by Tim Ellis
Everyone clapped.
‘Very kind,’ she mumbled as she sat down.
Toadstone stood up again and introduced Pickford Fernsby – an inventor who also cracked impossible codes as a hobby.
‘Without going into an enormous amount of detail,’ he began, ‘And as fascinating as that detail is, I’ll get straight to the point. If one slots the initials of each victim between the first letter of each of the locations one obtains the code. I’ve written a little computer program to illustrate exactly what I mean.’
He walked to a table behind them where he had a laptop connected to a projector that had been focused on the back wall. ‘If you’d all be so kind,’ he said.
Once they’d all shuffled their chairs a hundred and eighty degrees he said, ‘Here we go,’ and pressed the “Enter” key on his laptop. The letters began appearing one at a time, slotting into place and slowly revealing the code. The initials of each victim had been enclosed in brackets, so they could easily identify each location and each victim:
L(IN)C(OL)N(HE)R(EF)O(RD)A(VO)N(JO)R(DA)N(BL)A(CK)W(AT)E(RN)O(RW)I(CH)P(ET)E(RB)O(UR)O(UG)H(KE)N(NE)T(HU)M(BE)R(CH)I(CH)E(ST)
‘As you can see, the code identifies additional locations. In isolation, these locations are merely place names, but when they’re grouped together they identify a specific place in Basildon where those locations have been used as street names on a housing estate called Broadmayne.’ He brought up a map showing the estate. The street names had been highlighted in yellow: Lincoln Road, Hereford Walk, Avon Way and so on.
‘Is the killer telling us that’s where he lives?’ DS Patrick Hyde asked.
‘I’m afraid that’s the limit of my knowledge,’ Fernsby said.
Everyone clapped again.
‘Okay,’ DCI Todd said. ‘Let’s turn ourselves round again. ‘If you recall, DC Richards suggested we recruit the services of a criminal profiler, specifically Dr Miriam Shepherd, who’s been flown from the independent country of West Yorkshire to give us the benefit of her insight.’ He sat down.
Miriam Shepherd took centre stage and stared at them all for a handful of seconds. ‘Do we believe that an individual’s personality guides their behaviours, which includes their criminal actions? And from those behaviours and actions that we can then work in reverse and make deductive predictions about the individual’s personality? Much the same as any number of other disciplines that are described as pseudoscience, criminal profiling is steeped in controversy. However, I can tell you that empirical studies are ongoing in an effort to construct psychological measures and techniques, and validate the notion that criminal profilers can actually predict the personality characteristics of offenders from their behaviour, which is above the level of chance. Now, let me provide you with the criminal profile I’ve constructed of the killer based on his criminal actions.’
DC Lewis handed out copies of the criminal profile.
‘Please take a few minutes to read the profile, and then I’ll take questions.’
They read the two-page profile.
Criminal Profile of the Serial Killer known as ‘The Lover’
Prepared by Dr Miriam Shepherd PhD, AcSS, FAPA, FBPsS (Hon), FRSM, CPsychol; Assistant Director International Centre for Investigative Psychology at the University of Huddersfield; Senior Fellow International Academy of Investigative Psychology.
Victimology: Female; between the ages of 20 and 30; from a working- to middle-class socioeconomic background; dark- haired; attractive; childless. The victims resemble the killer’s mother at that age. Woman is trusting due to intake of alcohol and/or drugs, pub or club environment, friends and/or people of authority in close proximity. Woman goes with killer willingly under the impression of sex/romance.
Past Criminal Behaviour: Killer unlikely to have any prior criminal record. If he does, it will not be associated with the crime. No previous violent or sexual crimes.
Precipitating Events: Overbearing mother. His mother is the driving force behind his crimes. Has the opportunity and means to abduct or lure his victims.
Biographical Details: Middle-aged male – 40 to 50 years old, but looks much younger. No unusual physical features. Small of stature. Soft harmless look. Quiet and soft-spoken. He’s very intelligent, possibly has a degree. He is socially adept, and is following the coverage of his crimes in the media very carefully and probably keeps a scrapbook, or a show-and-tell wall. He’s geographically and occupationally mobile. He drives a flashy car. He also needs to return to each crime scene to see what the police have done. He contacts the police to play games. White-collar worker. Does not own a house, but lives with his mother. Not married, but dates regularly – not through any desire to form a lasting relationship, but to prove to himself and others that he’s normal. He has no long-term interpersonal relationships. He doesn’t allow people to get too close to him, but is good with other people. He’s respected as a pillar of the community.
Killer’s Background: Early and sustained childhood abuse and/or trauma. Loss of the father resulting in feelings of abandonment, which may have been the time at which he became the man of the house and the love for his mother mutated into something obscene. It’s possible that his mother sexually abused him, or forced him to satisfy her sexual needs. No attachment or positive emotional bonds were formed in childhood. No roots were ever established. He has had multiple unsuccessful relationships in adulthood. There is no history of mental instability, but hides obvious signs of antisocial personality disorder, narcissism, sadism, sociopathy and psychopathy.
