by Helen Cox
‘Morning, both, glorious day, weather-wise, isn’t it?’ said Kitt, her smile considerably wider than one might expect given the mammoth task ahead. She breezed past Grace and Evie who had beaten her down to the meeting place and were sitting on a bench. She then unrolled a large tartan blanket from her satchel and began spreading it out on the grass near the weathered ruins of St Mary’s Abbey. The opportunity to lounge out on the grass surrounded by what arches and columns remained of a Benedictine place of worship on a sunny day was just one of the reasons Kitt loved living in York so much. There were so few cities where you could get quite so close to history. Once she was satisfied the rug was lump- and crease-free, she waved her companions over.
‘You’re in high spirits this morning,’ said Grace, as she made herself comfortable on the blanket. ‘I’m guessing you made up with Halloran, then.’
‘And I bet I know how,’ Evie said with a sly smile.
‘Give over, you two, will you? This is not an episode of Sex and the City. We’ve got serious matters to attend to.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Evie. ‘All work and no play and all that.’
‘We haven’t done any work yet,’ said Kitt.
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Grace. ‘Alongside catching Evie up on what we discussed with Rebecca last night, I’ve been compiling every possible shot of our mystery man who’s appeared at all three crime scenes to see if there’s anything we can use to identify him.’
‘You must have been up with the larks!’ said Kitt. ‘Fantastic work. Any joy?’
‘Nothing yet, he wears pretty generic clothing. Nothing with a symbol or logo. I’ve zoomed in on quite a few pictures of him and as yet there aren’t any identifiable details.’
‘Well, Halloran is also aware of the individual. I directed him to the news coverage where we’d spotted the amateur photographer and they’re going to pull up CCTV footage from the days the reports were made. See if they can catch him getting into a car or using a cash machine so they can track the registration or the card number. If that doesn’t yield any results, I think they’ll then put a call out to the public for information. See if anyone who knows him comes forward, or indeed if the guy steps forward of his own accord if he’s innocent.’
‘That’ll be a big help,’ said Grace.
‘Mal also thinks that if he is the man we’ve been looking for, the call-out for information might make him panic and do something to incriminate himself.’
‘Here’s hoping,’ said Grace. ‘Ten days seems so much less time than eleven days did yesterday, it’s weird.’
‘I know,’ said Kitt, wishing, yet again, that she had been able to rearrange her library shifts until after the investigation was over. It had been a while since she’d asked for some leave on short notice but her boss Michelle had been adamant that there was nobody to fill in for this week. Mind you, Michelle was the kind who would have insisted that was the case even if Kitt had had all her limbs in plaster casts. It didn’t help the case with her boss that Kitt was only at the library two days a week these days. As far as Michelle was concerned, Kitt should be able to complete any PI work without it interfering with her minimal shift pattern. Ordinarily, this would have been a reasonable ask but with just eleven days to solve the case, every minute counted.
Still, Grace would be able to continue her research in the meantime, and she had managed to wangle the following week off when, if they hadn’t already cracked the case, time would truly be running out for them. ‘I think we’re going to feel that way with each day that passes but we have to stay focused. Worrying isn’t going to get us anywhere. And actually, one of Ruby’s neighbours did catch the killer – or his accomplice – on a home security camera. Not his face, mind you, but he was wearing a black hoodie with an inverted pentacle printed on the back.’
‘Is that going to help us narrow it down?’ asked Grace.
‘Not on its own,’ said Kitt. ‘I did a quick web search while eating my cereal this morning. There are so many shops, online and offline, that stock hoodies like that. And of course from online shops you can get stuff shipped from anywhere in the world. But we thought the symbol might be a clue. We’ll want to draw up a list of satanic organizations, starting with those based in Yorkshire, to see if they have noticed any unusual behaviour from their members.’
‘Are there a lot of satanic organizations in Yorkshire, like?’ said Evie.
‘I’ve no idea, but at a guess I would imagine the list to be quite short,’ said Kitt.
‘That’s one lead to follow anyway,’ said Grace.
‘Indeed,’ said Kitt. ‘But having spoken to Rebecca about the murder weapon and trawled the press for all the information we can find on the case, we now need to draw up a timeline and look into each victim in turn, their backgrounds, their movements, to help us draw up a list of possible suspects. That way, we can systematically work from most to least likely.’
‘All right,’ Grace said, taking her laptop out of her rucksack and switching it on. ‘Let’s start with the timeline and any evidence uncovered.’
‘Well, so far there have been three killings, one per month since January. No forensic evidence has been left behind and, up until now, no CCTV footage of the perpetrator,’ said Kitt. ‘Still, there are some common links. All of the murders have taken place within the county of Yorkshire, which might indicate that the murderer is from this region too.’
At this statement, Kitt noticed Evie looking warily over her shoulder, and, though to others it might seem ridiculously paranoid, she couldn’t blame her for it. The scars on Evie’s face told the sad story of how she had suffered last time there had been a serial killer at large on her home turf.
‘All of the victims had some association with the occult,’ Grace added.
