The Career Killer

by Ali Gunn

  ‘Go on,’ Elsie said.

  ‘The dates he’s bin out robbin’,’ Ian said. ‘How’s he know when to go?’

  The obvious answer was that he didn’t. Just that morning he’d been interrupted by the cleaner.

  ‘Relevance?’

  ‘This morning, he got seen, right? But none of the crime reports for the burglaries mention seeing someone. He can’t be that lucky.’

  Elsie looked around the room. How had the killer managed to get in and out without being seen? It was the same question she’d been asking since St Dunstan in the East and the answer was staring her right in the face.

  ‘He’s pulled the same trick twice! Why didn’t we see it?’

  Confused expressions met her gaze.

  ‘Think about it,’ Elsie said. ‘At St Dunstan in the East, we wasted forever looking for his car but he didn’t drive it there because he lived next door. It was Occam’s razor all along. The simplest explanation is the best. We couldn’t find a car coming or going from the crime scene because he his car was safely tucked up in the parking garage a hundred yards to the east of the crime scene. No wonder he wasn’t seen if he could drive into an abandoned car park and then dump the body when nobody was looking. The same probably applies to Chelsea Physic Garden. Someone find out if there are any properties that were vacant nearby – I’m betting he was a property guardian near there as he used it as a dump site.’

  ‘Right,’ Stryker said. ‘I can do that... but how’s that help us now?’

  ‘He committed murder in a StayAway rental last night. It likely wasn’t his first time. What if he’s using one of them now?’

  Even Bertie swore. It was so simple, so elegant. Rent a house with an integral garage, scope it out and check for CCTV on the first visit, and come back with a car, presumably with the body in the boot. Simple.

  ‘How’s that fit with your theory, Dr Leigh?’ It still felt weird calling Uncle Bertie that. She’d heard him talk to Dad over the years but this was the first time that he was working for her rather than with her.

  Bertie looked around the room, his eyes big and doleful. He pushed his glasses further up his nose. ‘It explains the contradiction, I suppose. Our killer is not the sophisticated genius who could get in and out of St Dunstan in the East unseen. Instead, he is simply following the path of least resistance in that regard and dumping the body on the doorstep... or close enough to the doorstep while still satisfying his compulsion.’

  ‘Conscious?’ Elsie prompted.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Bertie said. ‘It may be that he is choosing dump sites that mirror a place of trauma for him, somewhere he was rejected by a woman. There is something I am curious about. How did he choose when to visit those particular properties? If they were actively being rented out, surely it was a risk to break in and steal?’

  A light bulb went off in Elsie’s brain. ‘Ian, get up the StayAway website for me.’

  He did. The home page flashed up a registration screen. In the top right, it read “Already signed up? Login here” in tiny grey text.

  ‘Now, login,’ Elsie said.

  ‘Can’t, don’t have an account.’

  ‘We’ll use mine then. Pass your laptop down.’

  Sixty seconds later, Ian’s Alienware laptop was flashing its LEDs in front of Elsie, and they were in. She clicked through to find a random London property and smiled.

  ‘See?’ she said.

  They didn’t. Blank looks met her excitement.

  ‘Look,’ she said, this time using the mouse to drag the cursor around and around the box marked “select a date”. It was more than simply a space for her desired dates. When she clicked on it, coloured boxes came to life. A key underneath indicated that the cheapest dates for the month were illuminated in green. The midrange prices were in yellow through to orange. The most in demand – and therefore the priciest – were in red. She read out that explanation.

  ‘And,’ she added, ‘the greyed-out boxes show when the place isn’t available. He knows when properties are empty because StayAway actually tells him. The dates show up as available for rental, ergo, the property is empty.’

  ‘So,’ Knox said, ‘he’s found a way to break into houses to steal and kill. How do we find him?’

  ‘He’s a creature of a habit,’ Elsie said. ‘Isn’t he, Dr Leigh?’

  The profiler nodded. ‘He does exhibit a consistent and well-defined modus operandi.’

