The Career Killer

by Ali Gunn

  ‘Nice thought, Matthews. Sadly, geographic profiling isn’t likely to yield much with just two victims. Both murders so far are central London, and while we can probably rule out the killer living right next to the crime scene—’

  ‘Nobody shits where they eat,’ Knox said. Billericay born and bred, Knox had a way with words surpassed by none.

  ‘Quite,’ Elsie said, barely concealing her disdain. ‘Nobody lives in Chelsea or the City anyway. Our killer must have driven in, and that screams suburbia. We’re more likely to find our killer in Hornsey or the Isle of Dogs than we are in Holborn or Sloane Square. ‘

  ‘Hey, what about a psychiatric profile? See what kinda lunatic we’re looking for,’ Knox suggested. ‘The man who did this, he’s defo a headcase. If we know what kind of head case then that oughta help.’

  Elsie looked from one to the other. Perhaps they weren’t as useless as she had initially suspected. ‘A psych profile is a good shout. We need some groundwork to be done before that because Fairbanks is bound to have messed up.’

  ‘Damn right he will have,’ Knox said. ‘Prick couldn’t investigate a D and D in a brewery.’

  ‘You know him well then,’ Elsie said. She decided to give Knox a test. Failure would justify firing her.

  ‘I need you to run down everything in the Leonella Boileau investigation. Assume nothing. Reconfirm the witness statement in Fairbanks’ report, check everything for inconsistencies and unpursued leads. I want to know what our victims have in common. Maybe they went to the same gym, got their hair done at the same hairdressers, or drank at the same clubs. Look through the bank statements that I found at Layla Morgan’s home then cross reference them against whatever Fairbanks dug up on Nelly Boileau. Look for anywhere they both spent money. Chances are their lives overlapped somewhere, and that’s where we’ll find our man.’

  ‘That’s a lot of work.’

  The comment elicited a far-too-sweet smile from Elsie. ‘You’d best get cracking then, hadn’t you, sergeant?’

  ‘What about me?’ asked Matthews.

  Elsie considered what to do with her. She too was an unknown quantity, and there were few tasks Elsie could risk delegating if they weren’t going to be done to her own high standards. ‘Can you find out what expertise is available to us, please? Forget in-house profilers, they’re booked out for months and time is of the essence. See if you can find a post-doc researcher at one of the universities willing to consult on this case. Get me a few quotes to run past the finance manager.’

  From the other side of the room, the finance manager waved. Matthews’ task was make-work really, a test to see how reliable she was when given a task. Elsie needed a profiler, that much was true, but she knew which one she wanted and nobody else would do. Knox headed out without further objection, and the conference room fell silent.

  ‘You got it.’ Matthews rose and began to gather her things. Her iPad Pro, phone, and thermos went into her bizarrely oversized bag. She tucked each into a compartment except for the thermos which she clipped to the outside before slinging the lot over her shoulder.

  ‘One thing before you go,’ Elsie said. ‘I need to talk to you privately. Could everyone else give us the room?’

  Chapter 15: East Meets West

  When everyone else had vacated the incident room, Elsie stared at the crime scene layout sketch on the far wall. It had caught her eye during the meeting. Something about it was off. Elsie traipsed the length of the incident room to take a closer look and immediately realised what had been bugging her.

  ‘Walk me through this map,’ Elsie said. She beckoned Matthews over and stared at the wall. The map that Matthews had sketched was beautiful. It had been done on her iPad using an Apple pencil and then printed out. There was one problem. It was plainly wrong.

  Matthews looked puzzled as she approached the map. ‘What ’bout it?’

  It was hard not to laugh. The error was so egregious, and yet Matthews was utterly oblivious.

  ‘Where’s the church?’

  ‘There,’ Matthews said. She pointed at the right-hand side of the map. ‘St Dunstan in the East.’

  ‘Uh-uh,’ Elsie said. She was waiting for the penny to drop at any moment. ‘And where have you drawn the eastern entrance?’

