The Essence of Evil

by The Essence of Evil (retail) (epub)

  Grant noticed there was still no sign of the Range Rover that Julie had taken off in a few days ago. He felt a slight satisfaction at the thought that she’d absconded with it for good. Though Mary had suggested a far more ghoulish explanation for her sudden disappearance.

  ‘Car’s in for a valet,’ Francis said. ‘Nice to keep it as new.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure. You have a good one.’

  ‘You too, mate.’

  Grant turned and got into his car. As he made his way off the drive he nodded and smiled at Francis, who was back next to his clubs. Francis nodded in return, but the look he gave Grant was far from friendly.

  What was going on with that bloke?

  Grant arrived on campus in good time and spent the first couple of hours of the day reading through the research paper of one of his PhD students. He’d hoped to get through it all in that time, but it was in such a muddled and confused state that he managed less than a third of it before the clock wound around to eleven a.m., when he had a meeting scheduled. The meeting overran until nearly one, and after that it was back-to-back lectures, and he had no chance to get back to the research paper before the clock ticked along to four p.m. and his final lecture of the day.

  The lecture theatre was already filling up when he arrived with thirty seconds to spare, and he quickly got himself set up and ready, feeling a little flustered and underprepared.

  As Grant opened up the lecture he stared out across the faces in the room. He noticed there was no sign of Jessica Bradford. She’d missed the Monday lecture too, which was particularly strange given her previous keen interest, and her request the last time he’d seen her for some more of his time to discuss her thesis. Despite his previous discomfort at her fan-girling, he was quite disappointed that one of his few keen students was once again absent.

  Regardless, he carried on and was soon well into his stride, until another face caught his attention. A woman. She stood out among the other people in the room. Most obviously, she was older than the other students, who were virtually all eighteen and nineteen, just a handful of more mature students in their twenties. Ok, she wasn’t old, probably in her thirties, so younger than Grant, but she looked old among everyone else there. Grant didn’t think he recognised her, but he did feel like he knew what she was. There was a serious and slightly world-weary look about her that only certain people had. Police.

  Feeling more on edge, Grant carried on the lecture as best he could, but he was hyper-aware of the woman, who remained seated throughout, her gaze never leaving Grant.

  As he closed off the lecture, the students quickly stampeded towards the exit. It was five p.m. after all, and the poor sods were likely shattered at such a late finish to their short day. The woman, however, was clearly going nowhere. As Grant gathered his things, she got up from her seat and came down the steps towards the podium.

  ‘Professor Grant?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, can I help you?’

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Dani Stephens, from West Midlands Police. Do you think we could chat in private?’

  ‘Is this about Ethan again?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  Grant frowned. ‘Ok, right. Let’s go to my office.’

  He slung his laptop bag over his shoulder and made his way up the stairs and out of the theatre. DI Stephens followed him out, neither of them saying a word as they traipsed through corridors towards Grant’s office.

  Once inside, Grant shut the door behind him and moved over to the desk where he began shuffling the many scattered papers into some semblance of order.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said.

  ‘A cluttered desk is a cluttered mind,’ said Stephens.

  Grant smiled. ‘Indeed. And if a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?’

  ‘Einstein, right?’

  ‘Indeed. Please, take a seat.’

  Stephens sat and continued to look around the room, at the messy bookshelves filled with all manner of reference books. Grant sat down at his desk and studied her for a few moments, waiting for her to say whatever she’d come to say.

  ‘I remember reading about you years ago,’ Stephens said.

  Grant sighed. ‘Yes. Many people do.’

  ‘I wasn’t very old then. I didn’t properly think about what happened to you. What you went through.’

  ‘It’s an experience I would never wish upon another human being.’

  ‘What? The fame and the fortune from a bestselling book? They made a TV documentary too, didn’t they?’