Details of the Crime: The killer has a retreat, which might be where he lives, but is more likely to be a special place where he keeps and regularly visits his victims. As such, the location and tools are already prepared prior to the abduction. The victims are chosen because they resemble his mother, or at least the picture he has in his head of his mother in her mid-twenties. He’s organised, plans ahead and selects/observes his victims ahead of time. He is meticulous with details and the crime is well thought-out. He is extremely precise in what he does. The victim’s trust is obtained through alcohol and/or drugs, friendliness, conversation prior to the abduction. Once at the killer’s retreat, the victim is subdued, stripped of their clothing and restrained to allow the killer complete control for torture and rape. The victims are kept like that for one week and then killed by the injection of air into the carotid artery in the neck, which causes a catastrophic stoke. Once the victim is dead, the killer washes them internally and externally with sodium hydroxide, wraps them in plastic sheeting to transport them to a wooded area, where he carves a small heart into the skin of the woman’s forehead and then nails them upside down to a tree. The crime scene is controlled, and any forensic or physical evidence has been left there on purpose.
‘Any questions?’ Miriam Shepherd said.
DS Patrick Hyde cleared his throat. ‘How does this help us, Doctor? DC Richards said that you’d construct a profile that would be more scientific and feed into the investigation rather than stand apart from it.’
‘And that’s exactly what I’ve done . . .?’
‘DS Patrick Hyde.’
‘You’re looking, but you’re not seeing, DS Hyde. So, let me help you by making my recommendations on how to proceed with the investigation, which I omitted from my profile because the others had not given their analysis and I didn’t want to steal their thunder. We’ve had the handwriting analysis from the forensic graphologist Lena Gulliver, which is based on the killer’s note to DI Parish; we’ve had the forensic analysis from Dr Toadstone, which is based on a potpourri of evidence; we’ve had a report from DI Mellor of the leads that were followed up throughout the day; we’ve had the report of Christy Henson’s post-mortem from Professor Eric Carling; we’ve had the killer’s code revealed by Mr Fernsby based on location names and victim’s initials; and last, but by no means least, we’ve had a profile of the killer presented by myself, which is based on my analysis of all the available information. And yet, even with
all that converging data, you still can’t see how it helps. No wonder you haven’t caught the killer in five years.’
‘Excuse me, but . . .’
Dr Shepherd ignored his flustered interruption. ‘I’ve based my analysis on the clusters of information that have emerged from the crimes and also my experience in understanding criminal actions, which reveal the type of person who committed these crimes. A basic premise underlying all criminal profiling is that patterns of thinking direct behaviour – we are not mindless robots, Sergeant. The criminal profile, however, should not be thought of in isolation to the other data. It is merely a biographical sketch of behaviour patterns, trends and tendencies. It identifies the major personality and behavioural characteristics of an individual based on their crimes. So, let us attempt to make investigative sense of the data.’
She took a swallow of coffee.
‘We have to work on the basis that he lives on the Broadmayne estate, or else why else would he bother giving us the code? He’s taunting the police, especially DI Parish. He doesn’t think Parish will crack the code, and even if he does, that it won’t mean anything to him, and even if Parish gets as far as Basildon, he won’t have any idea who or what he’s looking for. We also have data that converges on his mother – everything he does is about her. He has to keep proving his manhood, because she continually belittles him. We’re looking for a small, soft-spoken and very intelligent man aged between 40 – 50 years old who lost his father when he was young and still lives with his mother. He drives a flashy car, has a high-level role in the community and has a retreat somewhere else. My recommendation is that you identify all the residents on that estate and search through them for your killer. Once you’ve found him, find his retreat before you go and arrest him and go to both places simultaneously. As Lena Gulliver indicated in her analysis, and I concur, he’s becoming more aggressive and might try to kill Summer Trent before you get to her.’ She looked at DS Hyde. ‘Is that helpful, Sergeant?’
DS Hyde said, ‘I didn’t mean . . .’
DCI Todd stood up and interrupted him. ‘Right, we have a plan. DS Hyde will be in charge of the night shift. I want all the residents on the Broadmayne estate identified. I want to know everything about them. And if that means dragging local authority jobsworths out of their houses to access computers, filing cabinets and lists, then that’s the way it’ll be. You have until I arrive in the morning to find the killer, DS Hyde. Any questions?’
‘No, Sir.’
