Deadly Dance

by Hilary Bonner

  ‘So it’s the host we should be looking for?’

  ‘Yes. I would say that’s correct.’

  ‘Any idea what sort of person might host these disparate characters?’

  Freda shrugged.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘It’s often someone who does not draw attention to themselves. He almost certainly lives alone, because it would be difficult to hide something this complex from anyone you lived with, be it a lover, a relative, or even just a flat mate. He probably avoids making friends too. But he would also contrive to appear pretty normal. It is quite possible that he holds down a job, even a responsible job.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Well, clinical research shows that DID patients describe severe childhood abuse, physical or sexual or both. Your subject has probably experienced some kind of major trauma but, of course, you wouldn’t know that.’

  ‘So are the different personalities aware of each other?’

  ‘Each would have its own memories, behaviour patterns and preferences, including sexual preferences, but none would have access to the memories and thought processes of the other. The host must be aware, to some extent, of the existences of these secondary identities. But when another identity takes over the host, it’s usually involuntary, as I explained earlier, though some hosts can develop ways of control, up to a point. However stress and, most importantly of all, an event or incident which could be seen as a threat to one of the identities, is likely to bring that identity to manifest itself.’

  ‘So where would Aeolus come into this?’

  ‘Ummm, a complication, but not unknown. In the case of your subject, it seems likely that the host, almost certainly subconsciously, loathes and has contempt for his alternative identities. But not Aeolus, it is Aeolus he reveres and aspires to ultimately become.’

  ‘Where does that lead us?’

  ‘Well, if someone with DID actively seeks to become a certain personality, they won’t be able to control that indefinitely. Extreme pressure or stress will bring Aeolus to the forefront. He will take over and your man – the host – won’t be able to stop it. Ironically, the closer you get to him, the more likely it is that he will succumb to his own involuntary subterfuges and believe that he has become Aeolus.

  And that, DI David Vogel, is when your killer will get really dangerous.’

  Vogel called Hemmings from the 21.15 back to Bristol. The commuter rush was well over and the train was quiet. Vogel was easily able to find a secluded corner, where he wouldn’t be overheard. He related his meeting with Professor Heath as quickly and accurately as he could.

  ‘Basically she backs up my theory, boss. I know it probably sounded far-fetched when I came into your office today, but it does make sense. The DNA evidence means it’s virtually indisputable that the same man was responsible for all three murders. I don’t think there’s any other feasible explanation.’

  Hemmings remained silent for several seconds.

  ‘Neither do I, Vogel,’ he said eventually.

  Vogel waited for Hemmings to continue. He understood the senior man’s reticence. The next step presented clear risks. It could leave the entire Bristol MCIT team open to ridicule.

  ‘OK, we have to go public with this now, without delay,’ said Hemmings.

  ‘I’m sure that’s the right thing to do, sir,’ responded Vogel.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Hemmings. ‘I still don’t like it, but we have no choice. The only hope we seem to have of finding this man is through the media and the public. I shall call the Chief Constable straight away.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘We now have a picture of the bastard by the way. A photo he emailed to the Thai girl. He’d deleted it and tried to remove all traces of it from his own email account and hers, but the tech boys finally unearthed it.’

  Vogel felt a frisson of excitement.

  ‘What does he look like, boss?’

  ‘A pretty ordinary Joe. I’ll send it to you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Oh and David …’

  Vogel stiffened. In their almost two-year association, Vogel could count the number of times Hemmings had addressed him as David on the fingers of one hand.

  ‘Well done. Nobody else in the force would have come close to this.’

  Hemmings ended the call, leaving Vogel thinking that his superior officer was not wrong about that: which meant that the consequences of going public with the Aeolus theory, whatever they may turn out to be, now rested on Vogel’s, not particularly broad, shoulders.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  A press conference was held at the Avon and Somerset Constabulary’s Portishead HQ at 11 a.m. the following morning. It was hosted by Hemmings, as SIO, with Vogel and the force’s senior press officer, Jennifer Jackman, by his side. Willis and Saslow were also present, as Vogel’s first lieutenants, in case he wished to refer to them, but they hadn’t been asked to sit on the platform.

