Perfect Prey

by Helen Fields

  Today there were three new applicants requesting access to the site. More than he was expecting, but things were heating up. He had a global audience, albeit with specific appetites. In a new and braver world, had this been a reality TV show, he’d have been a billionaire by now.

  He scrolled through the applicants’ names: Travis Stoppa from Utah, Askel Lund from Denmark and Rory Hand from Scotland. He paused on the third name, making some cursory checks and finding an address for him in less than a minute. Was it coincidence that Hand was from Edinburgh or had he moved to be closer to the action? There was no referral username given in his application. The Moderator didn’t like that. He preferred it when he knew which current user had shared the site information. It meant he would have to be that much more thorough with the background checks.

  Standard internet search engines were always the first port of call, but they usually had low information yield. Not so this time. Rory Hand had been a busy boy. A variety of unimpressive sexual offences had earned him the usual prison sentences. The more interesting press coverage detailed Hand’s attempt to pass off Dr Reginald King’s murders of three prostitutes last year as his own. That had earned Mr Hand another spell at Her Majesty’s Hotel for those who couldn’t commit crimes without getting caught.

  The Moderator confirmed Hand’s previous convictions and checked his personal information against local authority records. The pervert certainly had the motivation for joining the group, although he wasn’t as well qualified as certain of its members. There were hundreds of them now from all over the world. A fair proportion were from Russia, many from China, and the predictable crowd from the United States – large population masses, where individuals could disappear and live virtually undetected. That was where his followers liked to exist. Under the public radar, beneath the governmental administrative net, in their own little worlds. More importantly these days, the place they really liked to live in was the world the Moderator had created.

  There was some bitcoin exchanged. No one used real money on the darknet. Real money was too traceable, too regulated. In fact, the site had generated more bitcoin than the Moderator had anticipated, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to get all the right people together in the right place. He felt a momentary flush of embarrassment at his own pomposity, then thrust it aside. Why shouldn’t he feel proud? He’d planned it, spent a punishing amount of time learning the coding, taken some risks at the start contacting the sort of people who might be interested. He was entitled to be self-congratulatory. Not yet, though. Not too soon. There was still a way to go.

  The Moderator sent Rory Hand an email containing a link to click. Once Hand had done so, the Moderator would be able to look through his emails, check his internet use, see what hidden horrors lurked in his deleted folders. That was where the telling information sat. It was in the nooks and crannies of the digital world, in the places people thought it couldn’t be found and seen. He could have blackmailed hundreds of people by now with what he’d found. Or become the online equivalent of a comic book hero, ridding the world of a fair selection of deviants, abusers, and sadists. Other men would have allowed themselves to become heady with the power of it. Lesser men would have taken sexual gratification from some of the material he’d seen in his site users’ inboxes. His purpose was more practical than that.

  He spent another fifteen minutes checking out the other two applicants then turned his attention to the site. The police had finally figured out the graffiti communications. About time too. He’d been almost at the point of sending an anonymous tip to help them out. The set-up had been simple. For every victim, each site member was entitled to suggest one profession as a target. The Moderator secretly notified the kill target to one of the players who had to graffiti it at a given location for their opponent to act upon. Grom notified Sem Culpa who her next kill was, Sem Culpa did the same for Grom, and so on. Every part of the process served a purpose. The poll gave the members a sense of drama and involvement. Impressing the members was the driver for Grom and Sem Culpa to make the kills. The graffiti, all part of the showmanship, enabled the police to see a pattern. And crucially, every part of the scheme created a world in which two psychopathic murderers could draw the world’s attention. The targets were random, unfortunate, chosen courtesy of the global appetite for online media coverage. And that was where the police focus would be. Not that Police Scotland’s dim-witted detectives were any closer to either of the killers yet. The selected two were better than that. The Moderator had chosen them from numerous applicants because of their track records of avoiding arrest.

