The first two houses I visited after that were no good. They both had those boxes on the walls that indicated some kind of primitive alarm system. The third didn’t have one, and the back door didn’t give me any trouble either. This detective lived alone. Like Eric, she was sleeping when I found her. I carefully pulled down the quilt a little and hit her with the taser before she even stirred. The gag was in place within seconds. Once she was firmly bound, I unhurriedly began to undress, watching her futile struggles the whole time. This one was quite attractive, especially wriggling around with such enticing desperation like that.
While the body I was wearing enjoyed itself, energetically doing what came most naturally to it, I entertained myself by telling her, in gasping breaths, all the other things I could do to her before she died, if I felt like it. Why didn’t she have an alarm system installed? I asked. Wasn’t that a little stupid, for a detective? Shouldn’t she have known better? Or maybe she’d been hoping something like this would happen? Was I giving her a good time, on her very last night? I liked the muffled noises she made and the expression on her face as I asked her those questions. I’d never seen so much naked terror in a human face before and goodness, didn’t this body get excited by that? Taking a few rest breaks and jolting her with the taser again while I did so was fun too, especially when I aimed it at a particularly sensitive area. I wondered which inflicted the most pain, those shocks or my ungentle attentions. They both seemed to produce very satisfactory and stimulating results.
Immensely gratifying as the whole business was proving to be, I couldn’t stretch it out too long. To be safe, I needed to be out of here a couple of hours after arriving. We wouldn’t want any of the neighbours to see me leaving. Such a shame. I could have happily played with her for days.
I left there in good time and was sure that nobody saw me slip out the back, or walk round to the front again to leave myself a little bonus present there before heading off to where I’d left the car, about half a mile away. The sun wouldn’t be up for another couple of hours.
Let the human police collect all the DNA samples and fingerprints they could possibly want from that room. It made no difference. My pet had never been arrested for anything. He wasn’t a natural killer, or any other kind of criminal. Even ignoring the fact that we belonged to two entirely different species, he was nothing like me at all.
Tonight had been most enjoyable. Maybe I should start thinking about spending a lot more time controlling this body?
Twenty-Two
Caitlin
My friend Jackie Gibson was dead. It’s never easy to hear that someone you care about has died, however that may have happened, but nothing in my life had prepared me for the impact that the deliberate and brutal murder of an old friend would have on me. I’d known Jackie since we were teenagers, we’d been pals for over twenty years. School Friends first, sharing adolescent experiences, gossiping about the crushes we’d had on various boys back then, going to parties and concerts together. I knew her parents and both her brothers well. We’d even worked out of the same station a few times, on and off, during our early years on the force. Then I’d gone for Detective Constable, another training course, and an exam to pass at the end of it. She’d done the same a year later. And through all those years, we’d always managed to get together regularly for girls’ nights out, shopping expeditions, and more than a few group holidays.
She was always a good laugh, was Jackie.
If I was stunned by the horror of what had happened to her in this house last night, what was her poor family feeling right now? James McKinnon had gone to see her parents after leaving here. Had he told them everything? How Jackie had been repeatedly raped before her assailant had finally killed her? That she had taser burns all over her torso and in other places, or that, after he’d cut his message into her abdomen and sliced her veins open, he’d used a standard issue expandable baton to keep ripping her insides up as she bled to death?
God, I hoped not. I knew her da though. Once they’d been told that their daughter had been murdered, he’d have insisted that McKinnon tell him the rest of it. How could any loving father fail to be shattered by something like that?
Conall wouldn’t let me set foot in that bedroom, and I was grateful for it. He’d wanted to keep Simon Philips out too, but his conscience wouldn’t let him. I could understand that. If it had been my body, they’d been told to come and find this morning, nothing on earth would have kept Conall from making himself look at what had been done to his partner. He had come out of that room, briefly, to reluctantly tell me everything he’d discovered though, as promised.
Simon Philips hadn’t lasted a minute in there. He was sitting outside now, not far from where I was standing, hunched over and sobbing helplessly. I’d lost a friend today, but he’d lost his partner, and I knew how strong a bond a working relationship like that could become.
The call to Area HQ, at seven o’clock this morning had been made from an untraceable burner phone. The message had been brief.
‘Show that face again and I’ll kill another of you.’ Then the address, Jackie Gibson’s address, nothing else.
It was him, our killer, it couldn’t be anyone else. We hadn’t made the details of either of the earlier murders public. Phone call aside, no copycat would have known about the carefully carved messages or the sliced veins in Dominic Chuol’s arms.
This time the message had been in plain English, no Ogham script, no Irish, just six short words.
‘You Tried To Fuck Me First!’
I’d never wanted to kill anyone this badly, not before this. I didn’t want us to catch this guy and see him spend his days in some mental institution where he’d be given medical care, maybe even released again, one day, years from now. I wanted him ended! Well, I was pretty damned sure I had company there. Simon Philips for one. He’d take the man apart with his bare hands if he got the chance.
Cars had been coming and going for the past hour, and I was only dimly aware that yet another one had just pulled up close by. It was only when I heard Simon draw in a ragged breath and surge to his feet that I looked up and saw Conall’s cousin enter the front gate and walk towards us, scarf, glasses and all.
