The Book of Extraordinary Amateur Sleuth and Private Eye Stories

by Maxim Jakubowski

  The next scan was someone’s snapshot of the beach scene. Again, he repeated the process, studying the enhanced image closely, trying to spot anyone who appeared in the others.

  He knew this wasn’t really part of the task. The police would do all this analysis later; all they wanted from Danny was the enhanced images. They’d have a far better idea of what they were looking for.

  Another image. More faces. This time he noticed a young couple who also featured in the background of the mother and daughter picture. It meant nothing, of course, but was part of the process of building up a view of who had been where on that day.

  It was well into the early hours before he’d scanned all the images of the beach. His mind was spinning with permutations. Faces that appeared in more than one image, until he had a sense of comings and goings, almost more vivid than his own memories of being there on that day.

  He couldn’t see the photofit man, though. The dark, cropped hair, the square face, the dark eyes under heavy brows—they were the kind of features that would be distinctive even in a bad photo.

  Did that mean the man had kept a low profile, or simply that he’d only been at the beach briefly?

  He made another cafetière of coffee and kept going.

  The remaining images were from the investigation itself. The press briefing. Some pictures of lines of police and the general public searching the park behind the promenade.

  Danny even found himself in some of the images. A lanky kid taking pictures at the press conference, and then standing aside at the search, taking pictures, rather than actually helping. He wasn’t proud that he’d been so selfish back then. That he’d seen a missing child as an opportunity rather than the tragedy it was.

  He stared at the pictures until his vision blurred.

  The enhanced scans had come out well, but it was beyond him to get anything useful from them. Maybe Malik would manage.

  He was reaching for the monitor to power it down when he saw it.

  The face.

  The connection.

  His eyes jumped back and forth between the two images. The press conference photo and his own picture of the couple by the promenade with little Katie Sellers in the backdrop.

  You’d never have seen it in the original. The figure standing near Katie but not quite with her was a blur, features lost in the shade of the promenade. The enhancement process had recovered detail from the shadows, and sharpened what had been blurred. Had made the face recognizable.

  But it wasn’t the man from the photofit.

  ***

  The faces all turned to him. The suspicious, assessing gaze of the officer behind the plexiglass security screen.

  “DS Malik. I need to talk to her. Tell her it’s urgent. It’s Danny Reeves. I need to see her right now.”

  A short time later he was in the interview room again, tipping glossy prints out of a folder onto the table between him and Annie Malik.

  “This one, see? Him.” He jabbed a finger at the man standing near to Katie. “He’s with her. He’s approaching her.”

  Malik looked at the picture and then back up at Danny. “Last time you interpreted this picture very differently. You said the girl was clearly on her own. You said that was the key thing: that she was a small child on her own, and that was what was wrong.”

  “But she’s not!”

  “Don’t you think you might be over-interpreting?” She was trying to be kind, softening her clearly skeptical tone. “When your mind wanted to see her as alone, that’s what you saw. And now you’re saying she’s being approached. That’s not what I see. I see a child, who may or may not be Katie Sellers, and there are several people within a few yards of her. It’s not clear from that whether anyone is approaching her or not.”

  “But don’t you see who that is?”

  Malik stared again. “Tall. Mid-brown hair. Heavy build. That doesn’t really narrow it down.”

  “It’s her father. Jonathan Sellers.” Danny pushed a photo from the press conference toward her. DI Carver, the mother, Rachel Sellers, and her estranged husband, Jonathan. A solicitor and local councilor, Jonathan Sellers was a pillar of the community. He’d been separated from his wife at the time, fighting for custody of Katie.

  He’d have been the obvious suspect if he’d actually been in town at the time Katie disappeared.

  “I’ve read the case files,” said Malik. “He had a cast-iron alibi.”

  “Except he didn’t. He was here.” Danny jabbed his finger at the picture again. “Right here. His alibi must have been faked. So why did he lie?”

  “But he didn’t,” said Malik. “He was away that day, playing golf with Stephen Welham—who is now my DI. You don’t get a much better alibi than that. Look again. What do you see? A tall man. Mid-brown hair. Heavy build. It could be just about anyone.”

  Danny stared. How could they take someone’s word over the evidence before their eyes?

  “You’re doing what the AI software does,” said Malik. “Your mind is filling in the gaps, adding data that wasn’t there—but you’re not necessarily capturing what was actually there, you’re capturing what you think should have been there.”

  “Making shit up.”

  “No, not making it up. Just trying too hard.”

  He stared again. Saw a tall man. Mid-brown hair. Heavy build. A man who may or may not have been approaching the small girl, who might not even have been Katie Sellers.

  Malik shuffled the photos, looking at each of the big prints in turn. “I can’t believe these are the same pictures,” she said. “They’re so much clearer. I can’t believe you got this out of them.”

  She was trying to be nice.

  “I hope they’ll be useful,” he said. “Maybe you’ll see something.”

  “They’re great.”

  He looked down, unable to hold her look.

  She was right. He was over-interpreting. Overthinking things, as he always did.

