which often carried his two young granddaughters during his son’s Christmas and summer visits. It was a tradition: he would greet the girls in a crouch, and they would take a shoulder each, giggling as he rose to his full height, and bore them indoors, perched like parrots. He would perhaps enjoy that at least one more time.
He was a rugby man at Cambridge—a prop, of course—and he had briefly played the sport semi-professionally, before a knee injury had drawn him to the sedentary pleasures of storytelling. But his hedonistic appetites had always been at odds with the self-denial of sporting endeavour. He had been an unfailing epicurean. A drinker, an eater, an imbiber and inhaler of all. An arch consumer of the full tasting menu of life. He had been a two packs a day man—no filter—until his respiratory system had finally rebelled at the end of his fifties.
Simon unlocked the door and walked into the hall. He was tired from the early flight, but his head was full of ideas for his new book, and he was keen to get something down before picking up his dogs from the nearby boarding centre.
He dumped his case by the door and flicked the switch on the wall outside, illuminating a modest sitting room: low ceiling with exposed beams, small corner television, wicker dog beds, bookshelves, a couple of ageing armchairs, working fireplace with a propped poker. A folding wooden side table sat snug beneath a large window that, in daylight, looked down towards the limestone knoll of Chrome Hill and the southern fringes of Buxton.
He ignored the man sitting in the chair by the table and took up his notepad from the mantel shelf by the door. He settled into an armchair, slid a pen out of his inside pocket and opened the pad.
Simon turned a few pages, found his outline notes. He spoke without looking up. ‘Would you mind telling me what you’re doing in my home?’ His voice was loud and resonant, with no waver.
No answer. He looked up from the pad. The man was now leaning forward in the chair, elbows on knees. He held a large kitchen knife between his feet, with the point of its long, broad blade prodded into the floorboards. He twisted the handle, turning the blade. Light flashed off the metal.
‘Simon Brock,’ said the man. He was short, wiry, impish; engulfed by the high-backed chair. He wore surgical scrubs: short-sleeved sky-blue tunic, lightweight trousers, slippers with polythene covers. Latex gloves. ‘You’ve kept me waiting.’ In contrast to Simon, his voice was quiet and calm, higher in pitch. There was no malevolence in his eyes; they were open, accommodating, curious.
Simon nodded. ‘Sorry about that. Flight was a little delayed. Who are you?’
‘You know who I am. You’ll have read about me.’
Simon set the notepad aside. ‘Some kind of copycat killer?’
The man squinted in confusion. ‘No. I’m the antagonist, Simon. You know all about those.’
Simon scoffed. ‘You look like you can barely lift that knife, let alone stab people and carry their bodies around. You’re a fantasist and you need to get out of my home before I call the police. I have good contacts with the police, you know.’
The man smiled. ‘I’m sure. I read the first novel in your latest series. Not sure I have the stomach for the other six.’
‘Seven.’ Simon took out his phone.
‘Please, put that away.’
Simon placed the phone on his notepad.
‘I liked the story. I like the way you made use of the local folklore. On top of all the juicy murders, of course. That’s what feeds the commuters’ Kindles, right? The dark stuff.’
Simon nodded. ‘Most people lead conventional lives, which is why so many are drawn to the unconventional and transgressive in their imaginary worlds. Crime, sci-fi, fantasy. It all serves a similar purpose.’ He picked up the phone and swiped the screen to unlock it.
'That’s your wife, I take it.’ The man nodded at a photograph above the fireplace: a younger Simon in formal wear, standing beside a slight middle-aged woman in a powder-blue summer dress. Both smiling.
‘Amelia. The cliché applies. My fiercest critic. Dead four years now. Cancer.’ He looked down at the phone screen and accessed the call keypad.
The man lifted the knife from the floor and pointed it at Simon. ‘Put. The phone away. Now.’ His tone was more irritated than malicious.
Simon chuckled and slipped the phone back into his pocket. ‘So you can lift that thing.’
The man reached underneath the table and pushed a shoebox across the floor to Simon. ‘Put those on.’