Shit! Philips was not himself right now, and his eyes were blurred by tears. Shay was the right height, even if he wasn’t bulky enough. His hair was brown too, although that was a very inadequate word to describe all the sun-streaked hues running through it.
“Shay!” I moved to intercept him quickly. “Lose the scarf dammit. The glasses too! Christ! What are you thinking, turning up looking like that?”
He glanced at me, startled, through his glasses, and I saw his little ‘oh, shit’ moment before he hastily pocketed them and began to unwrap the scarf. It wasn’t his fault. Hiding his face was second nature to him, and he wouldn’t have given it a thought. Philips had uncoiled again as soon as he realised I knew the newcomer, but he was still staring at him murderously.
“Is he sick or just stupid?” he asked me, snarling.
“Neither, Sir, he always dresses like that in cold weather. This is Specialist Consultant Shay Keane.”
“My apologies, Inspector, I didn’t mean to startle you like that,” Shay said calmly. “I am truly sorry for your loss. You too, Sergeant Murray. I know Sergeant Gibson was a very close friend of yours.” The right words, but his tone and expression were tellingly colourless. Shay must be far more upset than he looked. Philips had managed to examine him by then, so he ducked his head again to take cover behind his fringe.
“You’re the drone guy,” Philips said accusingly, “Fuck! You had the bastard in your sights on Tuesday, and you fucking lost him!”
“It couldn’t keep up with the car.” Shay wasn’t being defensive; he was just calmly stating a fact. “Maybe, in a few years, we’ll be able to build ones that could. Whether or not we’ll ever be allowed to fly them is another matter entirely.”
There really wasn’t anything Simon could say in respo
nse to that. Later, when he was more himself again, he would probably regret this little exchange, but it took more than a little overwrought hostility to bother Shay Keane.
“Conall’s still upstairs?” Shay asked.
“He is, Mr Keane.” Conall must have asked him to come in person to examine the crime scene. How Davie Baird was coping up there I had no idea. He’d always got on well with Jackie. Those two had made a formidable darts doubles pairing on our work night’s out.
“Sorry, would you mind?” Shay asked once he’d folded his scarf up. I took it off him, and he produced a pair of gloves from his pocket, pulled them on, and disappeared inside.
“So that’s DCI Keane’s cousin.” Philips sat down on the doorstep again tiredly. “I guess I can see why he likes to hide his face. Cold-blooded fish, though, isn’t he?”
“I thought that too, at first, but it’s just his way of coping. He’s one of the good guys, Sir, and a very capable one too.”
He just nodded.
“I should have said something to you myself earlier, Sergeant Murray. I’m very sorry for your loss too. I know how tight you and Jackie were. She was always banging on about you.” Was. Everything would be past tense with Jackie Gibson now.
Neither of us felt inclined to talk any further, so we just sat, and stood, in mutual silence, each engaged in our own thoughts for the next twenty minutes until the police surgeon went up and, shortly afterwards, they carried Jackie’s body down and wheeled it away.
Glancing in at the sound of more footsteps on the stairs, I saw Conall and Shay coming down a few minutes later, but they didn’t emerge from the house. I decided to go in and see what they were up to.
“What’s he doing?” I asked Conall as Shay swept the living room with a little handheld device before moving on to do the same in the kitchen.
“Checking for hidden cameras or other devices. That’s a radio frequency detector. If anything in here is transmitting, he’ll pick up a signal.” Shay reappeared in the hallway then, and Conall looked to him. “Find anything?”
“Nothing in here. I still want to check the front and rear gardens though. I’ll do the back first.”
“Alright, we’ll see you out front when you’re done then.” Conall took me gently by the arm and led me out again, walking me to the far corner of the garden where we could talk privately. “How are you holding up, Caitlin?”
“Not well. I want that bastard dead, Conall. As long as he’s still breathing, I doubt I’ll ever sleep easily again.”
“After what he did last night? I wouldn’t give him a month in custody before he apparently commits suicide or meets with some sort of fatal accident. We just have to catch him first.” He sounded very confident of that. “Listen, Caitlin, I don’t want any of my people going anywhere alone until we’ve caught him. McKinnon feels the same way. Off duty or working, from now on, no officer moves around alone or sleeps in an otherwise empty house or flat. Everyone needs to team up.”
That made sense. I might even have expected it if I’d been thinking straight.
“My place is big enough for all five of you,” Conall continued, “if any of you would like to come and stay there. It’s up to you what you prefer to do and we’ll talk it over back at the station. The others will all be at Burnett Road in half an hour. McKinnon’s called every detective working these cases in for a meeting.”
“I think it’s wise to buddy up, but I really don’t like the idea of being chased out of my home by that sick piece of shit.”
“No, I don’t think anyone will. It’s a hell of a lot better than risking any repetitions of what happened here, though.”