  ‘So, he’ll probably go back to one of these rental properties. He’ll pick one where he can park his car, one without CCTV, and probably one he hasn’t been back to. That sound likely?’

  ‘Highly,’ Bertie said. ‘He’s taken a few risks but he’s careful with it. Hitting the same properties repeatedly would expose him to the chance that the locks had been changed or cameras added in response to his last break-in.’

  ‘Locks!’ Stryker said. ‘How’s he been copying the keys? Surely that’s how we can find him?’

  It wasn’t a bad shout. It was just too slow. According to Bertie, now the killer had been forced to abandon St Dunstan in the East, he’d lose the last of his self-control and lash out well before Stryker could trawl every locksmith in London with a copy of Flick’s e-fit.

  ‘Keep it on the back burner,’ Elsie said diplomatically. ‘For now, we’ve got more pressing things to think about. What happened with the car you tried to track down?’

  ‘It belongs to a law firm which is co-owned by one Joshua Robertson.’

  ‘Got to be a relative.’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Stryker said. ‘Joshua Robertson is his younger brother. While he admitted to knowing that James is a habitual thief, he denied everything else. I think we should get a warrant to tap his phones. In the meantime, Knox did me a favour and asked her friend Ozzy to tail him while we concentrate on finding the brother. So far, Robertson is sitting tight in his office.’

  ‘Good work, both of you. The warrant is a good shout but be quick. I’m mindful that time is getting away from us. James is out there somewhere and we need to find him pronto.’

  ‘So what’s the plan?’

  What was the plan? So much information had come to light in the last few minutes that it was almost overwhelming. Elsie could feel the fatigue creeping in at the edge of her periphery. If she wasn’t careful, she’d crash and be of no use.

  ‘Ian, Stryker, I want you two to analyse the list of all the rental properties he’s been in. Get me the details for every last one. I want to know the type of property, how visible the front door is from the road, how many crime reports there are associated with the place. Plot ’em on the map. Mark those properties where a burglary’s been reported in red. Those he’s less likely to go back to.’

  The two men shuffled to the end of the conference room table and set to work to translate the list that she and Knox had obtained from Adelrick Melrose into a plotted map.

  ‘What next?’ She looked around the room. The list would be over eighty strong before the robbery crime reports eliminated some. They couldn’t keep an eye on every one of those.

  ‘CCTV?’ Annie volunteered. ‘If he’s been avoiding places with security as you said, we can knock off anywhere he rented but decided not to return to.’

  Those were the lucky ones, the homes that he’d scoped out and never robbed. ‘Good. More. We need more. What else?’

  ‘Garages,’ Knox said. ‘If there’s cover for his car, we bump it to the top of the list.’

  It was a solid thought. He’d had access to a garage at St Dunstan and that had undoubtedly made his job easier. ‘He didn’t have a garage in Holland Park. He’s not totally risk-averse. I like your idea but let’s try and rate the properties based on exposure risk rather than a binary division based on garage status. We need to be holistic here. If he can dart ten feet under the cover of darkness in Holland Park, he’s willing to take even bigger risks now.’

  Bertie raised a hand politely. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘the Lady Killer will become less
picky. He’s not had to deal with this sort of pressure before. He can’t go back and rent more properties – he’s got to know we know his name so everything here on out has to be strictly off that grid which means he’s going to be spending cash not cards – so he’s only got the selection he already knows about. He may be choosing the “least bad option” rather than a property which ticks all his boxes.’

  Compromise. The killer would have to compromise. ‘Then what,’ Elsie asked, ‘would the killer prioritise? Is he going to be efficient and look for the most logical places to commit a murder? Or is he going to be smart and try to guess what we think he’s doing so that he can do the opposite?’

  ‘Neither,’ Bertie said. ‘He’s driven by compulsion. It’s not an entirely conscious, logical choice on his part.’

  Elsie felt herself getting annoyed at how vague that was. ‘But practically, what does that mean?’

  ‘He’s likely to stay in the same comfort zone, geographically and logistically.’