  Grant chuckled. ‘Very good, Detective. I’m sure you can imagine my fame was rather short-lived, nothing more than a flash in the pan really, if you pardon the cliché. In many ways I’m thankful for that. I’m guessing you haven’t come here today just to talk about my past, though?’

  ‘Actually, in a way I have.’

  Grant frowned, confused.

  ‘Ok. So what exactly do you want to speak to me about?’

  ‘Something I believe you’re particularly knowledgeable about,’ Stephens said.

  ‘Which would be?’

  ‘Serial killers.’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  ‘Detective, are you here on official police business?’ Grant asked.

  Dani did her best to remain steady. She’d expected this question. She hadn’t shown Grant her police ID – she didn’t have it anymore. She’d spoken to Grant’s wife already the previous week, so she knew Dani really was a detective, but Grant himself had never seen or spoken to her before. Up until that question he’d taken it on trust that Dani was who she said she was, and was acting in an official capacity.

  She could lie now, and tell him it was official business, but based on the fact that he’d already shown her to his office and given her a seat, and the problematic situation he was in with his son, she got the sense from Grant that he’d respond better if she told him the truth. Plus she figured that given the shared near-death experiences in their pasts, he may be happy to indulge her.

  ‘No,’ Dani said. ‘This is personal business. Very personal, actually. You’ve probably heard of my brother. Ben Stephens.’

  Grant’s eyes narrowed as his gaze moved from Dani’s face and up to the scar above her ear, then back again. ‘Wait, you’re—’

  Dani held her hand up to interrupt Grant’s all too familiar eureka moment. She was sure Grant was used to that himself.

  ‘Yes. That’s me,’ she said, in a flat voice. ‘My twin brother is a murderer. He killed his first wife, hid it for years, then when his life began to unravel went on a killing spree taking five other lives before he tried to kill me by smashing my head against a doorframe and cracking my skull open with an ornament a family member bought him as a wedding present.’

  Grant didn’t react at all to her words.

  ‘I was in a coma. I suffered what the doctors call a Traumatic Brain Injury. I’ve spent two years recovering, and I’m getting better, but I’ll never be the same person I used to be. I’m still here though, while my brother will now spend the rest of his life in prison. In that respect, you could say our experiences, our close shaves with death, are quite closely aligned.’

  ‘Close shaves with death?’ Grant said. ‘I’m not sure I’d quite describe my own experience in that way. Are you familiar with what happened to me?’

  ‘As familiar as most people, I guess.’

  Grant’s face screwed up in anger. Not at Dani, but at the memory of what had happened to him, she assumed. ‘Then you’ll know my close shave with death, as you put it, involved me being kidnapped and tortured. I was held in a grimy barn for nearly three weeks and very nearly starved. I had to watch as that bastard brought in two more victims to cut apart, in front of my eyes. I was his plaything. He would talk to me like I was his companion, asking for my thoughts and analysis on what he was doing, asking me to explain what it all meant, in a psychoanalytical sense. Whenever I refused to play along he’d beat me or cu
t me. So, other than that we both nearly died, I’m not sure the experiences are all that similar really.’

  Dani couldn’t find any words to respond to that. Grant had spoken at pace and with venom, and even though Dani didn’t believe that anger was directed at her, she still regretted her own choice of words and wished she could start over.

  Had she already blown her chance of help from this man?

  After a few seconds of silence Grant defused and he sat back in his chair. His eyes locked onto Dani who held his stare.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he eventually said. ‘It’s a subject that will always be raw. I shouldn’t have been so flippant. Yes you’ve been close to death too, and I’m sure your experience was quite harrowing.’

  ‘The most harrowing part has been the two years that have followed.’

  ‘I’m sure. Tell me what you want to know.’

  ‘That lecture you gave just now, about the characteristics of a killer… I have to say I was fascinated.’

  Grant half-smiled. ‘Let me guess. As you were listening you were trying to place your brother in among what I was saying.’

  Dani felt herself blush. The fact was, she had. Was she that obvious?