  Vogel suspected that Hemmings may have been hoping this would be one of the conferences the Chief Constable might choose to host himself. But the CC, like most of his rank in modern policing, had become rather more a politician than a policeman. He excelled at covering his own back more than anything else, in Vogel’s opinion.

  Hemmings, however, gave no sign of any discomfiture he might be feeling and did a more than competent job. He ran through the basic details of the three murders, then revealed that DNA evidence pointed to the same perpetrator in every case. There was a stir of increased interest in a briefing room packed almost to capacity.

  On the instruction of the CC, Jennifer Jackman had already indicated that there’d been a sensational development suggesting a strong link between the cases of Timothy Southey, Manee Jainukul and Melanie Cooke. Journalists known to be closely following these cases had been contacted directly. Almost all of those in attendance were experienced crime reporters representing local and national television, and mainstream local and national written press. They understood about profiling and modus operandi. They were as surprised by the DNA evidence as Vogel and the MCIT team had been.

  Hemmings turned to Vogel to explain his theory of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Vogel hated doing this sort of thing, but he couldn’t avoid it. It was his convoluted brain that had come up with the Aeolus theory and it was only logical that he should be the one to pass on his thinking to the world at large.

  By the time he finished the air of quiet excitement and anticipation had turned into near bedlam. The press photographers and news cameramen pushed forward, thrusting their cameras into Vogel’s face. Many of the gathered journalists rose to their feet and started to shout out questions. Others were clearly already filing copy.

  Jennifer Jackman called for order.

  ‘Neither DI Vogel nor DCI Hemmings will say anything more nor take any questions until everyone calms down,’ she said. ‘Please take your seats and if you have a question raise your hand.’

  Jackman succeeded in her plea for calm, to a degree, but her reward was merely a sea of waving arms.

  ‘Question for DI Vogel,’ began the correspondent from BBC Bristol. ‘Are you really telling us that we are looking for one man, who thinks he has at least four personalities including a figure of Greek mythology, Detective Inspector? Could you clarify that for me please?’

  Bedlam turned to hush.

  Vogel blinked rapidly behind his spectacles. He reckoned he would prefer to pull his own teeth out, rather than face the great British press on a charge.

  ‘Well yes, that’s about it,’ said Vogel.

  ‘Do you have any medical evidence to back this theory up?’

  ‘We have taken advice from a senior criminal psychiatrist, yes, which led us to decide to make this announcement this morning.’

  ‘So do we have three different motives then, as well as three different identities within the same perpetrator? Is that what you are saying, Mr Vogel?’

  That was a concept Vogel had considered, but he had so far
been unable to come to a properly thought-out conclusion.

  ‘Until we apprehend this man and can acquire detailed psychiatric reports on his state of mind, I’m afraid we cannot comment on his motivation,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly how do you plan to apprehend him, DI Vogel? I mean, isn’t he really little more than some kind of fantasy figure?’

  ‘Not exactly, we do have a photograph of our suspect,’ Hemmings interrupted.

  The DCI waved a hand at Janet Jackman, who had her laptop open in front of her. She tapped the keyboard and a large image of the photo emailed to Manee Jainukul flashed up on the big screen above the platform.

  Vogel turned to look at it. He’d already pored over the photo on the train as soon as Hemmings had emailed it to him the previous evening and again when he got home and again that morning. He had a feeling that face was vaguely familiar but then, he’d spent so much time looking at it he supposed it would be.

  ‘The experts tell us this image has been heavily Photoshopped,’ said Hemmings. ‘We have no idea how alike it is to our suspect – whom we believe to be Saul Homer, Leo Ovid, and Al – but it’s the best we’ve got. Please use it to help us find him. He is highly dangerous.’