  “Thank you so much for your time and expertise.”

  Which had all been for nothing. All they had now was a set of sharper images that still didn’t show either the photofit man or anything else that added to what they already knew.

  “Let me know if you need anything more,” he said, and stood.

  Fifteen years, and he still was unable to put this all behind him.

  He left the station and walked slowly home. The unseasonal warmth had gone and there was a chill in the air, and somehow that only seemed right.

  ***

  He tried not to dwell on it. Tried to focus on other things. On anything other than the case.

  Malik had been right.

  He’d been overthinking. His mind had been filling in gaps, until he saw what he’d wanted to see.

  Later, he went to the computer and stared at the thumbnail images in Lightroom. He opened his own picture of the seaside scene full size, the image that had started it all. The young couple, the beach backdrop, the little girl who may or may not have been Katie Sellers.

  That man, the tall one with mid-brown hair and heavy build… Malik was right about that, too. He might have been approaching the girl, yes, but equally he might have been oblivious to her. Just a juxtaposition frozen in the photograph.

  How had he been so convinced the man had been approaching Katie?

  He’d been overthinking. Wanting it too hard, just as Malik had suggested.

  It was time to file everything away, try to find some way to restart his life.

  He reached for the computer, but his hands didn’t get as far as the keyboard, because that was when he spotted something.

  He paused, his throat tightening.

  Stared, just to be sure it wasn’t his imagination playing tricks.

  He wasn’t. He was sure.

  After all this time, he had the answer.
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br />   ***

  This was a part of town he rarely visited. Grand houses set back from the road, flashy cars in the driveways. This was where the other half lived.

  He didn’t know how to handle this. All the way here, his thoughts had been rushing madly, but now…

  He’d wanted to take control, but now he realized he couldn’t do this alone.

  He called Malik.

  “I’m standing outside Jonathan Sellers’ house. I found something. Proof.”

  “What are you doing there, Danny? Why didn’t you come to me?”

  Because none of them ever trusted him. He didn’t say that.

  “What are you planning to do?” she asked into the silence.

  “I don’t know. I was going to confront him with it, but–”

  “Don’t. Listen, Danny. Give me…three minutes. I’m in my car. I can be with you quickly. Three minutes, Danny? Can you do that?”

  He cut off the call and stared at the house. It had been easy enough to find the address of such a prominent man. But what had he hoped to achieve, coming here on his own?

  ***

  Jonathan Sellers was unmistakable even fifteen years on, even though the mid-brown hair had turned to silver and the heavy features had shrunken, as if retreating.

  “We’re making a few inquiries into your daughter’s disappearance,” Malik said, after introducing herself.

  The man’s jaw sagged. “What? Is there something new? Have you…?”

  His act was convincing. He’d had fifteen years in the role, after all.

  “I know it’s a long time ago, Mr. Sellers, but would you please confirm your movements on that day?”

  “Me? What…?” Sellers straightened. “I assume you’ve read the statements,” he said. “You know where I was. So why this? Why now?” He was trying to intimidate Malik, but Danny knew that was not an easy thing to do.

  Malik reached into her bag and produced one of the prints Danny had given her. “Would you confirm that this is you in this photograph?”

  Sellers stared. “Of course it is. What’s this about?”

  The photograph showed DI Carver sitting with Rachel and Jonathan Sellers at the press conference, a picture that had featured widely in press coverage of Katie’s disappearance. In the picture, Sellers was wearing a white shirt and a dark tie as he talked animatedly to the audience.

  “And would you confirm that this is you in this photograph?”

  She showed him Danny’s enhanced picture of the seaside scene, pointing at the still-indistinct figure of a man standing close to Katie.

  “What? This is ridiculous. That could be anybody.”

  Now it was Danny’s turn. He thrust another photograph in Sellers’ direction. “And is it you in this one?”

  “Yes, of course it is. You know it is.”

  This picture was an informal one Danny had taken as the press conference wound down. Jonathan Sellers—tall, mid-brown hair, his heavy frame hunched over as he talked to one of the police officers.

  But in this picture, Sellers had pulled on a scuffed brown leather jacket with a distinctive tear in one cuff that made it hang loose at the left wrist.

  “And this one?”

  The search of the park, volunteers and police lined up as they worked their way from one side to another. Jonathan Sellers had taken part in that, too, and—yes!—he’d worn what appeared to be a favorite brown leather jacket again.

  “Yes, yes, it is.”

  “Now look again at this picture,” said Malik.

  The beach scene. The tall figure, his features indistinct but his scuffed leather jacket showing clearly…the jacket with a tear so that it hung loose at the left wrist.

  “You were there,” said Danny.

  “You said you were playing golf, but that was a lie,” said Malik. “And Stephen Welham helped with the lie for some reason. But it was a lie, wasn’t it? You were there. At the beach. When Katie went missing.”

  Sellers stared…at Malik, at Danny, and then at the photograph of the seaside scene, perhaps the last photograph ever taken of his daughter.

