by Michael Kerr
Julie ignored the detective. When Ryan turned to face her, she said, “My office, now,” before turning on her heel and leaving.
“I think our new gaffer is on the change,” DC Del Preedy said. “She looks like she isn’t getting enough of something that would put a smile on that hatchet face.”
“Typical MCP,” DC Angie Duke said. “You’re Neanderthal, Preedy. You need to know that guys like you are as prehistoric as Rod Stewart in a leopard skin leotard. Maybe you missed out on being breast fed, or do you just feel inadequate?”
“Hey, Angie, don’t get your knickers in a twist, girl. I say it as I see it. Okay?” Del said defensively.
Angie wanted the last word. “No, it isn’t okay, dickhead. Guys like you give me the shits. You need to step into the twenty-first century. It isn’t a man’s world anymore. Your era is over, so why fight it?”
“I―”
“Enough, for Christ’s sake,” Ryan said. “Let’s get with this case. You two want to fight, go in the gym on your own time.”
Del’s eyes widened slightly. He remembered that Angie was a black belt at some marshal art with a Japanese name he couldn’t get his tongue round. She was more than capable of beating the crap out of him.
“Get everything on the boards, Eddie,” Ryan said. “I’ll go see why Brannigan is in such a foul mood.”
Topping his mug up with coffee, Ryan headed for the lift at the end of the corridor. Took a sip of the stewed brew and braced himself to face the new Detective Chief Inspector, who was doing herself no favours. None of the squad had taken to her. She came across as being imperious and incapable of fitting in. Maybe she needed to be told that rank, in itself, wasn’t enough. You had to earn respect, and be able to fit in and win the troops’ hearts. She had a tough act to follow. DCI Ken Hughes had been a cops’ cop, always in the thick of things, and he knew how to listen, which was a quality that not many people had these days. Ken had been fifty-four, a non-smoker who watched his weight and was apparently happily married with four kids. The heart attack had taken him and everyone else by surprise. He had been in the squad room, complained of being too hot, loosened his shirt collar, and then dropped like a cooling tower being demolished with explosives, though a lot quicker. It had been Eddie who’d reached him first. Thought he’d just fainted. But he was gone. Ryan remembered the expression on Ray’s wife’s face when he went to the house to break the news. She didn’t cry, but he saw something die in her eyes. He had seen the same effect too many times. When someone you love ceases to exist, a part of you is taken away. You don’t get over it, you get on with it. Or maybe you don’t. As a DC, thirteen years back, Ryan’s DS at the time had lost his wife. She was hit by a drunk driver as she went to collect the kids from school. The DS, Toby Greenhough, had put his head on a railway line the day after her funeral. Even his love for their children had not been enough to give him the will to go on. Was that selfish? Ryan thought that it probably was, but could understand how losing the most important person in the universe could produce all sorts of reactions. You had no right to judge most people, unless you’d walked in their shoes for a few miles.
“Come,” Julie said as he appeared outside her open office door.
“You mean, ‘Come in, Ryan, take a load off, I need to bollock you over something’.”
“Pardon?” Julie said, a frown knitting her brow.
“Forget it,” Ryan said, dropping into a chair and making eye contact. Taking another swig of his coffee, he waited for her to start in with whatever was on her mind.
“Do you have a problem with my being in charge of the unit, Detective?”
“No, ma’am. Only with the way you haven’t stepped in to test the water.”
“Meaning?”
“That you’re trying to run the team from a distance. You act more like the brass on the top floor than a DCI. If you feel a little shut out, it’s because your man management techniques are nonexistent.”
“We have meetings, and go through―”
“We’re street cops, ma’am, not corporate suits. You want to ever be an integral part of the SCU, then rank doesn’t do it. You have to be accepted and respected. All the best leaders do it from the front. Not from some bunker miles away from the action.”
“You shoot from the hip, don’t you Ryan?”
