by Linda Mather
She was deteriorating rapidly and I was not going to be looking after her when she became really ill. She could rot in hell for all I care.
So one morning having packed what little belongings that I had, and stealing fifty pounds from her purse, I left my luggage in the hallway and I went into the now smelly living room and said,
“Mother, why do you hate me so much?”
She looked at me for a long time, almost as if she had trouble comprehending what I had said, then replied,
“I don’t hate you son, I just love me more”
“Then why have you hurt me so much?” I asked,
That was it, her usual tirade of abuse came flooding out,
“Fucking hurt you, what the fuck do you think you did to me when I gave birth to you, how hurt do you think I am, that I was given such a useless lump for a son.
How fucking hurt do you think I feel that you have lost me any opportunity I could have had with a bloke.
How fucking hurt do you think I am that I am sat here day after day, lonely with just a deformed idiot to pass my days with.
How fucking hurt do you………………….”
At that point I turned, picked up my bags and left never to hear her voice again, never to see her face again.
I left the only home I had ever known, the home that was my prison for sixteen miserable years……….. but not without its eradication, not without doing the one thing that I had always wanted to do.
I eliminated her from my life in just the way she deserved.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
My second elimination was my penis.
Chapter Thirty
Tuesday 29 April
Paul was stinking mad again; he had been humiliated and undermined once again by his boss.
Stephen had called a briefing at two o’clock today.
They had discussed the murders and any leads to date which were very few. The murders had been on a fortnightly basis, therefore the consensus in the homicide division was that he would strike again this Friday, and that his victim would almost certainly be at Jason’s.
So Stephen had told them all to cancel any plans they had for Friday night as they were going undercover.
About time Paul had thought, he’d been going down there undercover off his own back anyway and had been since the second murder, unbeknown to them lot.
There had been nothing notable, however he had given things some thought and recognised that he hadn’t known on these occasions what he had been looking for and neither did they, so Paul had asked if he should put together a profile of what the killer might look like, so that they had some idea what they might be on the lookout for. Well he should have known fucking better! Stephen had retorted:
“No thanks Paul, the team will manage on their gut instincts like they’ve been trained to do. If I needed a criminal profiler I would have acquired one externally, with far more experience than you have, so just get your glad rags on, on Friday and learn from this team how we do things around here”
That was it, put in his place and subject closed, and that wasn’t the worst. Stephen couldn’t go obviously because there is a chance that the perpetrator knows him, given the message he left at the last scene, so the imbecile Roberts has put John flipping Waterstone in charge, who couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.
This was going to be chaos he just knew it, felt it in his gut and in his head.
So, instead of getting mad, he had a plan. He was not going to roll a joint tonight, he needed to stay focused.
These murders were happening at an unbelievable frequency, they had left the community on edge, and someone had to do something and the only one that could was him he felt.
“I will do a criminal profile in my own time and at least one of us will know what we might be looking for” he’d decided and so he sat down with a pad and pen and made a start.
Okay he thought what do I know about serial killers, he knew that:
Most of them were organized and nonsocial. Most of them also follow some other basic patterns.
More than 80 percent of serial killers are male, Caucasian and in their 20s or 30s.
They are generally intelligent, and they usually kill Caucasian women. There’s no way to “tell” a serial killer simply by his appearance — most of them look like everyone else.
Often, serial killers exhibited three behaviors in childhood: bed-wetting, arson and cruelty to animals. They are also likely to have come from broken homes and been abused or neglected.
Although some are shy and introverted, others are gregarious and outgoing but actually feel very isolated.
Many theorists point to the troubled childhoods of serial killers as a possible reason for their actions.
He began swiftly jotting down all the information they had on the girls that had been murdered:
Jane Lizzie Floss
All had been to Jason’s
All single - Two were single parents
All in their 30’s
All spiked with date rape drug
All suffocated with their own pillow
No DNA
No forced entry
No trace evidence left of Rohanol
So what did this lead him to hypothesize? He began to build a profile, matching the information they had with a serial killers pattern which he wrote in bold. Underlining what he felt was the most probable of the facts.
The perpetrator frequented this nightclub often. Did he have some sort of a grudge with the nightclub or was he just an opportunist, knew the type of girl that frequented the place.
Serial killers seek out their victim, by focusing on those venues he is most likely to find the type of person he has chosen to prey on.
He didn’t like single parents, so maybe he was an estranged partner of a single parent didn’t see his kids or he was the child of a single mother who abused him in some way.
The killer’s thought process when looking for his victim involved looking around for someone on who to lay the blame for his/her anger and hatred.
He may have been mentally fighting a dominant woman in his life, perhaps his mother. Theorists maintained that most serial killers had experienced emotional problems in their own childhoods.