Simon edged the lid of the box aside and saw the contents: a pair of handcuffs. He sat back in his seat. ‘Look. Whoever you are, whatever this is about, there’s something I need to tell you. I’m not a healthy man. I used to smoke forty cigarettes a day, and I suppose I’ve paid the price. I don’t want to die like this, but I would like you to know that I don’t fear death. I’ve faced it for many years now, and it’s come close to taking m
e several times. I’ve felt its bony fingers around my throat. Doctors have employed many techniques to keep me going, and I’m grateful for their efforts. But I’ve had to make so many sacrifices. I’ve been forced to compromise on all of the things I love. Food, smoking, drinking. And now they tell me that it’s all been for nothing. Death has found me again. And this time, apparently, there’s no medical method of turning it away. I don’t know why you’re here, or what you intend to do. But you’ve certainly given me the urge to taste the pleasures of life, for just a little longer. May I?’
He pointed to another mantel shelf, near the fireplace, with a tray of spirit bottles and a small stack of tumblers.
The man shook his head. ‘Put them on.’
Simon smiled. ‘Come on. One last toast?’ He rose from the chair, slowly, and edged over to the drinks tray. He poured from an ornate, oval bottle, keeping an eye on the man, on the knife. He took a sip and threw back his head in pleasure. ‘Remy Martin. Louis XIII. A feast for the senses. Spicy and floral. Would you care for some?’ The man gestured to the chair with the knife. Simon didn’t move. He took another sip. ‘Damned death! There’s no escaping it.’ He turned to face the man, moving his body in front of the propped fire poker. ‘It finds us all, eventually. I have managed to delay it until now, with medical treatment. Others choose to take control, through suicide. Life, though. That’s different. It just comes. And of course, it brings us into existence. It’s upon us before we know it, before we ask for it. It’s the unstoppable force. I’m sure you know the phrase, “life finds a way”.’ He raised the glass with one hand, reached back to the poker with the other. ‘To life! Stronger than death!’
‘Put down the glass,’ said the man. ‘Move away from that poker and sit in the chair. Put the handcuffs on.’
Simon finished the rest of the cognac in one gulp. He winced. ‘Creative Writing 101. If you’re really the antagonist, then what’s your motivation? You can’t just be some boring, cartoonish psychopath. We might not agree with what you’re doing on a moral level, but we have to at least sympathise, yes?’
The man sighed. ‘Ten… nine…’
Simon stumbled away from the fireplace and sat back down in the chair. He could feel the alcohol flaring through his blood, soothing him. He picked up the handcuffs and turned them over in his fingers.
‘Eight… seven…’
‘Is this where I offer you money?’
‘It’s not about money,’ said the man. ‘Not even close.’
27
Karl Rhodes turned to the bank of monitors flattened against the recessed wall in his basement office at Buxton police station. Sawyer leaned forward and squinted into the screen. The room was cramped and overheated, with a continuous hiss from the computers’ cooler fans.
Rhodes looked up at Sawyer and grinned, bearing a rickety set of off-white teeth. ‘You’re welcome.’
Sawyer stood upright and flashed a look at Moran, who had fashioned a temporary desk in the far corner.
Moran nodded. ‘One of the stolen vans. Local shop CCTV. About an hour before Palmer would have reached his house.’
‘The van was waiting for him when he got back from the pub,’ said Shepherd, hovering by the staircase.
Sawyer took a seat, in one of Rhodes’ prehistoric wheeled office chairs. ‘And, given the lack of scene forensics, it doesn’t look like he made it inside. Walker called it. Mobile murder lab. He catches the victims where they live, literally. He kills and prepares them in the van, dumps them somewhere else.’
‘Does this actually tell us much that we don’t already know?’ said Moran.
Sawyer nodded. ‘It opens up the profile. He’s organised. Premeditated. He has a plan and he carries it through carefully, meticulously. He’s self-aware, unemotional. He’ll be intelligent, employed, educated, skilled, orderly, cunning and controlled. He’ll have some degree of charm and emotional intelligence. Organised killers work hard to cover their tracks.’
‘He’s certainly done that,’ said Shepherd.
‘He’ll be monitoring the investigation, watching the media. The scenes are so clean because he’ll be forensically savvy.’
Rhodes scoffed. ‘Fucking CSI has a lot to answer for.’
‘Organised killers often return to the scenes to observe, when the police and forensics teams are doing their work. Gloating. Plenty of killers have been caught by checks on the public around scenes.’
