The Murder Code

by Mosby, Steve

  ‘James,’ I said. ‘We have more than enough evidence to proceed with charges. And I think we both know you committed these murders. It’s over now. You’ve caused people untold suffering, but it’s done. The best thing now is to co-operate with us. That way we can bring some peace to the people you’ve hurt and begin to draw a line under this for everyone. Including you.’

  No response.

  I leaned back, folding my arms, thinking.

  ‘We’ve spoken to your father.’

  That got the slightest of responses.

  ‘He told us you were afraid of heights. He said you couldn’t have done it because you’re scared of blood. Is that true? Are you—’

  ‘I’m not scared of anything.’

  His voice was confident: proud, even. And finally, he looked up at me.

  ‘Your father told us you were.’

  ‘No.’ Miller shook his head calmly. ‘I used to be, but not any more.’

  ‘What about the animals, James?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘You were scared of blood, weren’t you? That’s what your father said. What did he do about that?’

  Miller just looked at me. He had the same piercing eyes as his father; I remembered them from the road, waiting for Laura. He had the same hard face too. I wondered if that had always been the case. But of course, it hadn’t. He wasn’t born this way.

  I said, ‘When I was a kid, my father was a lot like yours. Worse, maybe. You want to know what he did?’

  He didn’t reply, but I carried on anyway.

  ‘I was only six years old. A small kid back then. Weak—I got bullied a lot. When my father heard about that, he tried to teach me to fight. Took me outside, in front of all the neighbours, and showed me how to box. But he wasn’t really doing that. He just kept slapping at me, telling me to keep my hands up. Because he wasn’t really teaching me, you see?’

  Miller nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Exactly. It was about him. He was bullying me too. Making himself feel strong against someone weaker than him. Sounds to me like your father was kind of similar.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What did he make you do to the dog, James? You had a puppy, right? What did he make you do? Drown it?’

  Miller nodded again. But he still had that proud look, as though, once upon a time, the memory would have upset him, but not any more.

  Of course, after everything else he’d done and seen, that memory was probably nothing. But it tied in with Carl Johnson’s testimony of what had happened on Killer Hill—about Miller poking the cat in the cage, burning it alive, looking around like he’d done something that other people should be impressed by. Not doing it to shock—or not entirely—but to prove to them that he could.

  ‘So the animals were to impress your father.’

  ‘No. Never him. I did it all for myself.’

  ‘But he knew?’

  I wanted him to say yes, for what it was worth, but he just shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know. I keep my room locked. I told them both to keep out. They’re scared of me.’

  ‘I have a hard time imagining your dad is scared of you.’

  ‘My room is mine.’

  ‘Not any more,’ I said. ‘It’s ours now.’

  That got me a glare.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘We’ve been in there. We’ve seen that lovely little photo display you’ve put up. Why did you do that to his grave, James? Did these people really mean nothing to you?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘We’re going through your computer right now, along with your video camera. You know what we’ll find, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why the murders?’ I said. ‘Why the games? Did they make you feel powerful?’

  ‘They were something to do.’

  I let the answer hang for a moment, unsure what to say, and felt Laura shift slightly beside me too. Something to do. We were both used to the banality of murder, but this was something else altogether. In the silence, I saw Miller notice the discomfort his words had caused, and a slight smile curled at the side of his mouth.

  If was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared, but for that moment he looked far older than he really was. The sullen man in his twenties disappeared, and I had the strange impression I was looking at someone or something else altogether.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Something to do?’

  ‘That’s right. And a way out of that fucking place.’

  ‘What? That stinking bedroom?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How does that work? Go on—you might as well explain. You’ve already admitted it. But actually, you’ve succeeded, haven’t you? Because you’ll be spending the rest of your life in prison.’

  ‘I’ll be famous, won’t I? Everyone will remember me.’

  He looked so proud it disgusted me.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But not the way you think. And trust me, people will forget soon enough.’

  ‘No, they won’t. Because it’s out there and you can’t stop it. I might not have got rich, but people will remember me. They’ll still be afraid of me.’

  ‘What do you mean—out there?’ I shook my head. ‘And how were you ever going to get rich? You didn’t rob any of them—we know that and you know that. What are you talking about?’

  He looked at me. And again the smile came. But this time it stayed in place.

  ‘You’ll never catch him,’ he said.

  I stared back, allowing the silence to pan out.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The General.’ His smile broadened. ‘You’ll never catch him. Nobody will.’

  Beside me, Laura leaned forward. I remembered what I’d thought back at the woods—that the scene there was totally at odds with the calm, rational tone of the letters we’d received. That everything about the murders always had been.

  I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the problem: how to generate a code even you won’t be able to crack.

  And there was something else, too. That name …

  ‘The General?’ Laura said. ‘Is he the one who sent us the letters, Jimmy? And the video?’

  ‘What?’

