The Murder Mile

by Lesley McEvoy

  I walked over to the photographs on the whiteboard.

  ‘With Patsy, he would have had to check out the location and become familiar with her routine. Probably visited the café prior to the murder and possibly interacted with her – without arousing any suspicion. All of that indicates excellent interpersonal and social skills. We know he’s male and research would suggest he’s white. The degree of sophistication required to plan these killings places him as older than twenty. Probably somewhere between twenty-eight and thirty-eight-years-old. Most likely he’s a loner. Not married or in a long-term relationship. I think you’re looking for someone who’s regarded by others as studious, even withdrawn at times. Maybe a bit of a bookworm who prefers his own company. He’s neat and orderly. May even have a compulsion with tidiness and routine. He’s very self-aware and not easily rattled. He’s not going to panic and any tactic designed to throw him off balance would have to be carefully planned. He’s highly intelligent and obviously tech savvy, as evidenced by his use of technology and the ability to digitise his voice when he calls. I don’t think he’ll work a nine-to-five job. Martha said he often worked from home, so maybe a freelancer or self-employed. Whatever he does, it gives him a lot of flexibility and autonomy.’

  ‘Motive?’ Shah asked.

  ‘Because he’s a copycat, we can’t assume he’s driven by the same compulsions as the original Jack. I also don’t think our killer’s motive is linked to his choice of victim or location, as those are chosen to match the Victorian murders.’

  ‘So what’s that leave us with?’ Heslopp asked.

  I’d wrestled with this one from the beginning and I was going to have to be honest about it.

  ‘Most theories around copycat killings are that either the killer wants the same notoriety as his chosen role model and the media attention is likely to mean he’ll have a film or book written about him. Or that, by taking on the persona of a previous killer, it depersonalises it. Disassociates him from the act, which reduces his inhibitions.’

  ‘So, which is it for our killer?’ Callum asked, watching me intently.

  ‘I don’t believe it’s to lower his inhibitions. I don’t think our man has any. I do think that the publicity surrounding it is important to him, though.’

  ‘So will the lack of publicity be pissing him off then?’ Shah asked.

  ‘Probably. In fact, we could use that to our advantage. His profile suggests he has grandiose ideas about himself. At some level, the publicity feeds his motivations. If we can get the press to co-operate with us, we could develop a strategy that might make him careless. Give us a clue to his motives.’

  ‘But so far you’ve no idea what they might be?’ Heslopp didn’t even try to disguise his exasperation.

  I chose my words carefully.

  ‘There would be little point in choosing to copy such a high-profile killer if no one made the connection. He needs the publicity, otherwise he’s just playing to the police gallery and I think he wants a much bigger stage than that. He relates to Victorian Jack. To his crimes – but that doesn’t mean he shares his psychopathy. Something fascinates him. Perhaps the fact that Victorian Jack was the most infamous serial killer of all time? The one to emulate. He’s somehow managed to practice the mutilations too. So concentrate on access to bodies – human or animal. He knows how to inflict the same wounds in a short amount of time and with great accuracy. He won’t get that from a book. He’ll have had hands-on experience somehow.’

  ‘What about deviations from the original killings?’ Beth asked. ‘Does that tell us anything more about him?’

  ‘His deviations are in part down to the different era, but yes, they give us some clues. He’s not sticking to prostitutes for a start, which means his motivation doesn’t revolve around his victim’s character or lifestyle. He uses technology. The fact that he can hide his online footprints so that even your techies are struggling to trace him, means you’re looking for someone with advanced technical ability. Maybe he works in that field?’

  I paused as I came to the part I personally was most uncomfortable with.

  ‘Also, the fact that he’s deviated in one very major way from his role model gives us an important element.’

  ‘What?’ Callum asked.

  ‘Yorkshire and not London. That’s critical. For him to not act these killings out in the one place made notorious by the original, means Yorkshire holds real significance for him. Either he’s from here, or it’s vital to him that it happens here. Maybe because of the connection with the Yorkshire Ripper.’

