Desai had brought her in and introduced her to the dozen or so people in the room, then went to fetch her coffee. He seemed to Kathy to be rather proprietorial in his manner, rather pleased with himself.
Brock came in, and the talking died away. “I want to thank Dr. Nicholson for giving us some more of her time. She helped us earlier in trying to arrive at a picture of Angela’s killer, and the aim now is to develop the profile in the light of the new information we have. You got a copy of Kathy’s report all right, Alex?”
She nodded, and directed a little smile in Kathy’s direction.
“Later Alex’ll spend some time with the forensic team, but I thought we’d start with some discussion about what this new information might mean.”
He paused as the door opened. Bren stepped in, face flushed from hurrying. He nodded at Alex Nicholson as if he knew her and sat down.
“It might be worthwhile outlining the approaches you use, Alex, for those who haven’t worked with you before,” Brock continued.
She nodded and got to her feet. She spoke rather softly, apparently very calm. “We use four different approaches, based on four different psychological methods or theories. We use them simultaneously, because it’s hard to anticipate which are likely to be the most productive in any particular case.”
She turned to the white board behind her and wrote “1—Mental Maps.”
“People develop mental maps of the places they’re in. They need these to understand their environment and navigate their way through it. It’s a particular interest of the department I’m in, overlapping geography and psychology. The relevance of it is that it’s possible to infer characteristics of a person’s mental map of a region from the way they use it. In this case, for example, it may be possible to reconstruct features of the perpetrator’s mental map from the location of the attacks, and then suggest areas to look for where he lives, perhaps, or works. We did this successfully in the John Duffy case.”
Kathy nodded, remembering Brock’s obsession with the Southern Region rail system around Petts Wood.
Dr. Nicholson turned back to the board and wrote “2—Stats.”
“In a large murder investigation like this, you accumulate a huge amount of information, much of which is subjective, qualitative, and unreliable. In the John Duffy case, to use that example again, we had statements from twenty-seven attacks, which gave his description as ranging from negroid to ginger-haired. We can use techniques called non-metric multidimensional scaling procedures, that have been developed to analyse statistically this kind of approximate, qualitative data. The idea is to reduce eyewitness statements to a matrix of items, and then use these techniques to discover statistically significant patterns in them. This is the second approach.”
She wrote a third heading, “3—Offender Type.”
“The third is based on work done in the United States by the FBI Behavioral Science Unit, now part of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. They have developed classifications of sexual offenders, following psychiatric taxonomies, and the idea here is to identify the appropriate type from the observed behaviours, and then predict his other characteristics. One problem for us is that we don’t know if these American typologies are reliable in the UK, but we feel it’s worth pursuing.
“And then, finally, the fourth approach.” She turned back to the board and wrote “4—Crim. Career.”
“In the case of a series of crimes, carried out by the same man over a period of time, the pattern is not constant, it evolves. This is the aspect that you gave that paper on in Rome, isn’t it, Brock?”
He tilted his head in acknowledgement.
“Yes, well, to some extent you can read the offender’s mind by studying the developing pattern of his criminal career. The FBI people have pointed out that in some cases the offender may become quite self-conscious and calculating about this, so that it becomes almost like an ongoing internal dialogue, which we are observing from the outside, from the evidence it leaves behind. And of course he may be very aware that that is what the police are doing, so that his pattern may be influenced by the knowledge that he has an audience.”
She turned to Brock, who nodded. “Thanks, Alex. Questions? No? Well, which approach do we concentrate on here?”
“The first you did explore pretty well before, and it led you to the wrong suspect—Tom Gentle,” Alex Nicholson replied. “I think the location of crimes seems to be so strongly influenced by the theatre locations that we may have difficulty separating out the individual’s mental map.”
“OK.”
“The second approach, with statistics, you’re pretty heavily into at present, I think. I could have a look at the data you’re gathering from interviews and help set up a matrix with you, if you like.
“I’d prefer to leave the question of offender type for the moment, Brock. Which leaves the criminal career.”
She sniffed and pushed some hair back from the side of her face. “This is the really spectacular thing you’ve come up with. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before. The play provides the cue for the crime. Each crime seems like the next chapter of an ongoing drama. We can imagine that witnessing a performance—usually the final performance of the show—acts as the trigger for the violent act. But that act has been completely choreographed in advance. There’s nothing spontaneous about the response to the trigger, yet the act appears uncontrollably violent to those who witness its results.”
She hesitated. “It is like he’s making a point, communicating something. But I don’t think he’s talking to the police, the people trying to catch him. It’s so specific, being tied to this one little theatre group. It’s more like a fixation, an obsession of some kind. And that’s kind of supported by the other constant—the choice of blonde women as victims. So specific.”
She came to a stop, reached for her coffee cup, and stood sipping it while they thought about this.
“Could he be imagining that they’re one specific blonde woman, Alex?” It was Bren.
She nodded. “Yes, it could be that.”