I didn’t need to look at him to imagine what he was thinking. What if the killer had called at my house last night instead? Or Walker’s? Conall might be deeply shaken by this murder but he’d had no personal attachment to Detective Sergeant Jackie Gibson. It’s only human to feel more strongly about those you are close to than those you barely know. That he’d been struggling to control himself since he walked out of that house was a natural reaction to what he’d seen in that room. The sight of any woman found in that condition would have had the same effect on him.
His cousin appeared from round the side of the house and began his circuit of the garden, looking down at the little device he was holding shielded in his hand. He stopped briefly in front of the wall that ran along the front before pacing on. A few yards further on, he crouched down and began to dig at the soil with his gloved fingers. We walked over to watch him and Philips got up to come and see too.
“There’s a camera hidden in the wall,” Shay said as he exposed a small metal device. “He left the antenna sticking out of this thing.
“What is it?”
“It’s both the receiver and a signal boosting transmitter.” He left it lying in its hole and removed his gloves, wiping his hands on his trousers before pulling his phone out. “No good,” he said after another minute. “He’s disconnected from whatever he was watching us on.”
“You were right again, then. He wanted to observe our reactions to his handiwork.”
Shay just shrugged.
“It seemed like enough of a possibility to be worth checking. Here, you’ve still got your gloves on.” He passed Conall a small evidence bag from his pocket. Once Conall had bagged the receiver, Shay led us back to where he’d stopped before and pointed. Conall extracted a tiny camera from a crack between the stones and held it up so his cousin could examine it.
“Nothing special,” Shay said unhappily, “you can buy sets like this easily from loads of sites, and that model’s been available for a couple of years.” Once that too was bagged, he took it back and peered at the bottom of the little thing. “The serial number’s been scraped off too. Let me see the booster.” They exchanged bags, and he examined that too before shaking his head. “Sorry, Cuz, no joy there either.”
Philips, who had been watching them silently until then, cleared his throat. “Mr Keane, are you saying that the killer has been watching us all go in and out of Jackie’s house this morning?”
“I’m afraid so, Inspector.” Shay gave him a reluctant nod. “It seemed to me that it might be the sort of thing he’d get a kick out of.” I saw Philips pale with fury and his fists clench in a very Conall-like manner.
“Well, I guess we gave him quite a show then. I should probably head back to Burnett Road. There’s nothing useful I can do here. Sir, Sergeant, Mr Keane.”
We each got a curt nod. The poor man didn’t look in any state to work, but I knew how desperately he’d feel the need to. Simply going home, after this, was unthinkable to me too.
“It’s alright,” Conall told me as Philips walked out of the gate. “A patrol car will escort him back. Like I said, nobody goes anywhere alone from now on.”
“McKinnon won’t allow him to keep working on this, will he? Philips is too personally invested.”
“And you’re not? We’re all emotionally compromised to some extent, McKinnon included. Jackie was one of ours. Are we supposed to walk away from the case? Call in an outside team to take over and waste time bringing them up to speed?”
Hell no!
“That’s what I figured,” he told me, in response to my outraged expression. “So we’re all going to pretend we’re not bending any rules here, aren’t we? Come on, we’d better head down to Area HQ ourselves. Do you want to come with us, Shay, or shall I detail someone to escort you home?”
“Put a patrol car on my tail if you feel you must, but I’m going home.”
“Alright. There’s one parked up two cars behind you. Wait until I’ve talked to them before you drive off.”
“And at your house?” I asked. “He gets to be on his own?”
“I’m not a police officer,” Shay pointed out as we walked to our cars. “Plus, you should be hoping our man attempts something at our place. With my security system, he couldn’t get anywhere near the house without triggering a few alarms.”
“Even
if he cut your power?”
“I’ve got enough stored in Powerwall batteries to last for a few days.” Of course he did. Shay Keane really didn’t go in for half measures. He looked regretfully back at Jackie’s house. “I really wish your friend had installed even a basic alarm system, Caitlin.”
Conall shot him a sharp look. “You think that was a factor?”
“I think he’s been watching some of you and may know where a lot of you live. How else could he have picked a target so quickly after seeing that composite on the news? An alarm system may or may not have put him off… Shit, Conall! I didn’t mean it like that! McKinnon is not to blame for this and neither are you.”
“You warned us airing that sketch might trigger something.”
“I advised you that it was a possibility, yes, but it might also have given you a lead that helped you catch him. It still could. It was a risk either way, and someone had to make the decision.” He shrugged helplessly. “You may as well argue that if we hadn’t spotted him on Tuesday, none of this could have happened. Standing here trying to figure out how many more, or fewer, victims every move we make might result in isn’t productive. He’ll stop when we stop him and not before. So let’s focus on doing that, shall we?”
After Conall had spoken with the patrollers and Shay had driven away with his escort, we climbed into our own car. “Did he have any useful insights to offer? Upstairs?” I asked as we drove towards Burnett Road.
“A few. He said that he thought the fact that Jackie’s eyes had been left intact was significant. The earlier murders were ritualistic. Stabbing the eyes was a part of whatever the killer thought he was accomplishing. Maybe a religious delusion, to stop demons escaping the dying bodies or something. The fact that it was done when they were very close to death made him think so anyway.”
Death in the Black Wood Page 20