  ‘Mr Grant—’

  ‘Call me Steven, please.’

  ‘Ok. Steven, do you think every serial killer, one way or another, has a trigger? Something in their past that causes them to take that path?’

  ‘Detective—’

  ‘Dani is fine.’

  Grant smiled again. ‘Dani, then. The debate over nature versus nurture is one that could go on ad infinitum. I’ve already discussed it at length several times this last week in fact.’

  Dani raised an eyebrow but didn’t push Grant on what he meant by that.

  ‘Honestly,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure there is an answer, nor what you could gain from it if there was. That said, it is true that many well-known serial killers had experiences in their childhood that could be linked to their future destructive behaviour. Abuse, trauma, loss.’

  ‘But you don’t think that’s always the case?’

  ‘I’m not sure it matters what I think. Though I will say this: for starters, not all killers are caught and analysed. Those famous killers, the ones who the layman know – Fred West, Peter Sutcliffe, Jeffrey Dahmer – they get picked apart largely for the simple fact that it’s easy to do so. We know who they are, we know of their crimes. They were all over the media, they have movies and TV serials about them. Then, based on those cases, everyone begins to assume that all killers are the same. I’m sure you know the profile I’m talking about. Nut jobs who were abused as children, who hurt animals when they were kids before moving onto bigger prey as adults. You, for one, should know the answer isn’t as simple as that.’

  Dani winced at the comment. Grant was certainly right there. Dani had gone through in her own mind thousands of times what it was that could have turned her brother into a killer. As a child, even as an adult, Ben had appeared about as normal as anyone else. The conclusion that Dani had come back to again and again was that there must have been something that changed him; that made him capable of killing without apparent remorse, though she’d never figured out what that something was.

  ‘I’m really not sure why this is important to you,’ Grant said. ‘Perhaps if you’re more specific then I can properly help you.’

  ‘I’ve dealt with murder for years,’ Dani said. ‘But those killers you mentioned before, they’re almost so extreme they’re not real world. The deaths I see are gang crime, domestics, drunken brawls, robberies gone wrong. But serial killers… I’d never really even thought about that. Until… my brother.’

  ‘In real life it’s best to assume that every conceivable connotation of good and evil is possible,’ Grant said. ‘First off, there are killers we know are out there, who just haven’t been caught. You must know what I mean by that? I’m sure you’ve known murder cases go cold. But there are also murderers out there who simply fly so low under the radar that we don’t even know of their existence. Serial killers do exist, Dani. They’re out there.’

  An eerie feeling washed through Dani as she took in Grant’s words. His appearance, his voice, his manner, weren’t creepy – in fact Dani thought he was handsome, in a fatherly, older guy sort of way – but the fervour with which he spoke about such ghastly things was quite unsettling.

  ‘Let me explain myself a bit more clearly,’ Grant said. ‘You’ve heard of Harold Shipman, haven’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Dani said. ‘He was a doctor. Believed to have killed over two hundred elderly patients.’

  ‘Making him one of the most prolific known killers of all time,’ Grant added. ‘It’s believed he killed his victims over a span of more than twenty years before he was caught. And his method, it has to be stated, was simplistic. Yet to some extent it was faultless too, allowing him to carry on killing for many years. These weren’t gruesome murders that captured the attention of the press or the police. There was no crime scene clean-up to think about, per se. For years no one suspected a thing, because his victims were all old people anyway, and he was a respected doctor, a respected member of the community. His signature on someone’s death certificate, recording that they died of natural causes, or from some other age-related ailment, bore a lot weight.’

  ‘But he was caught,’ Dani said. ‘It took many years but the police did get him in the end.’

  Grant huffed. ‘No offence, but I’m not sure I’d say it was down to some super-brain detective. Many people have suggested Shipman may well have wanted to get caught. That he was out of control and was ready to give himself up.’