“I don’t have the time or inclination to play word games, or get involved in politics. I like to keep it simple. We investigate serious crime, and try to catch the bad guys.”
“And you make decisions that should be filtered through me. This case you’ve just taken off CID’s back does not fit our criteria.”
“I beg to differ. This is an ongoing repeat killer, who CID have got nothing on. We specialise in running them down. And we have psychologists on our list that can profile them and narrow the field of the investigation considerably.”
“From the intel I’ve got, it could be a professional hitman. The MO points to that.”
“I very much doubt that some mechanic would be given contracts on four young people, who as yet we can see no link between. They’re more likely stranger-on-stranger random killings.”
“I’ll concede that you could be right. But we’re talking about the principal here.”
Ryan gave her one of his most searching stares. “No, ma’am,” he said. “This is more about manpower and budgets, and all the side issues that I, excuse me, don’t give a flying fuck about.”
Julie felt the full force of his sincerity. She had spent some time in the personnel office. Pulled Ryan’s file and done her own profile. He was a good cop with a high success rate. Had he played the game, then he would have, without doubt, been sitting in her chair. Trouble was, his attitude sucked. He’d ruffled the wrong feathers, and his career was on hold. Just a couple of the many entries in red ink were enough to ensure that he never got the rank he deserved. Talking straight was admirable, but uncommon, and in some ways self-destructive. She could see that he didn’t give a damn. His mission in life was to hunt down killers and provide the evidence that would cage them for life. And he was right about her. She was ambitious, but not to the extent that she would knowingly neglect what he considered to be her main function as his superior officer. She had purposefully kept a low profile at first, to find her feet in what was a new area that she needed to become knowledgeable and conversant in. A forced sideways move from Vice Squad had been a shock to the system. To try and prove sexual harassment against a Deputy Chief Constable was not the way to go.
Gerald Sumner had touched Julie up once too often, after being told to back off and use a handkerchief to find a solution. Perhaps he thought she was playing hard to get. If so, then he was a moron. A knee in the balls was the eventual tide-turner. It cooled his ardour, but also resulted in her being transferred. Any career woman who thought that men in old school ties had lost their power base, was wearing rose-tinted glasses. Maybe she could loosen up and work with Ryan. He seemed a regular guy.
“You ready for a refill?” she said, nodding to the empty mug he was cradling in laced fingers.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Ryan said. “Black, as it comes.”
Julie got up, took the mug from him and went over to the small table on which her coffee maker was spluttering. She could feel his eyes on her.
Ryan decided that Julie Brannigan was not the stuck-up bitch he had at first thought. Maybe she just wanted to take it nice ‘n’ easy, or was a little hesitant in trying to pick up the baton that Ken Hughes had ran with for so long. She was tall, willowy, had short, feathered, salt and pepper hair, and wore a dark power suit. She was trying to look severe, but the laugh lines on her face betrayed her true nature. And her umber eyes danced with a mischievous energy that she somehow contained. She was thirty-nine, divorced, and just needed to lighten up a tad.
“What?” Julie said, handing Ryan his coffee, then sitting on the corner of the desk, in his personal space.
Ryan shrugged. “I was just thinking that
the power suit is over the top. Whatever image you’re trying to project, doesn’t work for you. I doubt you turned up for duty with Vice looking like that.”
“What do you suggest I wear, a revealing, clingy top, and maybe some arse-hugging jeans. Would that float your boat?”
“You might not float my boat in the altogether, ma’am. You asked me what I was thinking...I told you.”
“Good. I consider that progress. How about we finish our coffee and go down to the squad room? I want to know everything you know about this case. And I’m used to first names. I’d rather you addressed me as Julie, unless there are higher ranks present.”
“Okay, Julie. Call me Ryan.”
“What’s wrong with Frank?”
“I’m not comfortable with it. My dad named me after Old Blue Eyes, but everyone seemed to pick up on my surname.”
“You got something against Sinatra?”
