by James Carol
‘Should you be doing that?’
‘Relax. They only become dangerous when you add electricity. We could play catch with it and we wouldn’t be in any real danger.’
‘I’d rather we didn’t.’
Winter walked beneath the closest striplight so he could study the bomb more closely. It wasn’t as big as he’d imagined, or as heavy. It was three inches long and had a diameter of about an inch. The size wasn’t a complete surprise. Look how big bullets were, and there was no question how lethal they could be. Despite everything, he couldn’t help being impressed. The killer had a problem and he’d thought long and hard about it, and this was the solution he’d come up with. There was an elegance to the design that was hard to deny. It was pragmatic and simple. And deadly. And that’s the point where Winter stopped being impressed. At the end of the day this device had been designed and built with one purpose in mind. He held the bomb out to Anderton.
‘Do you want to take a look?’
She held up her hands and stepped back. ‘I’m good, thanks.’
‘It’s perfectly safe.’
‘So you keep saying.’ She took out her phone. ‘We’re now up to one hundred per cent. Gifford’s our guy. No doubt about it. Freeman needs to know about this.’
‘You’ll get no argument from me on that score.’
Winter put the bomb back where he’d found it, then walked the length of the attic to the make-up table. The mirror was two feet square and surrounded by lit bulbs on three sides. The chair was upholstered with padded black vinyl and comfortable to sit in. There was nothing on the surface of the table. No brushes or make-up. No nail varnish or eyeliner pencils. No lotions or potions. A small ball of adhesive putty was stuck to the edge of the mirror frame. Anderton’s footsteps came up behind him. A second later her face appeared in the glass.
‘How’s Freeman?’ he asked her reflection.
‘He’s not answering. I’ve left a voicemail.’
‘So, have you worked out what this make-up table’s for?’
‘It’s so he can practise his facial expressions. He watches the husbands on their webcams and when he sees an expression that appeals to him he freezes the frame and manipulates it until the picture is as good as he can get it. Then he prints it onto a sheet of photographic paper.’ She pointed to the small ball of putty. ‘Then he uses that to attach the photograph to the edge of the mirror and starts practising. And when he’s mastered the expression he takes a self-portrait and the two pictures go up on the wall, side by side.’
‘But why do that? What’s he actually trying to achieve?’
‘Good question.’
Winter jumped to his feet and made his way back along the sloped sheetrock wall to the workbench. He was going more slowly this time, his gaze moving from one pair of photographs to the next. Anderton was a step behind, doing the same. They stopped halfway along and turned to face each other.
‘Why are there no smiles and laughter?’ Winter asked her.
50
‘And what about the thoughtful expressions?’ Anderton asked. ‘Or the curious ones? Or the puzzled and perplexed ones? Gifford seems obsessed with the negative emotions. The despair, grief, guilt and devastation. That’s what seems to fascinate him. But why?’
It was another good question. Winter turned his head and looked at the workbench, his eyes travelling from left to right. The detonators, the explosives, the finished bombs. How much time and effort had Gifford put into the design? How much time had he spent building them? When it came to their favourite pastimes, serial killers didn’t do anything by halves. Nor did they do anything unless there was a damn good reason. Winter turned his attention back to the make-up table. It was easy to imagine Gifford sitting there for hours on end, experimenting with different expressions, wearing each one like a mask. What was he trying to achieve?
‘What are you thinking?’ Anderton asked him.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well, here’s an idea: Try thinking out loud. Maybe that’ll help you to get your thoughts straight.’
‘Okay, we know that the actual murders are a means to an end. Isabella, Alicia, Lian and Myra were collateral damage. Gifford was actually targeting the husbands. Question: what purpose do the murders serve? What is the end game here?’ Winter paused. ‘It’s like Gifford wants to get as close as he can to the grief and despair. He does that by studying the effect that the murders have on the husbands. The murders are instigating events. They’re catalysts.’
