by Kate Medina
Marilyn raised an eyebrow. ‘The task?’
‘Yes. I—’ she broke off. She was about to say – Task is as good a word as any – but she realized that wasn’t true. She was used to choosing her words carefully; it was critical when she was dealing with people, patients, who were paranoid, severely anxious, obsessive, suicidal, the whole gamut of mental illness. Her subconscious had supplied her with the word ‘task’ for a reason.
The door opened and Workman came into the room, balancing three chipped mugs full of steaming, murky liquid on a large black notebook. Setting the notebook on the table, she handed Marilyn a yellow mug and Jessie a white mug adorned with a blue sausage dog in a natty pink jumper. Taking the third cup, she sat down.
‘Sarah, have you got anywhere with finding similar crimes from previous years, any with similar modus operandi, either in Surrey and Sussex, or from other forces?’ Jessie asked.
‘Nothing even faintly similar. And I also haven’t yet found any connection between the three sets of victims.’
Jessie looked back to Marilyn. ‘You said, back when we were sitting in your car outside the Lewins’ house this morning, that he was just getting started.’
Marilyn raised an eyebrow and nodded. ‘I didn’t think that you were in any state to remember what I said.’
‘I was and I don’t agree. Despite what Sarah just said about not yet being able to find a connection between the victims, I’m sure that there is one, and I think that these murders are a task. A job to be ticked off and that may soon be done … may already be done. That perhaps Denise Lewin was the last.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m certain that the motivation is personal and how wide can personal be?’
‘Perhaps Simon Lewin was spared because the personal relates to Denise and not her husband, and Simon, like Leo, would have been collateral damage?’ Workman suggested.
Jessie shook her head. ‘Both partners were killed in the other murders and, from the level of violence inflicted on the men versus the women and the whole theatre of each murder scene, I’m pretty sure that the primary victims were the men.’ She glanced at Marilyn. ‘And we did agree that Denise’s murder scene felt … odd … different to the other two. We don’t know why though.’
‘Didn’t Simon Lewin say, last night, that he was on a last-minute business trip?’ Marilyn cut in, directing the question to Workman.
Workman nodded. ‘He told me, when we stopped him outside his house last night, that he’d been on a last-minute business trip to Wiltshire filling in for a sick colleague. Perhaps the murderer thought that Lewin was at home and found out, too late, that he was away. Lewin’s 999 call was panicked, so he clearly knew that Denise was in danger.’
‘Though that does beg the question why he left her alone in the first place if he thought she might be in danger,’ Jessie said.
‘Unless it was the Whiteheads’ murder that made him realize that he – they – would also be targeted,’ Marilyn said. ‘Lewin might have dismissed the Fullers’ murders as a one-off, related to Hugo Fuller’s business, but when the Whiteheads were murdered, he realized that he and Denise were next.’ He met Jessie’s gaze. ‘Which concurs with your personal theory.’
Jessie looked from Marilyn to Workman and back. She voiced what they must all, surely, be thinking. ‘Or the other option, of course, is that Simon Lewin is our murderer.’
Marilyn nodded sagely. ‘That is, indeed, a possibility.’
‘Lord,’ Workman said, inhaling deeply. ‘We’ve certainly got our work cut out.’
57
Taking another step sideways, Cherry Goodwin slid the belt from around her waist and unlatched the cage immediately to her left. It housed a Rottweiler, as old as Methuselah and deaf as a bedpost, but he was huge and anyone who had watched The Omen – which had to be most people, hadn’t it? – would be terrified of him. Swinging his door open, gritting herself against the intermittent squeaks, wishing she’d oiled the hinges, mentally adding that to her arm’s length ‘to-do’ list, she stepped inside. The Rottweiler – Damien, she’d called him, for obvious reasons – stood there, gentle as a lamb, while she slid her belt through his collar and hauled him out of his cage and into the walkway.
‘Come,’ she said quietly.