  ‘Here,’ Matthews said. She looked at Elsie as if she were talking to a child. She was pointing at the left-hand side of the map – the western edge of the church boundary.

  Elsie exhaled and shook her head in disbelief. ‘And what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She handed Matthews a blank sheet of paper from the conference table and held out a pen. ‘Matthews, draw me a compass.’

  As she scribbled away, she muttered under her breath. ‘North... south... east... west...’

  The finished drawing was inverted in the same way that the diagram of St Dunstan was. Matthews had mixed up east and west.

  ‘You’ve swapped east and west. East is on the right-hand side of the map,’ Elsie said gently. ‘Shouldn’t the eastern entrance be on the right of the church?’

  ‘No, boss, it’s St Dunstan in the East.’

  She said it with such conviction that Elsie wanted to believe her. Matthews made it sound like the church was the eastern edge of existence.

  ‘Open your iPad for me.’

  She did.

  ‘Now type in St Dunstan on Google Maps, and zoom in.’

  Elsie tapped her foot impatiently until Matthews gasped.

  ‘Ohh...’

  ‘Oh indeed. Does this happen a lot?’ It would explain why Matthews had never stayed in a team for more than a few weeks. She’d been bouncing around the Met since she’d joined despite holding a first-class degree from Cambridge. She ought to be on the fast track to promotion.

  ‘It’s not right, boss,’ Matthews said. ‘Think about it. You always say “north, south, east, west”, right? And you write left to right... so....’

  Elsie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She tore the sheet off the wall and screwed it up into a little ball. ‘Redo it, get it right this time, and put it back in place by the end of the day. Do that, and we’ll say no more about it.’

  There was the hint of tears in the corner of Matthews’ eyes. She turned away, dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve and turned back. ‘Sorry, boss. I can’t help it. This always happens... and I feel so thick if I tell anyone...’

  That explained a lot. Poor Matthews. Elsie’s mind whirred. If she made these mistakes and Elsie didn’t catch them, it could cause major issues. On the other hand, Matthews deserved a fair shake of the tree, and it wasn’t insurmountable.

  ‘If you’re confused in future, ask someone. This is the sort of silly mistake that makes us all look terrible but we can avoid them. What I need you to do is run everything by someone else on the team just to make sure. Can you do that?’

  Matthews nodded.

  ‘Then get going. And burn this.’ Elsie held out the screwed-up map. Matthews took it.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Elsie winked. ‘What for?’

  MATTHEWS KICKED HERSELF. She often mixed up left and right, an old mistake, one that she usually caught. The east-west confusion was an extension of that and she hated that she hadn’t caught it before the boss had noticed. It easy to fix. She’d drawn it digitally and mirroring the image was child’s play. Once she’d redone the map, she pinged it over to the wireless printer down in the incident room and made a mental note to pin it up later, then turned her attention to finding next of kin. She was sitting in the hot desk area of New Scotland Yard among the hum of other detectives working or pretending to do so. When she plugged her laptop into the dock the Met’s secure login screen immediately flashed up on the monitor prompting her to slowly peck away at the keyboard. She had yet to master the art of typing with more than one finger per hand, and so resorted to slowly hunting down and pecking the keys in the most deliberate of fashions.

  The first thing she tried was strictly by
the book as she looked up who else had been on the electoral roll at Layla’s address. Any adults living with her were likely to be family or, failing that, know who her closest relatives were. She typed the address and hit search.

  Nada. Nobody else was currently registered at Layla’s address. She texted Knox to ask what she ought to do next. Seconds later, her phone pinged.

  Knox’s message read, kid, cn u chk historical rcrds?

  It took her a moment to decipher the message. ‘Ohh... check the historical records.’

  Bingo. This time, it showed that Layla Morgan used to live with Denise and Francis Morgan, both of whom had lived in the property up until the year before last. At that time they’d been in their late sixties. Matthews presumed that Denise and Francis were mum and dad, and if they were still alive then they were next of kin.

  A quick search revealed no further addresses for Denise and Francis Morgan, and so Matthews resorted to the old standby – Google.