‘And,’ Kitt said, ‘the nature of the murders reflects this. The ritualistic markings on the doors. The eleven days between warning and murder – eleven being quite an important esoteric number.’
‘Is it?’ said Evie.
‘Yes, we don’t really have time to go into the whys and wherefores just now but I do have some excellent volumes on gematria and master numbers if you’d like a lend?’
‘I’m . . . all right, thanks,’ said Evie. ‘Sounds a bit heavy. I’ll take your word for it.’
‘There’s the fact the police believe the killings all happened around midnight too,’ said Grace. ‘According to the research we’ve pulled up it’s an important time of day in some occult belief systems.’
‘Not forgetting the way in which the killer drains blood from their victims – and the vampiric marks on the victims’ necks. If the killer isn’t involved in the occult directly, it’s safe to say they are in some way obsessed with it.’
‘Well, so long as the killer sticks to their pattern that rules me out,’ said Evie. ‘If they change their target to people who love vintage teapots though, I’ll definitely be watching my back.’
‘Not much chance of that, I don’t think,’ said Kitt.
‘Poor Ruby though,’ said Evie. ‘She must be terrified.’
‘If that’s what you think, you don’t know Ruby as well as I do. Wouldn’t surprise me if she somehow manages to take this bloke out single-handedly.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Evie. ‘She’s a hardy lass. But I think deep down she must be scared even if she’s trying to put a brave face on it. You say “bloke” – you think the killer is male then?’
‘We can’t rule anything out at the moment,’ said Kitt. ‘But Halloran suspects the perpetrator is male based on the fact that they’ve physically overpowered three victims in order to drug them. Plus, sadly, statistically this kind of killer is much more likely to be male.’
‘Besides the occult thing, is there anything else that links the victims?’ said Evie.
‘Not that we know of,’ said Grace. ‘They all c
ome from slightly different locations. Middlesbrough, Scarborough, Malton. Not a world away from each other but far enough apart that there are no obvious links between them – although we don’t have access to their phone and financial records like the police, so I’m just going on what I’ve managed to pull up online. There are no connections on social media, there’s no correlation in terms of sex, ethnicity or age, or professional employment either.’
‘That’s right,’ said Kitt. ‘The first killing took place on the seventeenth of January, at midnight. I assume, Evie, that Grace brought you up to speed on that when she talked you through the Zoom call we had with Becca.’
‘Yeah, the first victim led some kind of coven, right? And she cleaned the killer’s mark off her door thinking it was vandals?’
‘That’s right. The police found traces of the paint after the fact and, based on the eleven-day pattern of the other killings, it’s assumed the mark was painted onto her door on the sixth of January, so that seems like the most prudent place to start our timeline. When we’re asking for alibis, it’s as important to find out where the suspects were the days the doors were marked as it is the killings themselves. Mal suggested that the killer might use an accomplice, in case they are caught, and certainly we need to be open to the possibility.’
‘And if you catch the accomplice, they will lead you to the killer,’ said Evie.
‘That’s the hope,’ said Kitt.
‘Whether they’re working with an accomplice or not, the killer seems pretty determined to avoid any obvious pattern in his victims,’ said Grace. ‘Anna Hayes was white, and her day job was at the local council. This is a very different profile to the second victim, Roger Fairclough. He was also Caucasian but that’s where the similarities end. He was a man in his eighties, a retired police officer who lived in Scarborough. He ran an online forum about the occult as a hobby. He was killed on the sixteenth of February.’
‘Which I suppose means the door was painted on . . .’ Evie paused to do some counting on her fingers. ‘The fifth of February.’
‘That’s right,’ said Grace, making a note of it on her laptop.
‘The third victim was Alix Yang,’ said Kitt. ‘She was a woman in her forties who lived in Malton and had Asian heritage. She self-published spell books online.’
‘Was that her main profession?’ said Evie.
‘No, she was a journalist,’ said Kitt. ‘From what the papers said about her, the spell books were just a side-hustle.’
‘She was murdered on . . . the eighteenth of March,’ Grace said, double-checking the date on an article she’d pulled up on her phone. ‘So the mark on the door was likely painted on the seventh.’
‘And now Ruby has been targeted – a solitary witch.’
‘What I can’t get over is that the third victim was under police protection when she was murdered. How did that happen? I know Charley attended a big briefing about the case last night after that mark was found on Ruby’s door, but unlike Halloran, she isn’t a soft touch. I can never get anything out of her about a case she’s working on. No matter what methods I try,’ said Evie, referring to her partner, DS Banks.
Kitt chuckled. Poor Banks was always so despairing of Halloran’s inability to cut Kitt out of his cases. She couldn’t very well argue against the fact that Mal was a soft touch. She liked that he couldn’t help himself when it came to letting her in on what was going on. As well as a sign of devotion, it made solving murder cases a lot more straightforward than it would be otherwise. Though Kitt conceded that whenever she was in the middle of solving one, it never felt that way.
‘From what I understand, that tragic episode was all very Castle Inverness,’ said Kitt.
‘What? There were no murders in Inverness . . . were there?’ said Grace.
‘Fairly sure that’s a Macbeth reference,’ said Evie. ‘And you’d best move the conversation on sharpish before we get five more.’