  Every single property that James Robertson had rented was in the same vein – big, posh houses in zones one and two. Nothing he’d stayed in was cheap. One of the girls had suggested geographic profiling of the victims right at the start of the investigation. That seemed like an eternity ago. Perhaps it would be possible to apply the same approach to profiling the rental properties?

  ‘Can we build that into a profile of the places he might go?’

  Knox raised a hand. ‘It was Matthews who suggested geographic profiling way back. I looked into it a bit when you dismissed it out of hand. Aren’t we going to come up against the same brick wall that we’ve got an itinerant killer with no permanent fixed abode?’

  It was true. The Lady Killer had hopped from rental to property guardianship and back again. They had no known history of everywhere he’d stayed. Yet. But he had to call somewhere home.

  ‘Where does his brother live?’ she asked, thinking of the lawyer that Stryker had just interviewed. ‘If his brother is his closest family, it stands to reason that anywhere they’ve lived together could be home. Where did he grow up? Ian, can you pull up the census and electoral roll records? Look for any overlap between Joshua Robertson and James Robertson.’

  He looked annoyed at having to switch tasks so quickly. The map which he’d been busy building was minimised to the system tray. In its place, he opened the necessary databases. She waited, her fingers drumming impatiently against the desk. Minutes ticked by, nobody daring to make small talk, all eyes fixed on the screen.

  ‘Chelsea,’ Ian announced. ‘Beaufort Road. That’s the poor bit, isn’t it? Looks like our two “J”s lived there with their parents for a while.’

  Elsie knew it well. It was a road that bisected the Kings Road, half a mile or so west of Sloane Square Underground Station.

  Ian kept tapping away, cross-referencing the address against the Land Registry’s ownership database. ‘It seems to have been inherited by the brother, Joshua, and I’d guess it’s not a rental.’

  ‘That had to hurt,’ Elsie said. One brother a successful solicitor and property baron, the other an itinerant wanderer with no proper job.

  ‘Right,’ she continued. ‘Here’s the plan. We’re going to prioritise the list. Ian can carry on mapping it – I assume that’ll take a while – and then we’ll divvy it up. If we call in enough volunteers, we can cover most if not all of the properties. We need to be careful that this doesn’t leak to the press.’

  She looked around the room. Someone with access to the incident room had already leaked once. Was one of the people in this room responsible? If she couldn’t figure out who the leak was – assuming it wasn’t Matthews anyway – then sooner or later, she’d have to pass the issue to the Directorate of Professional Standards. That would have to wait until after this case was resolved, one way or another.

  ‘Dr Leigh, I want you to come with me. I’ve got hundreds of volunteers to corral and you know most of them. Is that okay?’

  He nodded. ‘Consider me your personal assistant for the afternoon.’

  ‘Boss?’ Stryker said. ‘What about the warrant for Robertson?’

  Elsie’s headache flared up. There were too many little things in motion, too much to keep track of. ‘Right, yes, we need one.’

  ‘I know but you asked me to help Ian with the map. Which do you want me to do?’

  ‘The warrant. Go get the warrant. Then come back, put the surveillance in place and then see how Ian is progressing.’

  She could see the afternoon melting away before her. Before she could corral the extended family that was the Metropolitan Police, she needed to give Knox a task.

  ‘Knox,’ she said. ‘I want you out on patrol. As Ian maps the properties, drive past them. Have a quick look. See what the state of play is. Anything that looks suspicious, call me and I’ll send out a volunteer team.’

  She would, in effect, act as the advance recon team to scope out the StayAway properties.

  ‘Got it, boss.’

  ‘Then move. Stay in contact. If you’ve got anything, WhatsApp the entire team in case one of us is occupied. Play it smart, play it by the book.’

  Chapter 58: All on Deck

  The volunteers trickled back in over the course of the afternoon. There were far too many of them to effectively make use of. Working out who was there, what they were capable of doing, and managing them was turning into a nightmare. Annie’s team was on-site and raring to go but had nothing new to examine so they had taken up residence at the back of conference room one to review and re-review the existing evidence. Confirmation had come back from the lab that the blood drops Annie recovered from the car park by St Dunstan in the East did belong to Layla Morgan which meant they were on the right track.