‘Like I said, he needs to do this. For some wider reason. It’s not psychotic. It’s not sexual deviance. It’s not domination, manipulation, control. He’s in control of his impulses. Which makes him harder to catch.’ Footsteps on the stairs. Walker entered the room. It was a cramped space for two. Now it held five. He hung back, listening to Sawyer. ‘We have a clear MO now, so the signature is the key. It reveals his motive.’
‘But there are lots of signatures,’ said Walker. ‘Which one is most significant?’
‘Single stab wound,’ said Sawyer. ‘Cauterised wound. Nude body. Cleaned body, no blood on the outside. Polythene. Cuffs. Tape. We’ve seen all of this, twice now. But what does it tell us about who he is and why he’s doing it?’
‘And how long is he going to keep at it?’ said Moran.
Sawyer turned to Shepherd. ‘Brief the others. I have an appointment. Moran, I want an ANPR check for this van. See if it comes up anywhere else. And get me the records for similar vehicles stolen recently. In case he’s planning a third.’
28
‘Your homework was on time.’ Alex smiled, reached over from the mauve armchair and poured the tea. ‘Is that carried forward from your school days?’
Sawyer settled onto the chaise longue but stayed upright; the thought of reclining felt like a cliché. ‘Not really. It was just short. Easy.’
Alex paged through her notes and nodded. ‘You scored very low.’ She looked up. ‘For anxiety.’
‘Is that bad?’
She laughed. ‘It’s not a competition. And, no, it’s not bad. Interesting, though. Sometimes, the absence of something can tell us a lot. Still, Beck is a little blunt for our purposes. I have a more specific questionnaire for you. The Impact of Events scale. It’s used to assess PTSD.’ He stayed silent, eyed the plate of biscuits on Alex’s tea tray. ‘Shall we talk about fear, Jake?’
‘It’s not something I know a lot about.’
Alex stirred her tea. ‘And that isn’t phoney bravery with you, is it? You really mean that.’
‘Yes, I do. I’m reading about it. Maggie gave me a book. The Gift of Fear.’
She nodded. ‘I know it: de Becker. He’s good, even though it’s effectively an advert for his protection business. Sound thinking.’
‘He says a lot of it is instinct.’
‘Yes. We underestimate our impulses. The conscious thought that you’re in danger comes later than the feeling. Two-hundred milliseconds. The brain alerts you to danger before you can assess, intellectualise. If we’d had to rely on conscious threat assessment, we’d have died out long ago. It’s true across nature. A weasel smells the air. An octopus puts out its tentacle. We have an incredibly complex brain that conducts all of that without our involvement. We flatter ourselves. It’s like all of our emotions, really. They’re just thoughts with bells on. In one sense, a faulty fear response can be helpful. You’ll be immune to certain types of persuasion, manipulation. Fear sells. Just ask journalists.’
‘I try to avoid them.’
She sipped her tea. ‘How do you feel, in a situation that you know is potentially hazardous?’
Sawyer looked around the room, searching the paintings for an answer. ‘I want to prevent bad things, bad consequences. I see them. I understand the implications.’
‘Yes, but you don’t feel it, do you? Your primal response doesn’t give you those vital milliseconds.’
‘No. I’ve trained my brain, though. To observe tells, signs. I’ve worked on my reflexes.’
‘With martial arts?’
‘Yes.’
Alex set down her cup and wrote something in her notes. ‘Do you think you’re disabled, Jake?’
‘No. Just differently abled.’
She looked up. No smile. ‘So, because of these coping strategies you’ve formed to compensate, you don’t feel compromised?’ He shook his head. ‘How about this?’ She put down the pad. ‘Does your own lack of fear response cloud your judgement, perhaps? You’re wired in to the signs yourself, but does your behaviour put other people in danger?’ She eyed his bandaged hand.
He sighed. ‘Am I reckless?’
‘What do you think?’
Sawyer leaned forward and took one of the biscuits: a Jammie Dodger. ‘I sometimes just feel… incompatible with the world.’
‘Like the operating system has advanced beyond you? Like you’re an outmoded program?’
He crunched into the biscuit. ‘No. The other way round. Like the world is the obsolete operating system, and I’m always having to slow down, compromise, filter, underclock myself to match the slower pace of everything. It’s exhausting.’
Alex watched him, smiling. ‘You say you’ve trained your brain. Do you not feel anything, in stressful situations? Confrontational moments?’