  Within seconds, an obituary popped up. The pair had died in a light aircraft crash eighteen months ago. That explained how Layla had such a beautiful house in a sought-after part of London – she’d inherited it. Perhaps inheritance also explained how she had a bank account with SQ Private Bank. Layla wasn’t successful enough as a model to earn that on her own.

  The next task was the one that Matthews had been dreading – calling Layla’s mobile phone company and asking for a copy of her recent calls. Whichever numbers she called most often were likely to belong to family or friends, and that might lead to next of kin.

  The frustrating thing was that the press had already jumped the gun. God only knew how they’d found out who the victim was so quickly. Layla Morgan’s photo – stolen from her Instagram profile – had been splashed across the front pages even without a name. It was odds-on that the next of kin already knew she was dead.

  Matthews found the number for the O2 switchboard and punched it into the phone. She hated using landlines. Who used such old-fashioned tech these days? It just felt so awkward.

  She hit the dial button.

  ‘Welcome to O2, your call is important to us. For your pay-as-you-go balance, press one. For billing and other enquiries, press two. For...’

  Matthews kept pressing the hash button over and over. If the phone tree thought she was hearing-impaired, she might get forwarded to a real person.

  This was going to take a while.

  Chapter 16: The Profiler

  The man Elsie had driven twenty-one and a half miles to meet lived and worked alone. His house was well outside central London, and, since his official retirement, he refused nearly all visitors. Thankfully, he was particularly fond of Elsie. He had been her godfather since she was ten months old which was probably why he’d agreed to work one last case. The great Burton Leigh would help her by profiling the Lady Killer.

  His house was up on the hill, tucked away behind wrought-iron gates which opened to admit her car only after he himself had had the chance to watch her through a camera. His years liaising for the Met on unusual murders had rendered him paranoid, and so the gates shut behind her almost before she was through them.

  Once Elsie had parked the car, she stepped out onto the driveway where the gravel underfoot gave a loud crunch. Her eyes watered as the cold air struck her. She made a dash for cover, the imposing oak front door cracking opened almost immediately, just far enough for Bertie to poke his head out.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he said, his tone frantic. ‘Hurry up!’

  She squeezed through the doorway only for him to slam it shut a split second later. Before he could stop her, she enveloped him in a hug.

  ‘Geroff me, girl!’ he muttered. When she eventually released him, she smirked. Now that she could see him without a door in the way, he looked older, his hair thinner and flecked with grey and white, his beard as unruly and unkempt as his clothing. Since Auntie Diane had left, he’d gone a bit feral.

  ‘Good to see you, Uncle Bertie,’ Elsie said. ‘It’s been a while.’

  ‘You’re one to talk. I’m always here.’

  It was true. He let the Waitrose delivery guy in once a week and saw the occasional patient by Skype. Other than that, his only social contact were the far too rare visits from Elsie or her father.

  ‘Seen my dad lately?’

  Bertie turned ashen. ‘Visited him the other day.’ He led her along the main hallway as they talked. Wood panelling lined the walls, every ridge thick with dust. The whole house needed a thorough clean. They eventually reached the orangery at the rear. From here Elsie could see right across the hills and back towards north London, though without any of the biggest landmarks in sight it could be almost any slice of suburbia. The cold blue hues outside contrasted sharply with the warmth of the orangery’s underfloor heating. It was one of those cosy places that enveloped and stifled. No wonder old Bertie rarely left.

  ‘You visited him? I thought you hated leaving Griffin Lodge.’

  ‘Sometimes I leave,’ he said defensively. ‘Sit, girl, sit. Tea? Coffee? Port?’

  Port at this hour? Old Bertie had been retired for far too long. A lead crystal decanter on the sideboard was half full of the stuff, and, if Elsie sniffed, she thought she could detect a hint of it in the air as if he had been indulging before she’d arrived. ‘Just water for me,’ she said.