  There had been some game changes required along the way – what plan ever ran smoothly? Upon choosing his two players, he’d imagined that Grom would be the right choice to make the final kill with all the drama and horror he could unleash. But it was Sem Culpa who had pleased audiences most. The audacity of killing in the middle of a crowd and waltzing away. The poetic resonance of the destruction of life in a library, where the improvement of human minds through literature was the foremost aim. Sem Culpa was the cleverer of the two by far. The truth was that Grom couldn’t be trusted. His smash and crush approach had its place, but the moderator needed to make absolutely sure that the final target would be successfully dispatched. It had required some rejigging of the order of things, but that wasn’t the end of the world. What really mattered was getting Sem Culpa to the right place at the right time. Whatever Grom did from now on was entirely a matter of keeping the public entertained and keeping the police busy.

  Last thing before logging out he posted a few online articles that would take time to rise up the search engine rankings, enabling them to be found quickly when the time came. There was always groundwork to be done. Nothing could be left to chance. His phone beeped to let him know it was time to get back to the day job. He would still need it for a while.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  DI Ava Turner stood outside Superintendent Overbeck’s door, twisting her newly fitted gold band complete with oversized diamond round and round her ring finger. It was fractionally too large, although that did make it easy to slip off, as she had last night once Joe had fallen asleep. She was too aware of its weight for comfort.

  ‘Come in,’ Overbeck shouted. Ava obeyed.

  ‘Sit down DI Turner,’ Overbeck said. She was being friendly. Ava’s hackles rose. ‘I gather congratulations are in order. Sensible girl marrying well.’

  The chief, old-school though he was, would never have called her ‘girl’. Coming from a fellow female officer it seemed even more offensive. Or perhaps that should have made it acceptable. Ava tried to focus. She was oversensitive and off her game.

  ‘What was it you needed, ma’am?’ Ava asked.

  ‘How’s the investigation going?’ Overbeck asked. ‘Any forward momentum?’

  ‘There’s a video reconstruction of the Emily Balcaskie murder scheduled for television broadcast tonight. We’ve been flooded with so many false alarms and wrong identifications that we’re chasing our tails. I’m waiting to hear back from Interpol about the DNA found at the Helen Lott murder scene. It takes a while to process through the international database, it’s so vast.’

  ‘Speaking of Interpol, I’ve had a complaint about DI Callanach,’ Overbeck said.

  So that was why she’d been called in, Ava thought. So much for subtlety.

  ‘Who?’ Ava asked.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Overbeck said, handing Ava a cup of coffee she didn’t want and hadn’t requested.

  ‘Who put in the complaint?’ Ava said, putting the coffee cup straight back down on the table.

  ‘That’s not important. What interests me is how much you know about his current activities. He seems rather lax about reporting in and I’m concerned about what progress he’s making.’

  ‘The graffiti was Callanach’s discovery,’ Ava said, ‘and it’s been borne out by the abduction of Julia Stimple. It’s the best break either of us has got in the investigation
so far.’

  ‘But that’s all. One of his murders was committed in broad daylight in a crowd of festival-goers. It beggars belief that there’s no lead on that.’

  ‘None of these murders were impromptu. They were professionally planned and executed. If Callanach hasn’t got anything concrete yet, that’s just the way it is. What exactly was the complaint against DI Callanach about?’

  ‘A variety of things. I’d appreciate your input. There are some changes coming and I need to know where all the pieces fit in the puzzle.’

  Ava frowned. It wasn’t like Overbeck to be anything less than brutally direct. She was even more dislikeable in pleasant mode than when she was being deliberately harsh.

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying, ma’am, you should be asking Callanach himself about this. It’s not for me to comment. Was there anything else?’ Ava asked.

  ‘Are you in a particular hurry?’ Overbeck arched an eyebrow. ‘Tell me what your plans are once you marry. Will you remain in Edinburgh or move to London?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead,’ Ava said, her face reddening. ‘It’s all happened so fast.’

  ‘DCI Edgar has a bright future ahead of him at Scotland Yard by all accounts. I’d have thought you’d be excited about an opportunity to move to London. It would be easy for you to find a post. And then I suppose you’ll be thinking about children.’