  The media went ballistic.

  AEOLUS

  I wasn’t quite sure what I felt when I watched the news and read the TV reports. In a way I was proud of the attention. Who wouldn’t be? My story led the news on every TV bulletin and I was splashed all over every front page. My picture was everywhere, well, the picture they thought was me. It was the same on the net.

  Of course, I knew the story was a captivating one. A damned good yarn, the press boys would say. I particularly enjoyed headlines like POLICE PUZZLED AND BEFUDDLED BY TRIPLE KILLER …, MYTHICAL MURDERER MAKES MOCKERY … and THREAT OF THE THREE-IN-ONE FIEND …

  I was, of course, aware that merely by working out what I was, the forces of the law had put me at greater risk of discovery. Detective Inspector David Vogel was clever for a police officer, there was no doubt about that, but not as clever as me. I wasn’t too worried.

  The media asked one question. The same question.

  ‘Who is Aeolus?’

  I am Aeolus. I am not the pathetic creature whose picture the police released. I’d used and doctored that picture, for my own ends. It barely resembled me. Nobody would recognise the real me from that picture.

  I am Aeolus. I am the ruler of the winds. I have powers the likes of which DI Vogel can only ever dream of.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The results of the press conference wildly exceeded anything Vogel had ever experienced. Even the coverage of the Sunday Club murders in Covent Garden, which had attracted extensive media attention, paled into insignificance compared with this.

  It was approaching mid-morning the following day and Vogel was still trying to get to grips with the sheer enormity of public response to the massive media onslaught, when his phone rang. Bill Jones, the duty sergeant at Trinity Road – the police station which covered the St Pauls district, where the body of Manee Jainukul was found – sounded unusually animated.

  ‘Woman just walked into the front office here. I think you should see her personally, sir,’ said Jones. ‘Claims she had an internet relationship with your Saul. Got a feeling about this one, sir.’

  ‘You’ve talked to her yourself?’

  ‘Briefly, sir.’

  ‘All right,’ said Vogel.

  He respected Sergeant Jones and was pretty sure the man wouldn’t bother him directly with anyone likely to turn out to be a nutter. If Jones thought this woman was worthy of Vogel’s personal attention, then she almost certainly was.

  But, for once, even Vogel didn’t dare leave his office. He really had to remain at the hub of the investigation of which he was DSIO. Hemmings was not going to stand for anything else.

  ‘Look, there’s no way I can come over to you,’ he told Sergeant Jones. ‘Would this woman be prepared to come here, do you think, if you got a uniform to drive her?’

  Sergeant Jones replied that he reckoned that could be arranged.

  Miss Sonia Baker arrived less than half an hour later. Vogel had her brought straight to his office. She was now sitting opposite him, a fair-haired woman, probably in her late thirties, just a little plumper than she might like to be and well dressed, in a rather old-fashioned sort of way. Discomfort oozed from every pore of her body. A handkerchief was clasped tightly in her left hand. She looked as if she may have been crying.

  Vogel introduced himself, offered Sonia Baker coffee or tea and tried to do everything he could to make her feel less ill at ease. The woman attempted a weak smile. He noticed that her lips were trembling, but he needed to start questioning her swiftly in order to ascertain whether she really was the genuine article or just another time-waster.

  ‘Could you please begin by telling me what you told Sergeant Jones at Trinity Road,’ he said.

  Sonia, in spite of being so upset, related clearly how she had met Saul Homer on line, through marryme.com, how they’d corresponded in detail for some time and had eventually arranged to meet.

  ‘And you are sure it’s the same Saul Homer we are now looking for?’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, it’s an unusual name, of course, but that’s not it. As soon as I saw the picture on the TV this morning, I recognised him at once. It’s the same photo he posted on marryme.com. It’s not there now though, I checked. But I have a print-out.’

  Sonia Baker reached into her handbag, removed a sheet of A4 paper and put it on Vogel’s desk. Vogel glanced down. The bespectacled face, which had been haunting him for a day and half now, was before him. It was the same Saul all right.