  ‘Did he ever say that?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware. Suspicion about him first arose when a local funeral parlour queried the coroner about the unusually high number of Shipman’s elderly patients who were being cremated there. Isn’t that such a simple oversight by him? Why didn’t he move location so that there was never such a build-up of evidence in one place, connected to one surgery? Surely that would have been obvious to someone who really wanted to keep going.’

  ‘But just because he got away with murder for many years before that, doesn’t mean he was a genius.’

  ‘Certainly not. I would point out though, that even that initial suspicion didn’t bear much weight with the police. They passed off those concerns saying there was insufficient evidence of a crime. He went on to kill three more people in exactly the same way as before. He could have called it a day when he knew the police were closing in, but apparently he couldn’t stop himself. Do you know how the police finally got him?

  ‘No.’

  ‘He forged the will of his last victim, completely excluding the old lady’s children and grandchildren, but giving Shipman several hundred thousands of pounds. He’d never done that before. Was that last move a sign that he was incredibly reckless? It’s possible. But if he was so reckless I doubt he would have been able to kill undetected for so long.’

  ‘So you really think he wanted to be caught at the end?’

  ‘It’s not unusual. Going back to the characteristics of serial killers – the known ones at least – it’s quite common for them to crave attention. Often they’re loners. Killing, for them, brings a feeling of great power. But sometimes it’s not enough just to experience that feeling in the moment. They need to share it with others. One of the ways a killer can do that is to get caught.’

  ‘And another is to leave notes,’ Dani said, feeling her heart thump a little faster.

  Grant studied her for a few moments, as though he sensed the words were important to her.

  ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s also relatively common. Calling cards, if you will, but also sometimes out and out taunts. Have you heard of the BTK killer?’

  ‘Actually, no. I may investigate murder for a living, but reading up on serial killers has never been much of a hobby.’

  Dani thought she saw a flicker of embarrassment on Grant’s face, a
s though her words had made him feel slightly ashamed of his obvious passion for the subject. He wasn’t derailed for long though.

  ‘The BTK killer – an acronym for bind, torture, kill – was a notorious American serial killer,’ Grant carried on. ‘He killed ten people between 1974 and 1991. Gruesome killings, as you can imagine from his moniker. Yet he remained free for years, despite the fact that he regularly left taunting notes for the police, admitting and explaining what he’d done. These notes were often left in public places, because he absolutely wanted attention for being a serial killer. If he’d never left the notes? Maybe the deaths wouldn’t have been linked at all. Perhaps he could have carried on killing with impunity.’

  ‘The notes led to him being caught then?’

  ‘Not exactly. His last confirmed victim was in the early nineties, and for years after that he went silent. No letters, no murders that we know of, and no progress from the police in finding him. He’d got away with it all. Then, in 2004 or 2005 I think, for no obvious reason other than he was missing the attention, and again, perhaps he wanted to be caught, he began leaving notes again. He wasn’t killing anymore, that we know of, but just leaving notes. And he got sloppy. He sent a floppy disk to a local TV station. From the metadata on there the police managed to track him down. He openly admitted to his crimes at trial. He never tried to hide a thing.’

  Dani sat back in her seat and let out a long sigh. Given the subject of the conversation, she felt the inanimate object stuffed inside her jacket pocket weighing her down, as though it was a great burden.

  ‘I know it’s not to everyone’s taste,’ Grant said, ‘but you’ve probably gathered I can talk about this subject until the cows come home.’

  Dani smiled. ‘Yes. I had noticed.’

  ‘But I’m sure it would be easier if you told me what you really need from me, rather than have me blather on about famous serial killers.’

  ‘That’s fair,’ Dani said. ‘Although you’ve already done a pretty good job of setting the scene for this.’

  Grant looked puzzled as Dani reached inside her jacket pocket and her hand came back out clutching the plastic wallet with the unfolded piece of paper inside. She passed it across the desk for Grant to see. Then she stared at the professor as he took in the scribbled words. He said nothing for a good while, just focused his eyes on the note.