He looked back along the photographs, his gaze moving down the wall they were standing next to and returning along the opposite one.
‘Sobek’s not here,’ he said. ‘It’s just Eric Kirchner and David Hammond.’
‘That’s because the security on his computer was so much better.’
Winter went quiet again, thinking things over. If you threw the pieces in the air where would they land and what sort of picture would they make? In other words, what did the chaos look like?
‘The first murder in any series often tells you more than all the other murders put together,’ he said.
‘So what can we learn from Isabella Sobek’s murder?’
‘That’s not quite the right question. Remember, the murders are a means to an end. This is about Nicholas Sobek. So, the question we should be asking is what did Gifford see when he met him? It must have been something fairly monumental because Isabella was his first.’
‘So we start by looking at the point where their lives intersected. That would have been when Gifford was called in to take photographs of the staff at Sobek’s company.’
Winter nodded. ‘Those sort of photoshoots are done in the workplace. An office or conference room is commandeered. The workers file in one at a time, have their picture taken, then file out again. Everything is over in thirty seconds. Back then, Sobek was the big cheese. Time was money. He would have wanted things over and done with as quickly as possible. If everyone else was doing it in thirty seconds he’d want to do it in twenty.’
‘And since time was money he wouldn’t have been involved with organising the shoot. That would have been left to one of his underlings. Which means that the only time the two of them had any sort of interaction was when the photograph was being shot.’
‘So the question becomes: what did Gifford see during those twenty seconds? In other words, what were his first impressions?’ Winter looked at Anderton. ‘What were your first impressions?’
‘I thought he was a murderer. And you?’
‘I thought he was a psychopath.’ Winter went to say something else, but the words never made it out. He shut his mouth then went back over what he’d just said. ‘Maybe that’s it. The thing that they have in common is that they’re both psychopaths. On some level that must have registered with Gifford. The difference is that Sobek is functioning at a much higher level. He’s rich and successful and has his own business. You could argue that society has accepted him for what he is. He’s mastered the art of blending in.’
‘And Gifford hasn’t?’
Winter shook his head. ‘No, he hasn’t. Gifford is an outsider. Look what he does for a living. He’s a photographer. He spends his whole life on the outside looking in.’
‘So, what? He does all this because he needs acceptance?’ It was Anderton’s turn to shake her head. It was going from side to side in a way that made it clear that she wasn’t buying. ‘That sounds a little too much like pop psychology for my liking.’
‘It’s not that straightforward. Psychopaths don’t need validation in the same way most people do. It means nothing to them.’ Winter stopped talking. The pair of photographs at eye level showed David Hammond and Gifford with their heads in their hands. They looked as though the world was about to end. ‘One characteristic that defines Gifford is his pragmatism. He eats ham sandwiches and instant noodles because it’s quick and easy and he doesn’t have to waste time thinking about cooking. He wears chinos and button-down shirts for much the
same reason.’
‘And he kills because he wants to provoke a particular reaction,’ Anderton put in.
‘It’s all about being pragmatic,’ Winter agreed. ‘The same goes for fitting in. If he can find a way to swim with the flow then that’s got to make his life easier.’
‘All well and good, but why the fascination with negative emotions?’
‘Because psychopaths don’t possess empathy. Most people have a full palette of emotions to work with. Psychopaths don’t. If Gifford is going to fit in then he needs both the negative and positive emotions.’
‘And the problem with the negative emotions is that they are much harder to fake. It’s easy to conjure up a smile, but much harder to produce tears.’
‘Exactly.’
Anderton moved a little further along the wall, looking at the photographs she passed. The pair that she stopped at showed Hammond and Gifford both in tears.
‘How is he able to cry on demand?’ she asked. ‘I mean, thinking about a favourite pet that died when he was a kid isn’t going to work. You need empathy to do that and, as we’ve already established, Gifford doesn’t possess any.’