  He muttered as he made a beeline for the kitchen. ‘Thank God, I haven’t got any milk in anyway.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘You looking after yourself, Uncle Bertie?’

  Only the sound of him running the tap broke the silence. She stared out of the window, admiring how the light played on the trees. London was where everything happened. It was where the people were. It was where the work was and it was dirty and cramped. Here was different. Hatfield was a lovely place to retire to, especially if you had a Jacobean mansion to potter around.

  Bertie shuffled back in with a jug of water, two glasses, and a plate piled high with a variety of biscuits.

  ‘My favourites are the chocolate Hobnobs,’ he said as he set the plate down in front of Elsie. She knew that all too well. Whenever Auntie Diane hadn’t been looking, he’d sneak the Hobnobs from a Kilner jar which he had hidden at the back of the cereal cupboard. He only shared them with those he particularly loved.

  Learned, vaunted, and respected, Burton Leigh PhD was still, well, weird. There was no other way to describe his eccentricity. If Elsie hadn’t known him for three decades, she might think he was losing it.

  ‘This on the books?’ he asked. ‘I could do with the money.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Elsie said. She meant it. If she had the budget, she would put everything through properly. As it was, the initial funding allocated to the investigation was barely enough to do the legal minimum. She couldn’t afford to spend the thousands it would take to pay for a full psychiatric profile to be worked up, not with the spiralling DNA testing costs associated with the myriad samples collected at St Dunstan.

  He sat down on the chair opposite with a thud. ‘You mentioned a serial. This the Lady Killer? Don’t look surprised. Even I watch the news every now and again. What do you want to know?’

  She chewed over a Jammie Dodger as she thought. What did she want to know? Everything. She wanted to know what kind of man would kill two women. She wanted to know how anyone could pose a body so coldly. She wanted to know how he dared to drive into central London without worrying about being seen while dumping a body on a bench in not one but two of London’s busiest public gardens.

  Above all, she wanted to know why. Why did two women lose their lives to this monster? What was it that drove him to murder?

  ‘Why?’ she rasped simply.

  He leant back as if to consider the question. ‘Why indeed,’ he mused. For a moment she could imagine him sitting there with a white cat on his lap, Bond villain-esque as he contemplated the Lady Killer.

  ‘Money, fun, anger, and jealousy,’ he said finally. ‘Those cover the vast majority of murders. Se
rial killers are like any other killers in that regard.’

  ‘But different in others?’

  ‘They tend to be thick,’ he said plainly. He paused to pour himself a glass of water and then topped up Elsie’s glass. ‘Serial killers are usually one to two deviations below the average IQ. Killing one person is high risk and with every subsequent victim the pressure will escalate. Getting away with murder takes luck, skill, and confidence. Being thick helps – they think they can get away with it. The rest of us know we probably wouldn’t get away with it which is why the threat of life in prison works.’

  ‘Dunning-Kruger?’

  ‘Yep. Stupid people don’t realise how thick they are, smart people do. If you know your limits, you know it’s too risky. It isn’t that smart people don’t have a violent streak – we all do under the wrong circumstances – but we weigh up the risks and rewards more accurately. That leads to lower levels of violent crime as education levels rise.’

  ‘How does that help?’

  ‘Your killer isn’t normal, and that bothers me,’ Bertie said. ‘Less intelligent killers use simpler murder methods—’

  ‘Like stabbing you mean.’

  ‘Yes, like stabbing. In that way, the Lady Killer is very much a typical serial killer. Where he or she differs is in the execution. Stupid people don’t get in and out of central London with a body without being seen. The contradiction between simplicity and elegance doesn’t sit right.’

  ‘Could he have got lucky?’

  ‘Once perhaps,’ Bertie said. ‘Not twice. Your killer had to have been planning the murders for some time. I assume from the report you emailed me that the automated number plate recognition has drawn a blank.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Then the killer knew he had to avoid the cameras and he knew how to avoid them. That is not reflective of a typical serial killer.’

  It sounded as if he didn’t think the two murders were connected at all. ‘Then what am I dealing with?’