  ‘Or because you’re here?’ Callum’s voice was so quiet it was almost inaudible. ‘And he’s chosen to put you in the middle of this with him.’

  6 September

  With only forty-eight hours to the next event, police surveillance teams had been in place around Hanbury Street for several days. Manpower and technical resources had been allocated and the team were still frantically trying to get any lead they could to our Jack, which was now ‘John’s’ unofficial name.

  I watched as Callum scanned the CSI report from Patsy Channing’s murder.

  ‘Tyre tracks found around the site are a match for a Yamaha bike. Can’t know for sure that it’s Jack’s, but it’s too much of a coincidence to ignore. I’ve got the team tracing and eliminating owners of bikes of the same make and model through DVLA.’ He chewed his pen as he scanned down. ‘Got a boot print that CSI believe to be his. Size eleven. They also got some DNA from Patsy’s body, but it doesn’t match anything in the database. Not much use unless we get a suspect.’ His eyes showed his frustration. ‘Not giving us much, is he?’

  There was nothing I could say. He was right. Jack was forensically aware and either too careful to leave anything incriminating, or knew his DNA wasn’t on the database, so didn’t care.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the geography.’

  I walked over to the large wall map of Fordley, with pins marking the last two murder scenes.

  ‘Geographic or spatial profiling isn’t my specialty, so you might want to consult on it, but it might apply in this case.’

  Callum came to stand next to me, so close I could feel the heat from his body.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Spatial research says that offenders prefer to operate in a “safe zone”. An area that’s comfortable for them. The killer usually lives centrally to the radius of his crimes. Victorian Jack killed all his victims within a one-mile radius –’

  ‘His “murder mile”?’

  ‘Yes. All his sites were within walking distance to each other. Our man has already deviated from that, because he’s looking for sites that match the original in some way – not because he can freely choose. But the theory might still apply, in reverse.’

  I could feel him looking at me. ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘Well, usually the killer lives in a fixed place and radiates out from there. But our man planned the locations of his killings in advance. So what if he then chose where he lived so he was central to those murder sites? Then the geographic profiling theory could still work.’ I traced a circle around the pins with my finger. ‘I think it’s unlikely he’ll go outside Fordley.’

  ‘But how do we know where the centre of the circle is?’

  ‘Geo profilers look at the distance between the two murders that took place furthest away from one another. Then draw a circle between those two points. They have computer programmes that calculate all the variables, and it’s been proven to be eighty-nine per cent accurate. It’s more problematic when killers dump their victims elsewhere. But our man, like Victorian Jack, leaves them at the murder scene.’

  Callum tapped Patsy’s location.

  ‘It’s only just on the border of Fordley. If you’re right and he goes for Hanbury Street in the city centre, then Patsy will be the furthest away to date.’ He looked down at me. ‘Think it’s worth speaking to a specialist?’

  I nodded. It couldn’t hurt. Fordley was the largest city in the bigge
st county in England. With a population in West Yorkshire of 2.2 million, we needed to narrow down the search area – and the clock was ticking.

  7 September

  There was nothing more I could do. Callum and the team were all with the surveillance operation in Fordley, and Hoyle had set up camp in the incident room. Annoyingly, Taylor-Caine was with him – no doubt to justify her existence on the payroll. I decided to stay well out of their way.

  I spent the afternoon back at the farm walking Harvey across the fields.

  Black fingers of trees at the edge of the woods were silhouetted against the dark blue of the late afternoon sky. Harvey bounded ahead of me, glad to be able to run further afield. I always seemed pressed for time lately and had confined Harvey to a half-hour circuit of our meadows.

  Today, though, I needed to decompress. To walk aimlessly, without any particular purpose. My mind felt overcrowded. The usual logical processes were cluttered and overloaded. As I followed Harvey on his random sniffing expedition, I pondered the fact that we had far too many unanswered questions.