“I didn’t know the man, but yeah. He came across as an arrogant bully, who had to have his own way, like a spoilt kid. Even some of his friends said that he thought the universe revolved around him at its centre. But he had a great voice.”
The team were in top gear. The phones and computer keyboards were alive. Eddie had used a black marker to write pertinent details on the whiteboards that were screwed to the back wall.
“Listen up,” Ryan shouted, to be heard above the clamour.
Julie had taken her jacket off and left it in her office. She was holding her ceramic coffee mug, and smiled at the wary faces that turned in her direction.
“The brass have been indoctrinating me in the way of SCU since I moved across from Vice,” Julie said, looking from one face to face, attempting to address the officers as individuals and measure their response. “Truth is, I don’t plan on fixing something that ain’t broke. With your help, I’ll settle in quick and be able to contribute. And in case any rumour about why I got slung out of Vice are circulating, I want you to know that if it involves my kicking a senior officer in the crotch for putting his sweaty palms on my arse, then it’s true. Please call me Julie, if no senior ranks are around, unless you prefer boss. I don’t like ‘ma’am’, it makes me feel like a school teacher. And take it as a given that I aim to be on your side, if you don’t take liberties. Any questions?”
“Yeah, er, Julie,” DC Del Preedy said with a lopsided grin. “How do you like your coffee?”
“Straight from the pot, Del,” she replied, holding her mug out for him to take and fill.
“You just passed muster,” Ryan whispered.
“Yeah, but words come easy. Now I have to back them up, don’t I?”
“I’m sure you will,” Ryan said. And he meant it. Whatever fence Julie had been sitting on, she had now – with just a nudge from him – jumped off it and landed firmly on their side.
The files were on separate tables below the corresponding boards, and each officer had copies. As if looking at paintings in an art gallery, Ryan, Julie and Eddie studied the autopsy photographs that were tacked to each board.
“Have we got a positive ID on the last vic, yet?” Ryan said to Eddie.
“Yeah, boss. Veronica Kirkwood, aged twenty. She was single. The local uniforms say she lived with her parents less than five hundred yards from the scene. Her handbag was found in bushes nearby. Nothing had been taken.”
“Take Angie and break the news, Eddie.”
“Gee, thanks, boss.”
“I know, Eddie. You’d rather shoot yourself in the foot.”
“Talk me through it,” Julie said after Eddie had left with Angie.
“Vic one was Stuart Rhodes, a twenty-three-year-old who worked at a video rental shop. He was parked up in woodland on the evening of the first Friday in September with Vic two, Cheryl Webster, a nineteen-year-old trainee nurse. Forensics show that the perp opened the driver’s door and put a bullet in Stuart’s right temple. Some of his blood and brain tissue was on Cheryl. She managed to get out of the car, but was shot in the head from behind. The perp double-tapped both of them. There was no trace evidence, and nothing taken, apart from the girl’s panties.”
“No suspects?”
“Not as yet. Seems completely motiveless, which we know it wasn’t.”
“How do we know that?”
“There’s always a motive, Julie. However obscure, all murder is committed for a reason. Maybe the perp is a complete lunatic, but he will have an agenda. If nothing else, I’ve learned from the profilers we use as consultants that repeat, pattern and ritual murderers are stimulated by emotional triggers. Something in their makeup sets them off, be it an inner rage, or because they’re hitting back.”
“Against what?”
“Anything. They may have been abused, or neglected. Hurt in such a way that they develop a need for revenge. The other theory is that they were born bad. That whatever evil is in a person’s blueprint is just a trait, like an innate ability; a predisposition to excel at a particular sport, or play a musical instrument.”
“You make it sound like a hidden talent.”
“Not talent, Julie. A capacity to commit acts that most people choose to view as extremely offensive.”
“Don’t you?”