All the girls were spiked with a date rape drug however none of them appeared to have been raped. Vera was probably right on that one he didn’t feel that he could overpower them. So he is possibly slight in build.
However this guy had no sexual motivation at all in his crimes, this was unusual, there was generally some form of sex act performed even if it was to cut the sexual areas of the body. The girls were fully clothed, so no sexual curiosity either.
Could have an insight into police procedures and know that if the girl put up a struggle then there could be DNA in her fingernails. He’d met his match with Floss though and she had put up a fight, he possibly hadn’t expected this.
All suffocated with a pillow, didn’t need to carry a weapon with him, most homes have a pillow, was this just in case he was caught before he killed them, perhaps.
None of them were violent crimes, which was atypical in itself. (with the exception again of Floss, but this may have been due to the Rohypnol not having the usual effect).
Most serial killers were violent and characteristically they would get more adventurous, more violent at each occurrence, they would get more courageous too, making mistakes, this was how they usually got caught.
These had all been soft murders, gentle murders, someone effeminate perhaps. A girl/A woman?
There were exceptions to the rule he thought.
There had been female serial killers, serial killers who began murdering during childhood.
There was no forced entry on all the scenes. The women knew him or her, the women trusted him or her. Most women will let a woman in late at night but not a man?
Most serial killers once they have identified their victim-to-be, then try to win his/her confidence.
He underline
d all the main points that he had hunches about, and racked his brain for more information on the sequence of serial killers behaviour. Then he remembered:
The moment of actually causing the victims death, is normally the emotional high for most confessed serial killers.
The serial killer’s feeling of triumph normally fades rapidly once the victim is dead, so to prolong his/her pleasure, he/she will often remove and take a souvenir or totem associated with the victim.
No evidence so far of him taking a souvenir, he thought. This was the only thing that struck him as odd and that threw him off course. Most of the serial killers that he had read about took some sort of souvenir.
He moved on to to look at the rest of the evidence:
All were left messages:
Jane: “Guess who?”
Lizzie: “Another one bites the dust!”
Floss: “Stephen, gives every bird a worm, but he does not throw it into the nest”
Now that last one is interesting, it is Stephen he is taunting.
First thing in the morning he made a note to himself to ask Vera, who had already been allocated the job of looking up all the arrests that Stephen had made over the years, for her list and see if any of them match his profile.
Stephen gives every bird a worm, but does not throw it into the nest, he repeated what the bloody hell does that mean?
He hadn’t got a clue. He then started to look at building a profile with the limited material that he had.
The perpetrator is:
Someone who visited Jason’s regularly
Was a child of an abusive single mother,
Was slight in build
Was not sexually motivated by the crimes,
Didn’t like violence
Possibly effeminate – A girl or woman?
Possibly knew the ins and outs of police investigative work.
Knew the girls or was someone they could trust.
Something was missing, something did not add up, he went into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea and then he had the brainwave, the revelation, the CUPS!
He kept the cups or glasses that he spiked; they belonged to each of the girls, that’s why they couldn’t find them.
“I’m clever” he boasted “Far too clever for them”
And that’s not all he mused.
After a killer causes a death, ‘post-homicidal depression’ sets in and triggers the cycle of steps to beginning all over again.
This is why a serial killer kills more than once and isn’t known to stop killing until he/she is caught or dies.
And I am going to be the one to catch him.
Then we will see the look on Stephen Roberts face! He gloated.
Chapter Thirty-One
Friday 02 May
Sophie was getting ready in her bedroom, she was not looking forward to this night out, ‘Jason’s” was not her usual haunt but she had promised to go for her younger Sister Victoria’s birthday night out.
It always dumbfounded her how differently their lives had turned out.
There was two years between them; a lot of people would mistake them for identical twins, although that was where the similarities ended.
Victoria was a party girl, had just as many opportunities as Sophie had and yet she had chose to work as a checkout girl and live in that grubby little run down cottage rented on that terrible estate.
Their middle class parents were astounded too; they couldn’t understand why she’d dropped out of college and chose ‘such a dismal life’ as they called it.
Sophie on the other hand had done really well. She was an investment lawyer and lived in a pristine minimalistic furnished apartment in an affluent area of Leicester.
She looked around her bedroom now and thought how she would rather lay on her Japanese style bed, snuggled up with a good book, going to sleep looking out of the floor to ceiling windows at the night stars.
Her boyfriend Kyle was in Paris this weekend on business, so this would be a time when she could have had some ‘me’ time, instead she’d let her sister talk her into this, what she knew would be an unbearable night out.
Victoria’s friends were not exactly Sophie’s cup of tea, getting drunk, getting laid or getting into a fight at the end of the night was their idea of a good night out and the worst thing was she couldn’t make her excuses and leave early because she’d promised to stay at her sisters so that they could spend her birthday together, shopping and having a giggle like they did as teenagers.