‘Excellent. I’m feeling optimistic for the first time in years. I know I shouldn’t, but what can you do? Okay . . .’ He checked his watch. ‘. . . it’s six o’clock now. Reed and Lewis can stay here to help Hyde until midnight, and then DI Mellor and Mullins will help him from midnight until six in the morning, when Reed and Lewis can relieve Mellor and Mullins to get washed and changed. As for you Hyde, if you look as though you’ve had any sleep during the night when I arrive in the morning, you’ll be a DC again and working somewhere extremely cold. Are we clear?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Hyde will need some manpower and vehicles to drag people out of their houses to provide him with the information, Nigel?’
‘No problem, Tom. I’ll let the Duty Inspector know to give him what he needs.’
‘That’s it then. The rest of you good people can go and get some well-earned rest in your homes or hotels, and I’ll see those who are staying to see this through to the end tomorrow morning at seven-thirty. Let’s hope tomorrow is a good day for catching serial killers.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘Is this it?’ Kowalski said, staring at the metal roller door with graffiti sprayed all over it.
They were under a bridge, but the moon was full, so there was plenty of light to see by. After leaving the late night café just around the corner from Bayswater station, they had to walk a fair distance down Moscow Road, past The Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Devine, to reach the lock-up garage where the Mercedes’ tracker signal was coming from.
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Do you think you’re dealing with an amateur?’
‘Of course not.’
‘This is it. Get your crowbar out.’
‘Crowbar!’
‘You haven’t got a crowbar?’
‘You never said I needed a crowbar.’
‘And you think I’m an amateur. Are you sure you were in the police force and not one of Mickey Mouse’s helpers at Euro Disney? How did you think we were going to open the garage if there was one, which we now find there is?’
‘I thought you . . .’
‘I thought you,’ she mimicked. ‘Well, it’s a good job I’ve got a brain.’ She took off her rucksack, pulled out a collapsible crowbar and opened it out. ‘I think you can be the muscle,’ she said, passing him the crowbar. ‘Do you think you can do that?’
He took the tool off her, pushed it under the door and pulled. It shot up making a hell of a racket.
‘You’re determined to get us caught and locked up, aren’t you?”
‘You have to make allowances for the elderly.’
‘I’ll come on my own next time.’ She switched on a small torch to reveal Paige Belmont’s black Mercedes SLC 200 with the number plate M100 PNB. ‘Well, here it is.’
‘Here it is,’ he said, slipping the crowbar under the lid of the boot.
‘Stop!’
‘What?’
‘Are you fucking crazy?’
‘Would I even know if I was?’
‘Probably not. The alarm is on.’
‘Of course it is.’
She slid down the side wall, turned on her tablet and began to disable the car’s alarm and central-locking. ‘There! You’d better give me that crowbar back before you get us both into trouble.’
After folding the crowbar up, he passed it back to her.
‘Now you can take a look in the boot.’
He opened the boot lid and looked inside. It was full of Paige Belmont’s possessions. If he was being truthful, he had expected to find her dead body inside, and was surprised she wasn’t there. ‘Just her stuff.’
‘Maybe she’s coming back for it?’ Bronwyn suggested.
‘Maybe. Now what?’
‘I’ll download her satnav data and see if there’s anything on there.’
‘There won’t be,’ a man’s voice said from the doorway.
Kowalski swung around and adopted a fighting position. There were two of them. He couldn’t see their faces, because the moon was behind them. Both were about his size and they made it clear they were armed.
‘There’ll be no need for that, Mr Kowalski,’ the voice said. ‘We’re on the same side this time.’
‘What do you mean, “This time”?’
‘Last time we met in France, you had something we wanted. Now, the shoe’s on the other foot.’
‘Keep going?’
‘You’re wasting your time looking for Paige Belmont, Paige Singer or to use her birth name – Irina Peleshenko.’
‘Russian?’
‘Yes. She was an “illegal”.’
‘Immigrant?’
The man laughed. ‘No, although that would probably have been a lot simpler. She was a Russian spy with a false identity.’
‘A Russian spy?’
‘Yes. We recently found out the names of a dozen illegals from one of our own spies in Russia . . .’
‘Have we stumbled onto a movie set by mistake?’
‘Don’t be so naïve, Kowalski. Every country has spies. Even America has its spies here, and we have ours over the pond. Sometimes, they’re buried so deep that we have to dig a good deal. Paige was part of what the Americans called the “Illegals Program” – a network of Russian sleeper agents under non-official cover. They create a “legend”, live as ordinary citizens and try to build contacts with academics, industrialists and policymakers to gain access to intelligence. The Americans made a big deal of
exchanging ten Russian spies at the end of Operation Ghost Stories in 2010, for ten of their spies. We like to keep things low-key.’
‘Meaning?’
‘We could have arrested Paige, but it was decided at the highest level not to. We made it known that she had to leave, and we watched her all the way . . .’
‘And the Colombian?’
‘A Russian posing as a Colombian. Another illegal who broke cover to help Paige get out of the country. They were in the Russian Embassy just down the road until yesterday, but they’re now back in Russia. So, you can both go home now, there’s nothing for you here.’