  The General. I remembered it now. It was a username from the website Renton had shown me—the one with the video of the cat being beaten to death.

  Miller’s smile had vanished now, but he was still too confused to be angry.

  ‘What letters? What did you get sent?’

  The_General. That was the username on the comment directly below the video.

  Great work! Can’t wait to see more!

  Forty-Nine

  DS RENTON WAS WAITING in the dark room for us.

  ‘It’s going to be a long night,’ I told him as Laura and I entered, closing the door behind us.

  ‘I gathered,’ he said. ‘What do we have?’

  ‘The General.’

  We took our seats beside him at the computer, and I explained what James Miller had told us in the interview, after he’d calmed down. When he learned about how he’d been betrayed—about the letters and the video clip—he proved suddenly far more eager to talk.

  ‘Miller says he was contacted by the user The General after he posted the animal video on the shock site. This guy apparently said he was a great admirer of his work and wanted to see more. And he had a proposition for him.’

  ‘A proposition?’

  ‘Twenty snuff movies,’ I said. ‘That was what he wanted. The plan was for Miller to film the murders. The General would pay him a thousand pounds for each clip.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To sell them.’

  Renton shook his head. ‘There’s no such thing.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But it seems that the General wanted to change that situation, or that’s what he told Miller. He said he was based overseas—a big name in the pornography world who wanted to remain anonymous. Said he already had a string of buyers lined up for the films.�
��

  ‘I doubt that’s true.’

  ‘Me too.’

  I didn’t believe it for one second, in fact. Whatever the General’s real motivation, I was certain the story he’d given James Miller was just a bluff: a cover to convince the boy. There was never going to be any distribution of snuff movies. And I was equally sure the General wouldn’t turn out to be based overseas. No—he lived here, in our city. That was where the letters had been sent from, after all.

  A code even you won’t be able to crack.

  His communications to us were personal; they didn’t involve James Miller. The boy was just a tool he’d been using to create his pattern. All along, the ‘code’, whatever that meant, had been unknown even to him. How did that satisfy his stated aims, assuming they were genuine? I didn’t know. Clearly, though in some way it did.

  ‘Is there any way of listing all the General’s postings on the website?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be a problem.’ Renton set the site loading. ‘A hell of a risk, isn’t it? From Miller’s perspective, I mean. Someone contacts him out of the blue with a suggestion like that, and he just takes them at their word?’

  ‘He says the General paid him five thousand in advance, no strings attached. The idea was to show goodwill, but it was carefully worded. Miller could take the money and walk away, no questions asked, no laws broken. But if he did kill someone, the police would be in serious trouble. The General was proving it wasn’t entrapment.’

  Renton tapped on the keyboard. ‘This was by email?’

  ‘No, on here,’ I said. ‘By private message. We’ve got Miller’s password. Only problem is, he says he deleted all their communication at The General’s request.’

  ‘Oh, brilliant.’

  ‘Won’t it be recoverable?’

  Renton shook his head. ‘Probably not. You delete a file from a laptop, most times we can recover that. But these messages are stored online, not locally. They’re part of the site. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.’

  ‘Right. Shit.’

  ‘Exactly. Here we are anyway. The General.’

  The screen was filled with the results of the username search he’d performed: all the posts made by The_General. There weren’t many. And they all read more or less the same. Variations on: Great work! Looking forward to more!

  ‘Looks like he’s never posted any footage himself,’ Renton said. ‘All he’s ever done is express his appreciation for other people’s pictures and videos.’

  ‘Fishing.’

  That fitted with what I was thinking. Miller was probably one of many users the General had initially targeted. He’d probably figured this site was a good place to find the kind of man he needed, and he’d been right.

  ‘Where is he from?’ I said. ‘Any way of telling?’

  Renton pulled up the General’s profile.

  ‘Not really. He hasn’t filled any information in. No personal details, no country of origin. It wouldn’t help us much anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘People can put whatever they want. The site doesn’t base the location directly on IP addresses or anything. If it did, none of these people would be able to say that they came from “The Depths of Hell”, which half of them do.’

  I peered at the screen.

  ‘Any way to access his account?’

  I already knew the answer.

  ‘Not his, no.’ Renton shook his head. ‘No way. For the same reason we couldn’t access Miller’s: the site owners would never co-operate, even if we could pin them down. What’s Miller’s password?’

  I gave it to him, and he logged in as Jimmy82. Miller had been telling the truth about that much, at least. Renton clicked a few links and pulled up his message history.

  ‘Empty.’

  So maybe he was telling the truth about that too.

  Renton leaned back in his chair. ‘I’ve never heard of anything like this before.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you considered the possibility that he’s lying through his teeth? Making all this up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Miller was caught, and he knew there was no way out. As proud as he seemed of the killings, it would make sense to try to lay the blame at the feet of someone else—psychologically, if nothing else. Or perhaps he was playing with us in some way I couldn’t guess right now.