  How infuriating it was to know the killer’s name, have his DNA on file, and know where he had been mere hours earlier, but not be able to arrest him. He was simply out of reach.

  Elsie had Ozzy’s team keeping tabs on the brother. He’d made a phone call to a criminal barrister in King’s Bench Walk but their warrant didn’t cover eavesdropping on that as it was a privileged conversation. It seemed that Joshua knew that the situation was a car crash in motion and he was keen to ensure that the best Queen’s Counsel in London was onside and ready to represent the Robertsons.

  ‘How do you want to play this?’ Bertie asked.

  ‘How about I go have a nap while you catch the killer?’

  She was only half-joking. In the state she was in, she didn’t feel fit to organise hundreds of the Met’s finest.

  ‘Can I be honest with you, Bertie? I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed here. How do I organise everyone? How do I stop the killer realising we’re onto him if hundreds of us flood the streets of London to look for him? Won’t the press notice?’

  Bertie took her to one side. ‘Lass, you’ve got this. This isn’t going to be easy or straightforward. It never is. Your father—’

  ‘He’d be in his element,’ Elsie said. ‘He always made everything look so easy.’

  The profiler laughed. ‘Not when he was with me. Your old man talks a good game and he knows his stuff. That doesn’t mean he didn’t fret about getting things wrong. He’s made his fair share of mistakes, he just doesn’t talk about them.’

  ‘He‘s proud man,’ she said. There was no doubt about that. Elsie could just imagine him sweeping his failures under the carpet.

  ‘Do your best, Elsie. That’s all you can ever do.’

  She knew that. ‘I’m just so damned tired. It’s so unfair.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know. The chronic fatigue syndrome has cost you so much. You know I’ve been best friends with your father for your entire life and most of mine so I’m going to give you the advice I wish I’d given you years ago. Life is too short to spend it dwelling on what’s fair instead of what is. You need to grieve for the woman you think you ought to be and accept the woman you are because the woman you are is spectacular and I’m so proud to call you my godda
ughter. Now go get in front of that lectern and tell these folks what you need.’

  ‘Come with me.’

  ‘No,’ Bertie said. ‘It’s time for you to be the leader you were born to be. Go and prove the doubters wrong. Find the Lady Killer. Solve the impossible case. I’ll be watching from right here.’

  Alone, she traipsed down the stairs to the front of conference room one. Her back straightened as she walked past colleagues, a shiver running down her spine. This was it. This was the moment she put everything on the table.

  She descended towards the front of the conference room, her confidence faltering with every step. A sea of heads turned in her direction. She ignored the lot of them, focused on Uncle Bertie hiding in the back row, and turned on the microphone.

  ‘Good evening, ladies and gents, thank you for coming in. You all know why you’re here. This is, simply put, a manhunt. The Lady Killer has been identified and his residence at St Dunstan raided. He is on the run. I have a list of places that we believe he may go to this evening. Those of you who have undergone surveillance training will each be assigned a location to watch. Those who have not will remain here to assist in coordinating our efforts. If there are no questions, can I please ask you to come to the front if you’re in the surveillance group.’

  Hands shot up.

  ‘Who is he?’ one woman asked.

  ‘I’m afraid that until we have our suspect in custody, we are operating on the basis of an e-fit only.’

  ‘But if you know who he is, why can’t you tell us?’ she asked again.

  ‘Operational security,’ Elsie said ominously. The leak was probably in this room. There had been a continuous stream of support staff in and out of the incident room since the start of the investigation. Elsie stared around, wondering which familiar face had leaked information to the press.

  A few more mundane questions later, everyone was on the same page. Bertie walked up to the front and handed her a folder. ‘The list, hot off the printer. Ian and Stryker did as you asked and ranked the rentals by priority. Those top of the list tick all the boxes. They’re allegedly empty tonight according to StayAway, they’ve got garages, they haven’t been robbed yet, and, perhaps most importantly, there isn’t any sign of visible security on Google Street View.’