‘He could try holding his eyes open until they start to water. Failing that, cutting an onion in half would provide the desired effect. Or he could try jamming a knife into his leg. That would work.’
Anderton gave him the look. It was part Did I hear right? and part What the hell planet are you from? ‘You’re joking, right?’
‘Only half joking. Remember, the key word here is pragmatism.’
‘Is there anything else we can learn from the first murder?’
Winter thought this over for a second.
‘You’re frowning,’ said Anderton. ‘What is it?’
‘I was thinking about Sobek sitting all by himself over at Mountain View Cemetery yesterday. I’m figuring that Isabella’s funeral was a circus. A high-profile murder like that is going to attract plenty of media attention.’
‘Yeah, it was a circus all right.’
‘So, someone wandering around with a camera, pretending to be a press photographer wouldn’t have stood out.’
‘You think Gifford was at Isabella’s funeral?’
‘I wouldn’t rule it out. Since the very start, the lack of escalation has bugged me. We now know that the reason we didn’t see any is because we were focussed on the wives. When you look at the husbands, that’s when you start to see signs of escalation. It was three months before Gifford attempted to infiltrate Sobek’s computer. That feels like an afterthought rather than a part of the original plan. He killed Isabella, and for a while that would have been enough to sustain him. But it wouldn’t have sustained him forever. So he starts looking for ways to take this to the next level and that’s when he comes up with the idea of hijacking Sobek’s webcam.’
Winter stopped talking and Anderton nodded for him to continue.
‘Serial offenders start small and build up. There’s always going to be a progression because enough is never enough. So a serial killer will start by killing and torturing small animals before moving on to cats and dogs, and finally people. Similarly, with serial rapists there’s often a history of minor offences before they progress to attacking women. Stealing underwear, exposing themselves, voyeuristic behaviour, that sort of thing.’
‘How does this relate to Gifford? You think he started off by killing the neighbourhood pets?’
Winter shook his head. ‘No, I don’t. Not this time. Gifford is driven by curiosity rather than sadism, so he would start with something that feeds that particular desire.’
‘Such as?’
‘What if he started out by hanging about at funerals watching the mourners? Nobody’s going to look twice at a guy in a black suit at funeral. Everyone’s just going to assume that he knew the deceased. So Gifford gets a ringside seat to witness the grief first hand. Afterwards he would have spent hours going over what he’d seen, replaying those emotions like there’s a film show going on in his head.’
‘But at some point that won’t be enough,’ Anderton said. ‘Somewhere along the line he’ll want something more permanent to look back on.’
Winter nodded. ‘Right. Wearing a black suit won’t raise any eyebrows, but if he starts waving a camera around, that would. Then one day he attends a high-profile funeral. Maybe it’s a murder victim. Or maybe it’s someone famous. Whoever it is, there are cameras around, and the thing is, nobody is looking twice at the people who are operating them, which gets Gifford wondering. So he starts thinking about how he can create a similar scenario.’
‘And Isabella Sobek ends up dead,’ said Anderton.
‘So he turns up at her funeral and takes some pictures, and nobody looks twice at him. For a while that’s enough. But enough is never enough. There’s always going to be a way to push the envelope further.’
‘So he decides to use Sobek’s webcam to spy on him. He’s already got the malware because he used it on Isabella’s laptop, and he knows it’s a great way to watch because he spent hours and hours watching her in the run-up to the first murder. All he needs to do is install it on Sobek’s computer.’
‘Which is where the idea falls down. The problem being that Sobek’s security is too efficient. So what does he do? He starts hunting around for another victim. After all, the idea is a good one.’
‘And there’s your escalation,’ Anderton said.
‘The good news is that he’s still escalating. Look at the latest murder. He actually approached Cody Hooper in person. Next he’ll be looking to approach his targets after the murders. At some point he’s going to overplay his hand.’
‘Well, let’s hope he overplays it sooner rather than later. I don’t want to wait another year before we catch him.’