‘Oh, right, should have known,’ Grace half-groaned. ‘So what does that mean to us lay-people who don’t navigate the world via the works of Shakespeare?’
‘It means the officers on guard from the local nick in Malton, one at the front of the property and one at the back, were drugged,’ said Kitt, wincing as she remembered the tale Halloran had relayed to her before she left the cottage that morning. During the briefing at York police station last night the officers from Malton had explained their encounter with this devious killer in nightmarish detail. ‘According to Mal, the killer injected the officer watching over the victim’s property with Xylazine, the same drug that has been found in the victims’ systems.’
‘Grace said that it was a drug used on animals?’ asked Evie.
‘Yes, Mal reckons it’s most commonly used by farmers,’ said Kitt. ‘And it’s quite difficult to get your hands on it. A vet would have to prescribe it. The police in each area where the killer has struck have been going through a list of vets in their region, asking them to provide details of any Xylazine prescriptions they’ve dished out in the last six months.’
‘It gives me a bit of hope that the police have got something that concrete,’ said Evie. ‘That’s a paper trail and hopefully they’ll reach the end of it before anything untoward happens to Ruby.’
‘I agree,’ said Kitt. ‘The police are best placed to locate and interview anyone who’s had a Xylazine prescription. We’ll focus on the areas they have less time to pursue.’
‘God, poor Alix Yang though,’ said Grace. ‘She would have thought she was safe under police protection. But once the officers on watch had been knocked out there wouldn’t have been anything they could do to stop the killer.’
‘It’s worse than that, I’m afraid,’ said Kitt. ‘In the quantities the killer used on the officers, the Xylazine doesn’t knock you out. Instead it causes a kind of paralysis; an inability to move properly or think straight. From what I’ve read, they call it the zombie drug. The officers may have had some sense of what was happening but couldn’t get to the victim or raise the alarm because of the effect the drugs were having on them. The killer was so swift in their actions neither officer even had a chance to hit the emergency button on their radios.’
‘Crikey. I’m not sure Charley would ever forgive herself for that if it happened to her,’ said Evie. ‘I’ve never known anyone as dedicated to public safety as she is.’
‘Almost every officer I’ve ever come into contact with is extremely devoted to keeping us all safe,’ said Kitt. ‘But the boldness of turning up at the victim’s property while it’s under police protection tells you the kind of person we’re dealing with here. And that’s why, though Ruby’s been moved to a safe house at a location Mal won’t even disclose to me, we cannot count on that alone to save her.’
Five
Kitt’s somewhat unsettling statement gave all three women pause. They fell silent as they considered the task in front of them. Was it possible to get the better of someone as dedicated to their mission as this killer appeared to be? At that thought, it seemed to Kitt that the warmth of the April sun was no longer reaching her. In response, she wrapped her purple cardigan tighter around her body though it did little to stave off the sudden chill.
‘Well, no matter how prepared this bloke thinks he is, we can’t just sit idle,’ said Grace. ‘Ruby’s hired us to do a job, and we’re going to do it. Just like we always do.’
‘We’ll throw all we’ve got at it,’ Kitt said with a nod, hoping the others couldn’t hear the lingering doubt in her tone.
‘At least the police have got that lead on the Xylazine . . . and there’s the occult angle binding the victims together,’ said Evie.
‘Yes . . . although even that element has its variations. Each victim has slightly different associations with occult practices,’ said Kitt. ‘Still, I suppose if we’re assuming the occult element has some significance to the killer, we should presume t
he same thing about the Yorkshire locale.’
‘You mean other than convenience, if he lives here?’ said Grace.
‘Although the killings have all taken place in Yorkshire, that’s a big if.’
‘How come?’ said Evie.
‘Think about it. The most famous serial murder cases have historically happened in America. There’s a reason for this. America is huge with numerous states, all with slightly different legal systems that don’t quite connect.’
‘So, a serial killer can move from one state to another, committing the same acts and reducing the likelihood of getting caught because the police have to start almost at square one each time?’ said Grace.
‘I’m sure interstate communications are better than they once were, but if you travel across the country, you can probably do quite a bit of damage before the police realize it’s the same offender. Especially if the killer makes some slight alterations to their MO and they have no idea what they look like.’
‘And you think that’s what’s happening here?’ said Grace. ‘The killer doesn’t really live in Yorkshire at all, he’s making trips here especially to kill people to divert attention from his true location.’
‘Crumbs. Lots of people make trips north, south, east and west every day,’ said Evie. ‘Family visits, remote working, you name it. Picking someone out of a haystack like that would make it even more difficult if the killer doesn’t live nearby.’
‘I know,’ said Kitt, taking a deep breath. ‘We can only hope, for Ruby’s sake, that he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. You both know what Mal’s like about cases like this, but this one has got him really rattled.’
‘If the Yorkshire angle doesn’t help us much, perhaps the question that’s most likely to lead us in the right direction is: why target people with links to the occult in the first place?’ said Grace. ‘I know serial killers are sort of known for being more ritualistic than most, but that still doesn’t explain why the killer is choosing these people in particular.’