Clutching the belt tight in one hand, pulling Damien to her hip, she moved forward, catching her ghostly advancing reflection in the glass door that led to the outside exercise field; her pale face, floating, disembodied, above her navy jumper and the whites of Damien’s eyes, visible as two huge orbs punctured by the jet black of his irises and pupils.
As they neared the end of the walkway and the empty cage, the dog began to growl.
Was he sensing her fear? Or reacting to his own?
She laid a hand on his head, as much to reassure herself as him, felt the timbre of his growl, low and fierce, vibrating against her palm.
Oh God.
Lifting the hand from his head, white, so white – Why is my hand so drained of colour? – she slid the latch back on the cage. The back of the cage, the basket, was in half-darkness. She still couldn’t see. What is it? She stepped into the cage, towing Damien, growling, resisting, behind her. What is it? Just a bundle of clothes? No – a blanket – a blanket thrown over something.
As she took a step forward, there was a piercing cry. Her own, she realized, a millisecond later as Damien ripped the belt from her hand and shot out of the cage. She leapt back, slamming into the wall of the cage.
Moving. It was moving.
God help me.
And then she saw a face. As ghostly white as her own.
A thing? A doll? A horror, demon doll?
She felt a warm trickle down her legs.
No, not a doll, a dog. A white dog’s face. But the dog’s face wasn’t attached to a dog’s body.
What the fuck?
It was attached to that of a human. A human child. Cherry watched, rooted to the spot, as the little body in the basket twisted and writhed, its tiny hand pawing at the mask covering its face, pawing, grasping, tearing it off.
A little boy stared up at her, as shocked and terrified as she was.
A balloon of pent-up air burst from her lungs.
Oh God, you poor little thing. Your poor poor little thing.
58
Marilyn sighed. ‘Perhaps there are no links between the victims and our man is just a sociopath or a psychopath, killing serially for pleasure.’
Jessie shook her head. ‘That’s too easy.’
‘Complex isn’t always the answer, Jessie.’
‘No, not always, but …’ she tailed off. The snatched three hours’ sleep had just seemed to exacerbate her exhaustion and dull her brain. She felt as if her head was wrapped in thick mulch, as if her whole body was sinking into a vat of it, no mental or physical energy to resist.
‘But what?’
‘The Psychopathy Checklist Revised, which is the most common checklist used to assess someone as a sociopath or a psychopath, states that a sociopath tends to be nervous and easily agitated and that they are volatile and prone to emotional outbursts, including fits of rage. They’re likely to be uneducated and live on the fringes of society, unable to hold down a steady job or stay in one place for very long. We know that our killer’s not a sociopath because crimes committed by sociopaths, including murder, will tend to be haphazard, disorganized and spontaneous rather than planned. These murders were meticulously well planned and very efficiently executed.’
Marilyn winced at the word ‘executed’.
‘Sorry,’ Jessie said. ‘Carried out. Is that better for your sensitivities?’
‘Much better, Doctor.’
‘As we know, he was watching the Fullers and Whiteheads before their murders, possibly for an extended period of time. Watching and planning. He brought a lead to the Fullers’, for Christ’s sake, to take Lupo away with him. He may have collected Sophie from Sheiks and driven her home, just to draw out the pleasure o
f his kill. He left multiple trails to confuse the search dogs at the Lewins’.’
‘Unless Simon Lewin is our man; there would already be multiple trails from him in his own garden.’
‘But not out in the woods behind his house, unless he laid them there deliberately because he’s our man, which again concurs with an extended period of planning.’
‘I concede both those points,’ Marilyn said with a wry smile. ‘Psychopaths are highly intelligent and their crimes, whether violent or non-violent, will be highly organized and generally offer few clues for authorities to pursue. QED. I’ve read the Psychopathy Checklist Revised too. At six o’clock this morning actually. Homework.’