  His shoulders slumped.

  “Maybe you did play golf with your policeman friend,” said Danny. “Maybe you left earlier than you claimed and he wasn’t sure, but was just happy to agree with whatever you’d said, because you were a friend and why would you lie? But afterwards you went to the beach. Why? What were you trying to do?”

  “I know you,” said Sellers. “That pushy student.”

  He wasn’t denying anything. He almost seemed relieved now. He looked down for a long time, then up again, meeting Danny’s look.

  “Welham was drunk by the end of that day. Why wouldn’t he agree with what I said?”

  Danny stared. Finally hearing the words that would absolve him of the tangled-up feelings of guilt and responsibility that had blighted his life for fifteen years. He wondered if that was why DI Welham had encouraged Malik to dig into the old case now: nagging doubts and memories, guilt…

  “What happened to Katie?”

  “I didn’t plan it…”

  He could barely hear Sellers’ words, they were so softly spoken.

  “I only wanted to talk with Rachel. Try to work things out. But I saw Katie, on her own. Rachel had let her wander off, as she often did. Rachel was always flaky, easily distracted. I saw Katie, and all I wanted to do was protect her from that woman.”

  The photo. It had encapsulated that moment: Sellers approaching his isolated daughter.

  “Katie saw me and she literally jumped up into my arms and I caught her and suddenly I knew I could never let her go. Rachel didn’t deserve her.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Bizarrely, Danny found himself clinging to a sliver of hope for the girl, even now, but what Sellers said next quashed that.

  “It was an accident.”

  Four simple words that said so much more.

  “I carried her to my car. Drove her home. But as I drove she started crying for Rachel, and when I pulled up into the driveway she started to scream, as if I’d done something awful to her. If anyone had heard her…seen her like that, I knew I’d never see her again.”

  Sellers was crying now, his words punctuated with great big gasping, heaving sobs.

  “I… I only wanted her to be quiet. It was an accident.”

  Danny closed his eyes, struggling not to see it. The small girl screaming in the car, the panicking man who suddenly knew he had no way out. A hand over the girl’s face to smother the cries. A hand held in place just a little too long.

  The details might be different, but that didn’t really matter. It was like the image of the beach, the before and after as the details were filled in, sharpened, resolved.

  The details didn’t matter, he realized. It was the story they told that did.

  He realized Malik was studying him, trying to read him.

  She reached out then, put a hand on his arm. “You okay?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Yes, I think I am.”

  He didn’t know what came next, it was all a blur. The rush of cars arriving. The blue lights. The police officers pushing him aside.

  He remembered turning away, and an officer trying to stop him, and then Malik saying it was all right, let him go.

  Walking home, the details resolved, and finally ready to start the rest of his life.

  Around the World in

  Five Serial Murders

  Yvonne Eve Walus

  First Murder, Kiruna, Lapland

  When I tell people I’m a criminal profiler, their second thought is always FBI, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Their first thought is, of course: say what?

  They have a point: it’s difficult to be a woman in this job. “You won’t have the stomach,” the university dean declared
when I signed up for a forensic post-grad qualification. “You won’t have the physical strength for the obstacle course,” the law enforcement academy decided when I applied. “We don’t have vacancies,” was the police force’s excuse when they didn’t hire me. What they meant was, “You don’t have the imagination to get into the mind of a serial killer.”

  Thinking like a serial killer (and I’m not being sexist here when I say they’re almost all male) is difficult enough for any so-called normal person, but for a woman to try to get inside such a man’s head—that’s inconceivable.

  Which is why here I am at twenty-eight, with a degree in criminal psychology, a five-year-old son, and no steady job. Granted, my son is not a result of the world’s discrimination toward female perp profilers. He’s the result of my discrimination toward abortion, and my single status is the result of my discrimination toward charming holiday romance partners who turn into violent arseholes back home. Suffice it to say, Jack’s dad is now out of the picture on a permanent basis.

  Anyway. To make a living, I follow rich guys whose wives worry about being upgraded to a newer model. To fuel my passion, I follow international murder news reports, siphoning and shaping Big Data into patterns and anomalies.

  The Lapland murder was the first in the pattern, yet it caught my attention right off the bat. Everything about it shouted anomaly: location, victim, the setup of the murder scene.

  The location was a Lapland hotel, a distinctive structure made of ice. Or, as the hotel’s website helpfully informed me, the walls were constructed with “snice,” which is a mixture of snow and ice. Every piece of furniture in the room was pure frozen water: tables and chairs and, of course, the bed. The website contained more detail about the building process and what kept the hotel from melting in the summer months, but what caught my eye were the room names. Each hotel suite had ice sculptures that contributed to its theme. The murder had taken place in the House of Cards suite, so named because the walls were decorated with gigantic Aces of Spades, Jacks of Clubs, and Threes of Diamonds.

  There, on the slab of ice that served as a bed, lay the body of a red-haired woman, her face painted white, her lipstick exaggerated into a red heart. The Queen of Hearts. It was discovered on the morning of 26 December.