“You mean he’s fantasizing that he’s killing somebody else while he’s attacking them? Acting out what he wants to do to her?”
“It could be more than acting out. It could be that he’s deluded. That’s where we get to the offender type. I wondered whether we might have a functional psychosis here. Maybe a form of schizophrenia. But I’m not really qualified to speak on that. I think it would be worthwhile to talk to someone in the clinical field, a psychiatrist who specializes in this area.”
“But still, Alex, you obviously feel there are some indications here?” Brock pursued the point. “I thought schizophrenics suffered from disordered thinking, whereas this bloke seems pretty orderly in his attacks.”
“It depends what you mean by order. There are many kinds of schizophrenia, and they don’t necessarily have to hear voices in order to kill, though some do. Some rare crimes, like matricide, are almost only committed by schizophrenics, and the more bizarre the murder the more likely it was committed by someone with a mental disorder like this.”
“Go on.”
She was frowning. “Well . . . there is a very dangerous condition, allied to paranoid schizophrenia, but without the characteristic thought disorder of true schizophrenia. It’s called the Othello Syndrome. That’s why it occurred to me, of course, as soon as I read your report, with all the references to the theatre and plays, including the Shakespeare tragedies. The Othello Syndrome is a form of morbid jealousy, and quite well defined. The sufferer is usually a male in his forties, married or in a stable relationship for ten or more years, who has delusions of infidelity about his partner. These develop for four or five years, during which he becomes more enraged and more violent towards her. Nothing she can say or do will affect his delusion. In the end she must leave or he will probably murder her.”
There was silence.
Then Bren said, “What happens then? After she leaves?
Does he get over it, or what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“So, let’s say she’s a blonde actress, and he goes on ticking away, after she’s gone, like a bomb, until he’s ready to blow. He goes to Edinburgh, to the Festival, maybe searching for her there, and he sees this amateur group put on this performance of Equus, and he thinks, my God, that’s it, that’s what I’m going to do to her, and after the performance he grabs the first blonde woman he sees, and stabs her eyes out.”
Dr. Nicholson gave a little nod.
Bren continued. “Why does he then continue to haunt this same theatre group?”
“There must be some very strong association with the woman. Maybe she used to be in the group, or maybe one of them looks a lot like her. Maybe one of them is her. Zoë Bagnall, say.”
“Her former husband? Christ, we never checked that.”
“He would have to have been in a relationship with the woman for some time?” Brock queried. “And he’d be in his forties?”
“That’s the typical case, Brock, but no, of course it might well be otherwise. Or she could have left some time ago. If it is this condition.”
“Does he need an Iago to set him going, this Othello?” Brock said, scratching his beard.
“No.” She smiled. “I don’t think he needs a provocation. He does it all himself, inside his head.”
“OK,” Brock nodded. “Say you’re right. The group has another play coming up the week after next. What do we do? Do we stop them?”
“I’m glad I don’t have to make that decision,” Alex replied. “Cancelling the play isn’t going to stop him now—he’s demonstrated that with the National Theatre outing, that he can use other things as a trigger. And if the play goes ahead, you’ll know when to expect his next attack. But you won’t be able to protect every blonde woman in south-east London, will you? I think if it were my decision I would cancel, yes, because I’d feel so bad when he did it on the day I knew about, even though I knew he’d have done it another time anyway.”
The group erupted in argument and discussion about this. When this finally died away, Alex Nicholson’s quiet voice said, “If you do decide to let them go ahead, I’d do one thing. I’d get all the blonde women in the cast to dye their hair, for a start.”
Later, as they were eating sandwiches for lunch, Kathy found herself next to Bren. She hesitated, then said, “How’s it going? How’s your mother-in-law?”
“She’ll live. The driver that hit her said he did it in self-defence.”
“That’s original.”
“Yeah. He says she leaped out at him waving her umbrella as he was driving along. His car was the same model and colour as mine.”
“Oh, Bren! That’s terrible.” Kathy stared at her plate, then gave a little involuntary snort. Then she heard Bren do the same, and then they were both laughing.
THAT EVENING, SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 29, the whole production team for The Father gathered in response to phone calls from Ruth. There were many people in the rehearsal room whom Kathy had never seen before—stage-managers, set-builders, lighting, sound, props, stage-hands, publicity, ushers, and house-managers, as well as two members of the cast who were new to Kathy, Doctor Östermark and the trooper Nöjd, whose acting styles, as Ruth explained to Kathy, formed opposite extremes.