  ‘Do you have children then, ma’am?’ Ava asked, her tone harsh enough to earn a glower from Overbeck.

  ‘I don’t,’ Overbeck said, ‘but I know Joe is keen to start a family. I’d assumed you two would have discussed it.’

  Ava stood up. Overbeck could order her to remain and talk work, but she couldn’t be forced to spill her guts about her private life.

  ‘I’m needed in the incident room. We’re already short-handed. If there’s nothing else?’ Ava said.

  ‘One more thing about Callanach. Are you aware who he’s been spending time with lately, or what channels he’s pursuing?’ Overbeck asked.

  ‘No,’ Ava said. ‘We communicate professionally and that’s it.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you two were friends outside of work,’ Overbeck said. ‘Some people seem to attract trouble wherever they go, don’t they?’

  ‘Has something specific been raised about DI Callanach’s private life?’ Ava asked.

  ‘I thought you were in a hurry, DI Turner. Your squad will be waiting.’

  Ava had been dismissed. She made her way back to the incident room, passing Callanach’s office on the way. She wondered if he was in, considered knocking, reconsidered, and went to her own office instead. Callanach had been absent from the station a lot lately. Somebody had it in for him though, and if Ava were in his shoes she’d want to know.

  She thumped down hard into her chair. Callanach had behaved like an idiot at her engagement party, storming in and issuing orders to get back to work. Joe had been so nice about it afterwards, hypothesising that it was hard for Callanach to see her starting a new life when he’d had to leave his behind in France. That was probably right, but still … Callanach’s reaction had been childish.

  Ava considered phoning Natasha in the States. She hadn’t told her about the engagement yet. It had been years since Tasha had met Joe, and Ava had been avoiding the subject of their renewed relationship, knowing that Natasha and he had never really hit it off. Joe had changed, though. He was what Ava needed right now. Natasha would understand.

  A uniformed constable slid a note onto her desk, bearing an Interpol heading and a tiny font. Ava began to read. The international DNA database had come back with a hit for Helen Lott’s killer’s DNA. Her initial excitement morphed into frustration. It was an empty hit, meaning they had a DNA match on file for another murder, but no one had ever been apprehended. She read the summary of the related offence.

  ‘Ljubljana, Slovenia. 4 May 2011. Corpse of male, twenty-three years of age, found in trunk of car left undisturbed in public car park for three weeks. Police alerted to scene by passer-by concerned over smell issuing from vehicle. Extreme violence. Cause of death massive brain trauma. Weapon used: hammer, found in boot of car with body. Skin scrape beneath victim’s fingernail provided DNA sample. Believed defensive injury. Autopsy shows twenty-four hammer blow sites to head and torso. No DNA match on Slovenian police database. Victim had recently moved to area. No known motive. No persons of interest identified.’

  So the murderer had struck once in Slovenia, twice in Scotland, and who knew where else. Without a criminal record he was free to move across much of Europe unchecked. The offences were notably similar in the degrees of violence, but in Slovenia he’d sought to cover his tracks, hiding the body to allow time for escape. And the only reason to need time to leave the area was if he had links there. It was an assumption, but a reasonable one, that Ava was hunting for a Slovenian national. She called in a detective sergeant.

  ‘Follow up this Interpol report. I want to know if the Slovenian police publicised the fact that they had the killer’s DNA. If not, our killer won’t be bothering to hide the fact that he’s Slovenian. Text me as soon as you have an answer. And let the media team know I may be calling a press conference tonight.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Grom sat opposite the lollipop lady. He’d expected her to be scared, but she had either misunderstood her circumstances or she was the bravest person he’d ever met. Then there was the dementia option. He hadn’t bothered tying her up. It wasn’t as if she was in a fit state to run anywhere.