  John Smith, AKA Jack. His choice of victims and locations. Which were his signatures and which were elements of his copycatting?

  One question haunted me: how did Martha’s fractured alter ego present himself to me when she was under hypnosis, and then become a flesh and blood killer out here in the real world? There had been just the two of us. Now she was dead. How could it happen like that?

  Absently, I threw Harvey a stick and listened to him crashing through the undergrowth. A flash of iridescent copper rising into the air startled me as a hiding pheasant took off. The drumming of its wings and indignant crowing shattering the sudden stillness.

  Something Martha said to me that day had jarred and now I couldn’t recall what it was. At the edges of my mind, I knew it was important. I decided I’d listen to the recording again when I got back. It would give me something else to focus on than the endless wait for Callum to ring.

  I’d reminded him that the next body had been found at 6am on the eighth of September. If ‘Jack’ was true to form, he would stick to that time. Which meant he could kill anytime during tonight – if he wasn’t caught first.

  My thoughts were interrupted by Harvey’s sudden low growling. He was transfixed by a figure on the other side of the trees. It was too far away for me to make out clearly, but then I saw a hand raised in a familiar greeting.

  ‘It’s only George.’

  I ruffled his ears playfully. He lowered his guard at my touch, leaning against my leg as we watched the familiar figure climb into his old Land Rover Defender and bounce it out of the gate and down the track towards his farmhouse.

  We followed the same direction the Land Rover had taken. Five minutes down the disused track brought us to my empty cottage.

  Obviously George had been working there. He’d hung an old door on it just as he’d promised. The paint was peeling and it had seen better days, but it would keep the foxes and the rats out. A wrought iron horseshoe, cradling the number thirteen, was crudely nailed on and hung at a drunken angle.

  The door creaked in protest as I lifted the latch and nudged it open. The single room was tiny. When it was inhabited, there had probably been just enough room for a table and chairs by the open stone hearth opposite the door. It felt crowded with just me and Harvey in it.

  He pushed past my legs and barrelled his way round, his nose to the stone flags. He sniffed loudly as he followed the trail of wildlife now long gone. The floor had been swept and the fireplace cleared of the leaves and debris that had been there when I’d last seen it. I was impressed. George had been busy. I made a mental note to take him for a pint down the village pub when I had a free evening.

  Harvey’s hackles suddenly lifted and he growled softly at nothing in particular, adopting his protective stance beside me. I ruffled his ears.

  ‘Nothing here but ghosts.’

  But he wasn’t convinced and his hackles stayed up until we were almost back home.

  The night dragged. I’d spent most of it in my office, going over the notes I’d made on Martha’s sessions and listening again to the recording when ‘Jack’ made his appearance.

  But whatever it was she had said – that hadn’t felt right at the time – it wasn’t on the recording. I stared out at the night sky as Harvey snored contentedly at my feet. Perhaps she had said it earlier, before I had started the digital recorder?

  I finally switched off the desk lamp. Enough. I’d had enough and my brain just wasn’t playing. A long soak and an early night were in order. Not that I expected to sleep much tonight, waiting for Callum to ring.

  8 September

  Predictably, sleep eluded me. My mind chattered incessantly until I fell into a fitful doze in the early hours. I woke at 5am, feeling exhausted, my eyes heavy and gritty. Pulling on my robe I went into the welcoming warmth of the kitchen and let Harvey out while I brewed tea and then carried it down into my office.

  I watched Harvey bounding around on the lawn outside my window as I waited for my emails. The ‘ping’ of incoming mail turned me around to stare at the screen.

  My fingers were shaking almost uncontrollably as I called Callum, surprised when he answered on the second ring.

  ‘Sorry, Jo, we’re still in the middle of it, but quiet so far. We’ve had no activity down here yet.’

  ‘Yes you have,’ I said, not daring to look away from the horror unfolding on my screen.

  ‘No, Jo, there hasn’t been another one.’

  ‘Yes there has… I’m looking at her body right now!’