She looked in the mirror at her reflection and said “you’ll do”, donned her coat and got a cab to meet at one of her sisters favourite restaurants for a bite to eat before they headed off to the club.
**********
Seven members of the team were all collected in the main office by seven o’clock as requested. Only Vera missing Stephen thought as he entered the office.
Just as if by magic, she tottered into the room on four inch stilettos to a barrage of wolf whistles.
“Okay, Okay” Stephen interrupted “this is not a stag and hen party. You all need to have your wits about you tonight”
They all quietened down as they always did when Stephen spoke.
“Right” he said “does everyone know what they are doing?”
A unanimous “yes” chorused around the room.
“Then go get him, I don’t care if you end up arresting fifty men tonight, as long as we get the right one amongst them. If he looks suspicious watch him, if he smiles at you watch him, if he’s hovering and looking at women watch him, if you have any hunches watch him! I want this bastard caught, and I want him caught tonight, is that clear?”
Another chorus of “Yes’s”
“Remember to pay particular attention to Caucasian males aged between twenty and thirty. That is the classic profile of a serial killer” he said, avoiding all eye contact with Paul.
“There will be uniformed police in the vicinity” he added, “anyone that you think should be pulled in; give a description on your ear pieces, and the boys in blue will pull them on their way out, they have their instructions and will find something to pull them on.” He paused.
“Any questions?”
There was no response; everyone was psyched up to go.
“Paul” he directed his conversation to Paul “I need you to stick alongside Vera all night, don’t lose sight of her, she’s a woman and therefore a potential target, is that clear”
“Yes sir” Paul responded although his face clearly revealed his displeasure at what he perceived was babysitting duties.
“Okay off you go and good luck” Stephen said ignoring Paul’s dismay.
They all left the building, all looking the part for a hopefully good night out at Jason’s.
**********
There were eight of them snuggled around the table, four bottles of wine already emptied and replaced by four more and that was before the food had arrived.
This was going to be a long night Sophie had thought, as the food was eventually served. They had ordered a mixture of finger food that they could all dip into, barbeque ribs, chicken dippers and sauces, king prawns in batter and mini filled jacket potatoes. It looked delicious.
Victoria was on top form and centre of attention which was how she liked it.
“I don’t like these crunchy bits that they’ve put in the ribs” Sally, Victoria’s best friend commented.
“I was thinking that” said another.
“Nor me, they don’t usually put them in, what are they” said another chewing on something in her mouth, that seemed to take forever.
“Bloody hell” Victoria exclaimed, looking at her hands.
“What’s up now” Sophie asked exasperated.
“My nails” Victoria said “they’ve all fallen off!”
To which, everyone looked from the bowl of ribs, to Victoria’s nails to the contents in their own mouths.
Sophie was the first to realise what had happened, Victoria’s nails ha
d fallen into the bowl of ribs and everyone was eating them. She burst into fits of laughter, followed by everyone else.
Perhaps it was going to be a good night after all, she considered.
The meal over with they all got in to taxi’s to head for Jason’s, Victoria had managed to get VIP passes so they didn’t have to queue, which was a blessing as the queue was long that night.
Sophie was surprised with there being a serial killer on the loose, and rumour had it that all the girls had been to Jason’s on the night they were killed, and yet it had created a bigger crowd not a smaller one. Some people were just ghoulish she thought or on a death wish.
She’d tried to talk Victoria into them all going to a different venue but she wouldn’t hear of it, said that she was not going to be scared off by some lunatic, so Sophie had decided to keep relatively sober so that she could keep an eye on her sister if nothing else it was one good reason she needed to be down this dump tonight.
It was ten o’clock and already Victoria was drunk and chatting to some undesirable bloke, Sophie thought. She had no sense that girl, tonight of all nights and here of all places. She headed in her direction hoping to drag her away.
“Come on Vic, time for a dance with your sister” she said.
“In a bit Soph I’m just talking” she replied annoyed at her rudeness when she was just about to pull.
“No, now Vic” Sophie said protectively, although Victoria didn’t see it that way.
She pushed her sister aside and said “Back off Sophie.”
Sophie backed away knowing that her sister could get quite nasty in drink, but kept a close eye on her.
Whether she liked it or not, she was not going to let Victoria go off with any bloke tonight, not with things being so unsafe at the moment. Besides their parents would never forgive her if she let anything happen to her.
Sophie ordered a Pepsi from the bar and watched her sister like a hawk annoyed at her naivety and the fact that she would have to stay here to the bitter end babysitting her.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Stephen was sat in his car, parked up at the side of the road; he was too agitated to go home, he had felt a cloud of depression fall over him and had no idea what it might be. He felt a sense of pending doom and had heard from somewhere that this happened just before a heart attack, that and a need to go to the toilet.