  His English wasn’t great, and the Scottish accent made it that bit harder, but he’d been able to settle in relatively well. Edinburgh was more welcoming than London. He’d only stayed in the English capital a few months before moving on. Poland had been his first stop when he’d left Slovenia, but it had felt too close to home. After that he’d tried Paris, but found he couldn’t walk down a street without people staring. He didn’t blend into crowds. He was too tall, too broad. And in Paris, the fact that he wasn’t French had seemed to stand out a mile. Even amidst the immigrant population, he still felt out of place. But the United Kingdom was across a stretch of water. It was as if the ferry trip had removed him from his past life. He had finally been able to stop running. And then this opportunity had presented itself. He was living in Birmingham when he’d been tipped off about the website. Birmingham was like a bowl of human soup, everyone mixed, blended, shoved together. There he’d been free to do whatever he wanted, to experiment.

  Born Alfonz Kopitar, he was from the mountains originally. A country boy who had grown up with his father and brother, always the target of their jokes, always to blame for whatever went wrong. If only they could see him now – travelling the world, feared by so many, venerated by the few who mattered.

  ‘Lollipop lady,’ Grom said, spitting globules of saliva-soaked bread as he stuffed himself with a sandwich. ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Animal,’ lollipop lady responded. Grom understood her better when she said only one word at a time. At first, she’d spewed endless language at him, most of which he’d found unintelligible.

  ‘You eat if I say,’ Grom said, throwing the last piece of his sandwich across the room. It hit the edge of the bin and bounced onto the floor. He didn’t need to clean up. He’d be making enough of a mess of the place before the week was out. Why worry about a few stray pieces of food? He was the boss. No one could tell him what to eat, how to eat. Not like it had been with his father, dragging him across the floor if food had been spilt, making him lick it off the broken, dirty tiles like a dog.

  ‘I have to go to the toilet,’ lollipop lady said.

  ‘You just gone,’ Grom told her. He hated that aspect of having a prisoner. The need to care for them, the demands. Killing quickly was easier.

  ‘I have a weak bladder. And my medication has a diuretic effect.’

  ‘Not understand,’ Grom said, pushing his face into hers. He couldn’t allow himself to lose his temper. One punch from him and it woul
d all be over, and he hadn’t yet figured out how to kill her. It had to be spectacular. He had to win back some of the ground he was losing to that bitch Sem Culpa. That was her username. He had a much better picture of her now that she’d been careless enough to get caught on CCTV after murdering the librarian.

  Grom was Kopitar’s username. It meant thunder in Slovenian. He preferred it to his given name. Grom was everything anyone needed to know about him. He was unstoppable, a crack of pure energy that would be heard across the globe. And he had thought of it all by himself.

  ‘I … need … to … pee,’ lollipop lady said. ‘Do … you … understand?’

  Grom bent down close to her ear and roared. See how much she liked his special brand of thunder. He pulled his head back to look into her eyes and witness the fear. He saw none.

  ‘I’m a bit deaf in that ear,’ she said. ‘Could you take me to the bathroom now?’

  Grom grabbed the front of her jumper, marching her to the toilet. The lollipop lady made it last as long as she could, then retook her chair. For now, Grom was keeping her in the lounge. He was biding his time, waiting for a sufficient build-up of press attention before showing his work to the world.

  Sem Culpa had taken out her first victim in the middle of a festival – in bright sunshine, in view of thousands – and walked away, for God’s sake. It was so perfect, he’d cried. Then he’d had his chance to shine, reducing Helen Lott to pulp on the floor. There couldn’t have been a bone left unbroken. He had been a machine. Remorseless, untiring, bestial. And still Sem Culpa had outshone him with her next kill, perhaps not publicly, but her description of it on the website had garnered ridiculous praise. The only thing that had stopped him from giving up and boarding the next ferry out of Scotland was the fact that the press had been all but silent on the details. Sem Culpa had yet to prove her claims. His work on Emily Balcaskie had been simple but powerful, leaving Edinburgh’s inhabitants scared to walk the city streets at night. And now this unexpected opportunity, before Sem Culpa had taken her next shot, not that it mattered how the game was being organised. Only that he won it. Psychologists would be arguing for decades about his mental state and motivation.