“Yes. But I also understand it. In Roman times, families paid to see gladiators kill
one another, and to watch people be torn to pieces by lions and tigers. Today we have football, boxing, tennis, and other sports instead. We can scream and shout for our favourites without the attendant brutality. And some of the most popular movies are the ones with high body counts. There’s something sinister about the human psyche. It even makes people gather at the scene of accidents. They want to be once removed from it, but are still fascinated by suffering, death and destruction.”
“That doesn’t say a lot for mankind, Ryan.”
“It says a hell of a lot about us as a species. The type of offenders we’re all too often looking for are men and women who have stepped over the line and become players instead of spectators.”
“Why those individuals? Do you know?”
“There’s no one answer. If you have nothing you value to lose, then there is less inhibition. The average person has a family, a job, and a position in the community that they don’t want to put at risk. Take those factors away, and the safety valve can become ineffective. There are all types of nuts out there who can only express themselves by inflicting pain. Other physically and sexually inadequate specimens can only get their rocks off by raping and murdering. They’ve gone native, and survive like any predator, stalking and taking suitable prey.”
It was a lot to absorb. Julie had not heard it put quite that way before. It made her feel that the world outside was little more than a concrete jungle, with sudden death lurking in every shadow. “Was this number three?” she said, moving to the next table and looking at the colour print of a ruined face.
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Ten days later. Paula Kay. She was twenty-two, worked for the Beeb as a researcher, and lived with a female partner in Stoke Newington. She was found in the local cemetery that she used as a short cut to Lordship Lane. Again, no forensics, and nothing bar her panties taken.”
“Do you have any idea of what the common denominator is between them?”
“Not yet. Cheryl Webster was a short, bottle-blonde. Paula Kay was a tall redhead. And tonight’s offering was a brunette of medium height. As for the guy with the Webster girl, he was probably just collateral damage to the killer.”
“Do you accept that it might be a thrill killer who just cruises around at night and picks them at random?”
“No. He doesn’t appear to be sexually motivated. And his MO is cold and impersonal. He doesn’t seem to want anything from them. Just executes them from behind. Doesn’t take the time to humiliate them, or interact with them in any way.”
“He takes their panties.”
“I know. I don’t get it. Most serial killers who take trophies, do it to relive the sexual acts they have committed. I can�
�t figure out why this iceman would need reminders of just pulling a trigger.”
“That means he’s a pro, Ryan. I reckon he was hired to kill them.”
“I’ll keep an open mind for now. This one doesn’t fit any category I’ve come across. I plan on giving David Wilde a bell, if that’s okay with you.”
“Who’s he?”
“A criminal psychologist. He’s worked with us on a dozen cases. He seems to be able to look at the paperwork and get a real feel for the type of freak who did it.”
“You rate him?”
“Yeah, Julie. When you’re looking for a perp with a mental problem, then you need to use any and every weapon in the arsenal. This one is going to kill again. I want to throw everything we’ve got at him.”
Chapter FOUR
David washed up the dishes. Poured two glasses of Californian cabernet sauvignon. Took them through to the lounge and set them down on ceramic coasters that he and Gwen had picked up in Lisbon as mementoes of their holiday in Portugal.
“Thanks,” Gwen said, picking up the glass and sipping the rich wine. “There’s a Clint Eastwood movie on in a minute.”
“Which one?”
“The Bridges of Madison County.”
David had seen it, but not since it was made in the mid-nineties. As he recalled, it was a romantic drama; the story of an affair between a married woman and a middle-aged photographer. It was a close-up inspection of loneliness, frustration, and of how a brief emotional encounter threw up choices that could never be satisfactorily resolved: a weepy. He settled next to Gwen on the sofa, put his arm around her shoulder, and they both enjoyed Clint and Meryl Streep in their underplayed roles. As the credits rolled, David picked up a pen and made a note on a Post-it pad to buy Robert James Waller’s book, that he had no doubt would have more depth than the screen version of his story.
After another glass of wine, Gwen yawned and kissed David on the cheek. “I’m going up, love, I’m bushed.”
“I won’t be long after you,” David said, and kissed her back, on the lips.