  ‘So did you ever meet him, Miss Baker?’ he asked.

  ‘No, he didn’t turn up, you see,’ said the woman ‘I stood on the railway station at Bath like a total idiot. He was supposed to be arriving there from Swindon, where he said he lived. I looked all along the train he was supposed to be on. I even thought I saw him. There was this man who was about to step out of one of the carriages and then turned away and went back in. I thought it was him at first. There was definitely a similarity, although it might just have been that he was wearing tinted glasses like Saul’s. I caught a glimpse of him again, looking out of a window. Straight at me, I thought, but he wasn’t my Saul, obviously. My Saul never arrived. I waited for the next two trains from Swindon. We’d spoken on the phone a couple of times. He had this quite gentle voice, with the hint of a rural Wiltshire burr. I thought he sounded so nice. What a fool. I couldn’t phone him from the station. He said he’d lost his phone, a lie obviously. I realise now how stupid I was, but he seemed to want all that I wanted. He must have told the same sort of story to this poor woman from Thailand. It still upsets me, which is ridiculous really because I could be dead, couldn’t I, Mr Vogel? I could have been another victim. It all fits.’

  ‘If you are right and I suspect you are, then I think you may have had a very lucky escape indeed, Miss Baker.’

  Vogel asked the woman if she would make a full statement and she agreed to do so at once. He said he would arrange for someone to go through the procedure with her and asked her to accompany him to reception. In the corridor, they met Willis and Saslow, clearly on their way out.

  Vogel asked Sonia to wait a moment and took Saslow to one side.

  ‘I need a word with you two, where are you off?’ he asked.

  ‘They’ve had a walk-in at Avonmouth nick. Character who claims he’s Aeolus.’

  ‘Ah, the first and almost certainly not the last.’

  ‘I know boss, but apparently he’s pretty convincing. Hemmings wants us over there pronto, just in case.’

  ‘All right, Saslow, let me know how you get on.’

  Saslow hurried after Willis, who had barely paused and was virtually out of the door. Typical, thought Vogel, not disapprovingly, Willis was always completely focused on the job in hand.

  Sonia Baker took a step towards the DI and touched his
arm lightly.

  ‘Mr Vogel, who were those people?’ she asked.

  Vogel told her.

  ‘Then you are probably going to think I’m crazy, Detective Inspector, but I have something to tell you.’

  As soon as Sonia Baker left, Vogel picked up his phone to call Saslow and Willis. Then he put it down again.

  He had questioned the woman thoroughly and the more he’d questioned her, the clearer it seemed that she was not entirely sure of the quite startling information she had given Vogel. Indeed when the DI had suggested that she make a formal statement on the matter she’d declined at once.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to do that, not until you have checked it out and tried to discover whether it might be possible or not,’ she said.

  She could be letting her imagination run away with her, Vogel told himself.

  But he’d seen, many times, how a clever barrister can destroy a witness in a court of law; making someone, who had previously been quite sure of their evidence, seem inept and full of doubt. He’d always thought that sort of lawyer to be too clever by half, and maybe that’s how Vogel himself had just been behaving to Sonia.

  On the other hand, Sonia Baker had said that she couldn’t be sure, not absolutely sure, anyway. Then again, Vogel had never been the kind of policeman who would only believe what he wanted to believe. He was a meticulous man, who made sure that he or his team checked and double checked every lead, however obscure. However unlikely. However ridiculous.

  And this was ridiculous, surely.

  Quite ridiculous.

  He should certainly do a little elementary checking before alerting others. He didn’t want to be guilty of a false alarm on a matter of this enormity.

  It was always a good idea to check dates and opportunity before wreaking havoc. To at least discover if a possible suspect had a solid alibi, like being aboard an aircraft in the middle of the Atlantic or picked up on CCTV at the other end of the country. He switched on his computer and called up a file, which would give him the information he needed.