It was Jessie’s turn to roll her eyes. ‘If I had a gold star, I’d give it to you, but you’ll have to settle for finishing your cold coffee instead. Psychopaths are usually highly intelligent and can be very charming and disarming, but they are basically playacting because they are unable to feel real empathy with others or to feel remorse. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, so they’ll appear normal to unsuspecting people. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature. And, as you pointed out, when committing crimes, psychopaths carefully plan out every detail in advance and often have contingency plans in place.’
Marilyn raised a hand and mimed making a tick in the air with his index finger. Ignoring him, Jessie ploughed on.
‘But, for me the key is that whole “playacting” thing. A psychopath feels no empathy and no remorse, not towards people or animals. They have no empathy for other living creatures – full stop. One of the key traits that bind psychopaths is the torturing and killing of animals, before they move on to the torturing and killing of people. In my opinion, there is no way that our man is a psychopath, because not only did he spare Lupo, he went out of his way to ensure that Lupo was found.’
Marilyn sighed.
‘I hate to sound like a broken record, but I’m sure it’s personal, Marilyn, and I’m also sure that our killer is very disturbed, but not sociopathic or psychopathic.’ Jessie sat back, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘When we find out what the personal connection is, we find him.’
With another, more theatrical sigh, Marilyn laid his hands flat on the table top and pushed himself to his feet. ‘OK, Doctor, I believe you. Now shall we go and have that chat with Mr Lewin and see if he can enlighten us?’
Jessie held up a hand. ‘Yes, but before we go to talk to Lewin, we need to agree a strategy.’
Marilyn didn’t have time to formulate a reply before the door was flung open and DC Cara burst into the room.
59
‘It is customary to knock, DC Car—’
‘Leo Lewin has been found, Guv.’ The words rushed out of Cara in an unbroken, barely intelligible stream.
Marilyn slumped back down in his chair with such a thump that it was as if someone had hacked him off at the knees. Lifting his arms above his head, he raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Thank you, God, for finally giving us a break, in every sense of the word.’
After his last case, Jessie knew that he had been beyond stressed about the disappearance of the little boy.
‘Where was he found?’ she asked Cara.
‘You’re not going to believe this.’
She wasn’t so sure that he was right. ‘Was he left, safe and well at Paws for Thought, the dog-rehoming charity in Forestside?’
Cara swung around to face her. The expression on his face resembled that of a five-year-old whose mind has just been boggled by seeing a magician pull a live rabbit from a top hat for the first time.
‘Left there some time during the night, while the charity was closed? Put into the cage at the far end of the kennel room on the right-hand side?’
‘How did you know?’ stammered Cara.
Jessie flashed him a guilty half-smile, before turning to meet Marilyn’s laser-sighted, mismatched gaze.
‘Am I missing something or are you in the wrong job?’ he snapped. ‘Shouldn’t you be dressing in a black headscarf and calling yourself Baba Vanga?’
At times like this, she found it far easier to hold the gaze of his milder-mannered brown eye than risk connecting with that piercing azure-blue one that could cut through steel.
‘Someone has been letting themselves into Paws for Thought at night,’ she said.
It took Marilyn a moment to reply. ‘Sorry – what did you say?’
‘Someone has been letting themselves into Paws for Thought at night. Not every night, just some nights.’
‘There must be police reports if someone has been breaking in.’
‘They haven’t been breaking in. They’ve been letting themselves in. They either have a key or can pick locks.’
‘What are they doing when they’re there? Stealing things? Hurting the dogs?’
She shook her head. ‘Hanging out.’
‘You’re not making any sense, Dr Flynn,’ Marilyn snapped, rubbing a hand over his eyes. ‘Not to me, at any rate.’
Jessie sighed. She appreciated that what she was about to say sounded mad – madder even than everything else she had told Marilyn to date.
When she had finished filling him in on Cherry Goodwin’s night visitor, he barked out an incredulous half-laugh. ‘I assume you’re joking.’
‘Unfortunately, I’m not. Cherry told me a couple of days ago, when I went to adopt Lupo.’