  ‘But it feels too elaborate,’ I said. ‘It’s not the kind of story he’d just make up on the spot, and it would take too much effort for him to have set it up in advance.’

  And there was, again, the matter of the letters. Miller’s reaction to them had seemed genuine. He’d been shocked, and, as dangerous and vicious as he came across, I didn’t think he was that good an actor. I was willing to bet he hadn’t known about them: that someone else had written and sent them, without his knowledge, and that person had to have got hold of the video somehow.

  Plus, the story fitted with the contents of the letters too. The details in the first, for example, had been noticeably scant—back when the General wouldn’t have known anything specific. It was only after Miller started supplying him with the videos that he’d been able to include more detail, and even send us a copy of one of the clips and pass it off as his own.

  But why?

  That was the question.

  ‘How did Miller send the clips?’ Renton said. ‘We might be able to track that. Did he email them?’

  ‘No. Too risky, apparently. This guy arranged for a locker in a storage unit in the centre of the city, near the railway station. They both had keys. A local courier for the General—supposedly—would deposit the money there and pick up the CDs Miller left.’

  ‘How did Miller get the key?’

  ‘By post. He burned the envelope, so once again, we can’t prove it for sure. But we found the key in his bedroom, along with a good chunk of money.’

  And that was our one glimmer of hope.

  Miller had said he’d deposited a bundle of CDs last night. News of his arrest was being kept strictly under wraps, and plain-clothes officers were en route to the storage unit right now. We would join them shortly. The plan was to keep the area under discreet surveillance and see who, if anybody, came to the locker. There was a chance—just a small chance—that the General, whoever he was, might show up. ‘That’s good,’ Renton said, ‘because as things stand, you won’t get him this way.’

  ‘No.’

  I thought of the locker at the train station. Was that our only hope?

  ‘No,’ I said again. ‘But we will get him.’

  Fifty

  ‘HE WON’T SHOW UP,’ Laura said.

  ‘Probably not.’

  Trestle Storage was a seedy twenty-four-hour locker unit situated down an alley behind the station. It was basically just a long room with a single entrance—a glass door at one end—and one wall taken up entirely by the battered metal lockers. Laura and I were sitting opposite those, sipping coffee in a slight alcove behind the counter.

  We’d relieved the receptionist of his duties for the night, and ten additional officers were stationed discreetly in the streets surrounding the unit. Between us, we had Trestle Storage totally contained: nobody could get in without us seeing, and nobody could get out once they’d arrived. So far, nobody had tried to do either. Aside from the buzzing strip lights overhead, the unit was eerily silent.

  The General had chosen this location well, I thought. There were several premises like this in the city centre, and their principal appeal was that questions weren’t asked. The main customers were homeless people looking for a safe place to store whatever valuables they didn’t want to cart around with them, and low-level drug-dealers. A locker cost two pounds a day to hire. About a quarter of the two hundred in here were in use right now. The money was barely enough to cover the rent, but the owners of these dives were generally mid-level criminals who got their cuts elsewhere.

  As such, security was minimal. The CCTV was cursory at best. It covered the main entrance, and
was wiped at midday. We had a little under eight hours of footage to check through, but all it would show was people coming and going, not which locker they visited. Similarly, a name was required upon rental, but no ID. If you didn’t come back, you just lost the contents.

  We’d already checked the ‘database’—a clipboard of curling A4 sheets covered with scribbled biro—and the locker we were interested in had been rented to James Miller for the last three weeks. That didn’t prove anything one way or the other, of course. The General could have given whatever name he wanted, and both keys were missing from the pegboard of clips behind us.

  ‘Quiet in here,’ I said.

  ‘You think the receptionist put the word out?’

  ‘Probably.’ Bad for business to have known clients turn up and find police behind the desk. ‘To some people anyway. Maybe not to the General.’

  ‘I’m starting to think “the General” doesn’t exist.’

  ‘He exists. His name’s right there on the website.’

  ‘Yeah, but we’ve only got Miller’s word for it that they ever talked to each other. And the rest of it. He could even have written those posts himself—set up the username.’

  It now seemed even less likely to me that Miller would have gone to such lengths. For what? He committed the murders; he wasn’t denying that. This bit of subterfuge wouldn’t achieve anything. But he might have his reasons, and for me, there was something even more conclusive.

  ‘What about the letters?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did he strike you as being that articulate?’

  ‘Not really.’ Laura sipped her coffee and grimaced at the taste. ‘Jesus. But the only way we’ll know for sure is if he walks through that door. Without that, this could all be a figment of Miller’s imagination. And there’s another thing too.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Let’s say the General exists, and that it all played out exactly as Miller described it. And let’s imagine he walks in here and opens that locker in the next few minutes.’

  I glanced at the smeared glass of the entrance. Nothing but night out there for the moment.

  ‘I’m imagining that.’