  I sat in the incident room, nursing a disgusting cup of vending machine tea, trying to get my thoughts into some kind of order. It felt like I’d stared at my laptop for an eternity before the police arrived to ferry me to the station.

  Now I concentrated on a spot on the carpet as I reran the image. A woman laying on her back. Her legs drawn towards her. Her feet resting on the ground with her knees splayed outwards, as if she was preparing for an internal examination. My mind recoiled from the medical analogy. That image had been more like the scene from a slaughterhouse.

  Her stomach had been ripped open and eviscerated. Her intestines lifted out and put above her right shoulder. Other parts of her stomach had been put above her left shoulder. Her throat had been cut, almost severing her head. But through all the horror, it was her face that haunted me.

  Unlike Victorian Annie Chapman, this woman had been pretty. ‘Had been’ because her face was bloated in death. Her swollen tongue protruding between even white teeth. It was her eyes. Bright blue eyes, that had probably been sparkling and vivid in life, staring blankly towards the camera. Pleading with me… just like Martha.

  ‘Jo?’ Callum’s voice finally penetrated.

  ‘What? Sorry – miles away.’

  His eyes were concerned as he took the cup out of my hand and held my elbow.

  ‘Let’s go into my office.’

  I felt like a spectator in a dream. He sat me in the chair opposite, watching me for a moment.

  ‘If it’s any consolation, we all feel the same.’ He ran his hand through his hair, his breath escaping him in exasperation. ‘We don’t know how the hell he got past us. He’s like a bloody phantom.’

  ‘Sorry.’ I felt impotent. Useless. ‘I don’t know what to say. Who was she?’

  He tipped back in his chair, staring at a spot on the ceiling.

  ‘Anne Stenson. A prostitute. She’s lived in a flat just off Hanbury Street for the last five years. Ironically, she took the warnings from vice and stayed off the streets. Another girl came forward this morning and identified her at the scene. Said they’d been working out of Anne’s flat lately as they thought it was safer.’

  He righted his chair and got up to pour coffee, shaking his head. ‘Bloody typical! They were the ones being careful. There were plenty of girls out last night and yet she copped it.’

  ‘Probably because she fit the victimology better. Or it was o
pportune and she was in the wrong place at the right time.’ But even as I said it, I was convinced that nothing our killer did was opportune.

  ‘She was found in the backyard behind the newsagents when the shop owner put the bins out.’

  ‘What number is the shop?’

  He turned to hand me a coffee. ‘Thirty-one. But it shares the backyard with the curry house, which is number twenty-nine.’

  I took the cup and looked into his eyes, which were weary with exhaustion.

  ‘Then it wasn’t opportunistic,’ I said. ‘It was planned. Like everything else he does. Twenty-nine Hanbury Street, exactly the same as Victorian Jack. But how did he avoid the surveillance?’

  ‘The curry house shut at 2am. There’s a passage between it and the newsagent next door and we had spotters covering that all night – nothing but a kid taking a pee and some students taking a short cut to the university. A spotter walked down that ginnel at 4.45am and it was empty. At 5am Anne went to the newsagent, as she did every morning, according to the owner. Apparently, she was always his first customer of the day. She always called in on her way back home for milk and fags as he was opening up. Today was no different, except she’d been in her flat all night. She left her mate there and went to the shop as usual. At 5.45 the owner goes to put the bins out in the yard and finds her body.’

  ‘Habit,’ I said, almost to myself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Routine and habit. I was wondering how “Jack” managed to get her to the right spot at the right time.’ I took a sip of coffee, not enjoying it. ‘It was her routine. Obviously he’s watched her. She matched the victimology – a prostitute called Anne – Annie. She lived near Hanbury Street, but somehow he had to make sure he could get her to the yard at number twenty-nine on the right day at the right time. He probably watched the area for a long time, staking it out to map everyone’s routine, and she fell right into it by her routine of calling at the newsagent right next to where he wanted her.’