They stopped talking and for a while stood there staring at each other. The silence was uncomfortable. It was a silence that demanded to be filled.
‘It’s a nice theory,’ Anderton said eventually. ‘But you realise that’s all it is. A theory. There’s no proof that this is what actually happened.’
‘But you’ve got to admit that it’s a compelling one.’
Anderton didn’t say anything for a second. ‘If I was still running this investigation, I’d task someone with digging a little deeper into this. It’s possible that Gifford got noticed at one of the funerals. Maybe someone reported him to the police. I’d be interested to know if he was in the system.’
‘You’ll run this by Freeman, then?’
‘No, Jefferies might be better for this. He’s more likely to take it seriously.’
‘I like Jefferies.’
Anderton’s eyes narrowed. ‘Good to know. But I’ve got to say, that one came a little out of left field.’
‘I was just thinking, that’s all. One thought led to another and I started wondering about how far back the two of you went.’
‘Why not say what’s really on your mind?’
‘Jefferies is your number-one winged monkey, isn’t he? He’s the head of the troop? The top banana?’
Anderton cracked a small smile. Her brown eyes were shining and there was guilt writ large all over her face. ‘I couldn’t possibly comment on something like that.’
‘I thought we were partners, Anderton. Aren’t partners supposed to share everything?’
‘Not everything. There’s such a thing as oversharing.’
A sudden loud banging from downstairs made them both turn toward the hatch. Winter counted four bangs in total, each one as impatient as the last. The banging was followed by muted shouting. They were too far away to make out the actual words, but Winter recognised the tone. The bemused expression on Anderton’s face indicated that she did, too.
‘Looks like we’ve got company,’ he said.
‘Yeah, we should let them in.’
Winter climbed down the ladder and headed along the landing to the stairs. He’d almost reached the bottom when the front door suddenly exploded open. The cop standing the
re was dressed in full battle gear and holding a large steel battering ram. He moved aside and two more cops stepped in to take his place. One had a semiautomatic gun pushed hard into his shoulder and aimed at Winter’s chest. The other was aiming at Anderton. Winter’s guy was screaming for them to get down on their knees and put their hands behind their heads. Winter didn’t move. So long as they didn’t make any sudden movements they’d probably be okay. He reckoned that they were due another couple of shouted warnings before the shooting started. Anderton was clearly thinking along the same lines. She hadn’t dropped to her knees either.
It took a couple of seconds for recognition to kick in. There was just too much adrenaline and testosterone flying around. Anderton’s guy got there first. The muzzle of his gun wavered briefly then he dropped the weapon to his side. He gestured to his buddy, who kept his gun aimed at Winter for a few seconds longer before lowering it. Winter moved to the side, looking for a way out, but the doorway was blocked by the cops.
‘Freeman!’ he yelled out. ‘Tell your people to stand down. Gifford isn’t home.’
51
Argyle Street was busier than it had ever been. Police cruisers were parked across both ends of the street to block access, and there were more cars parked at the sidewalk opposite Gifford’s house. Winter had counted twelve people in total. The advance guard had helmets, vests, semiautomatics, the works. The rest were in their detective clothes, and the compulsory Kevlar vest. The old woman from further along the street had stopped working and set up a lawn chair in the shady part at the front of her house so she could watch.
Winter and Anderton had moved to the sidewalk while the police searched the house. Anderton was on her cell, talking to Rebecca Byrne and making her promise not to release William Gifford’s name until after an arrest had been made. She hung up and put her phone away. A short while later Freeman and Jefferies came out of the house and walked over. Winter and Anderton were standing on the kerbside, facing the building. Freeman and Jefferies were backed up to the lawn as though they were daring them to come closer. The posturing was unnecessary. Winter had already seen everything he needed to. Freeman looked seriously pissed. This was his big moment and he’d been beaten to the punch. It was hard to feel sympathetic.