Fishing around in her handbag, she withdrew the rubber bone that she had taken from the charity in a plastic freezer bag and laid it on Marilyn’s desk. Marilyn looked as if she had just dropped a steaming dog turd in front of him.
‘I took the bone. It has teeth marks in it, human teeth marks.’
Picking up the freezer bag, he turned the bone around in his hands. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this before?’ he asked finally, looking up.
‘Because I didn’t think it was relevant to the case.’ She shrugged. ‘I didn’t know how it could possibly be relevant, but as soon as DC Cara came in, it just seemed obvious. It’s circular and it all comes back to dogs. To dogs and to watching and to being personal.’
‘Of course, there will be no witnesses to Leo Lewin being left because our man is far too clever for that.’
Jessie met his gaze and raised an eyebrow.
‘What?’ Marilyn asked, suspicion in his tone.
‘I asked Callan to give Cherry some advice about security. He installed a couple of CCTV cameras.’
Marilyn lifted his hands to the ceiling again. ‘Hallelujah. Though I’m sure that I don’t need to point out to you that the local dog-rehoming charity is not military police jurisdiction.’
‘He didn’t do any policing. Cherry was worried, unsurprisingly. The CCTV cameras she had up were dummies as deterrents, which made no sense when you can buy a great nanny cam off the Internet for fifty quid.’
‘So, last night should have been recorded on a CCTV camera hidden inside a teddy bear?’
‘A Border Collie.’
Marilyn rolled his eyes. ‘A what?’
Jessie grinned. ‘Actually, I have no idea, though I do absolve myself entirely of responsibility. However, being a good military man, I’m sure that camouflage would have been at the top of Callan’s mind.’
‘God help me. Though at least there’s a decent chance that our perp didn’t spot the cameras, if Captain Callan installed them.’ He swung around to Cara. ‘Get Tony Burrows over there five minutes ago with his CSI cavalry.’
‘Already done. Burrows has locked the whole place down. He and his team took Leo’s clothes, nail scrapings, the works, and they’re now going through the place with a fine-tooth comb.’
Marilyn leant back in his seat and ground his fingers through his hair. ‘And there I was thinking that you were barking up the wrong tree with your dogs, Baba Vanga. But you may have something, though God knows what, let alone how
it all fits together. Now shall we go and see what Simon Lewin has to say about all this?’
Jessie nodded. ‘Sure, but as I said before, first we need to agree a strategy.’
60
‘Am I under arrest?’
Simon Lewin was a tall man with dark hair cut short, a strong, square-jawed face and deep brown eyes. He should have been handsome, but there was something about him, an edge, an undercurrent, that twisted his good looks and made them unattractive. What was it exactly? Jumping to conclusions about people was entirely against the ethos of Jessie’s profession – Keep an open mind, peel away the layers, look for the cause behind the effect – but for some reason she didn’t feel unfair taking a leap in relation to Lewin. She realized suddenly that her thoughts had subconsciously driven her to lean back in the chair, fold her arms across her chest, body language that radiated doubt, said ‘I’m closed for arguments’, before the man had even opened his mouth. It was schoolboy-error psychology. Subtly, she tilted forward, unlocking her arms and resting one forearm lightly on the table edge, deliberately relaxing her facial muscles, curving the corners of her mouth into an enquiring smile that she hoped didn’t look as false as it felt.
She and Marilyn had agreed on a strategy: Marilyn’s job was to elicit the words; hers to decode the nuances of Lewin’s behaviour, what his subconscious was telling them in the minute changes of facial expression that people found it hard to actively control, in the tone of his voice, in the subtle movements of his body. They had also agreed not to tell Lewin that Leo had been found. They wanted him fearful, on edge, and feeling as if he needed to keep them on side to ensure they put the maximum effort into finding his son. They would have done so anyway, irrespective of how his father behaved, but parental love was a strong motivator.