“Nöjd is the young man over there,” she whispered as they waited for Brock to speak, “a panel-beater at a garage in Beckenham, and very useful if you ever have a bump with your car. The trooper Nöjd is the one at the start of the play who refuses to accept responsibility for the maid whom he’s got pregnant, on the grounds he can’t be sure the baby’s his, and so gets the Captain wondering about his own daughter, and the uncertain position of fathers in general. His problem is that he over-acts terribly. He only ever gets small parts from Stafford, whom he worships, and he tries to throw absolutely everything into them. Östermark, on the other hand, has a tendency to turn to stone when he gets on to the stage. He actually is a doctor in real life, a registrar at the hospital, and terribly nice. In the play he is completely manipulated by the cunning Laura into believing the Captain is mad, so perhaps his rather robotic acting style is well cast. Stafford’s problem is to try to animate him at the same time that he’s trying to restrain Nöjd.”
“We’ll never keep tabs on them all,” Kathy said, having already told Ruth something of the problem they faced.
“Well, I hope they decide to call a halt to the whole thing,” the other woman replied. “We still haven’t had a complete run-through of the play. Can you imagine, at this stage? It should have happened a couple of weeks ago. And now with this dreadful business, it’s all become a nightmare. Mind you”—she nodded towards Kathy’s aunt seated over by the wall, busy measuring the arm of the person next to her—“I don’t think Maryanne would ever forgive us if we gave up now.”
The murmur of conversations died away as Brock got to his feet. As he described the police theories linking SADOS productions to the murders, shock and disbelief froze the faces in the room. He asked them to consider again whether they might have noticed anything unusual during this or previous productions. He described the sort of precautions that could be taken against stalkers, and the kinds of assistance that the police could provide. The most obvious precaution, however, would be to cancel The Father immediately. This met with a stunned silence, then a babble of anxious voices. Kathy watched Stafford, head bowed, giving no indication of his feelings.
“Would that really solve anything though?” Edward Quinn spoke out, his voice strong and clear, just as on the stage, so that Kathy wondered if he and Nesbit had rehearsed this.
“I mean, the murderer would still be out there, wouldn’t he? He’s not going to stop doing what he does just because we cancel a play!”
“It would avoid providing an obvious trigger,” Brock said.
“But anything could be a trigger.” Quinn echoed the argument that Alex Nicholson had put forward. “He’s shown that. An outing to the National Theatre was a trigger. I think we should go on with it. At least then we’ll know when the danger time is likely to be, and the police might have a better chance of catching him.”
There was a murmur of approval for this.
“I’d like to hear what Stafford thinks,” Vicky said. “It’s his play.”
All eyes turned to the producer, who took an interminable dramatic moment to raise his eyes to meet theirs. He let the tension build, then, softly, “Thank you, Vicky. But no, it is not my play. It belongs to all of us, equally. And it would not be for me to prolong it for one single second beyond its useful life. If it does represent, as the Chief Inspector so sensibly suggests, a danger to us, then we must bring it to an end immediately.
“Of course, Edward makes a strong argument against that view.”
“He’s doing Mark Antony,” Ruth hissed in Kathy’s ear. “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”
“Edward rightly points out that stopping the play doesn’t really solve anything. But the Chief Inspector is a professional man, all his colleagues are professional men . . .”
“Oh Stafford!” Ruth hissed. “Shame on you!”
“The Chief Inspector naturally does not understand what the play means to us. For him it is no more than a social diversion. And this is entirely understandable and sensible. But the truth is that it is not for Edward, nor for me, nor even for the Chief Inspector and his colleagues, to say what we should do. They are not at risk. It is the women of the company who are at risk. For my part, I would not extend their risk by one second, if by killing the play stone dead now I could avoid it.
“Vicky, my dear. It is you and your sisters who must decide.”
Before Vicky could respond, Ruth was on her feet. “It’s perfectly clear what we should do. The police have given us their professional advice, and we’d be fools to ignore it. We can easily postpone the play until another time. There’s no point in trying to take on a madman.”
She sat
down to cautious nods of agreement.
“Ruth, darling”—now Vicky took her cue, smoothly—“he’d have to be mad to take you on. But seriously, I for one think we’ve all invested too much of ourselves in this to give it up at the eleventh hour. And as a woman, I resent the implication that we should rearrange our lives and our priorities because some man decides to terrorize us. I suppose the police would be delighted if all the women in South London locked themselves indoors for the next six months.”
Coming from Vicky, the most attractive potential victim in the room, it was an argument that Ruth couldn’t easily counter. She shook her head in dismay as the company voted overwhelmingly by show of hands to continue with the play.
Stafford took control of the room immediately, asking non-actors to clear the floor. As the majority made for the door and the saloon bar below, he called out, “One other thing, everyone. To make us all feel much safer, Sergeant Kathy Kolla has kindly agreed to be our new prompt, since Hazel is clearly not going to be well enough to resume her duties.”
To Kathy’s embarrassment, there was a scattering of applause.
Brock ambled over, looking not at all put out by the decision.
“Don’t you mind?” Kathy asked.
“Well, it was a bit stagey for my taste, but at least we got the right outcome.”
“The right outcome?” Kathy looked at him in surprise, wondering suddenly if Brock had manoeuvred them all into this position.
“Well, Kathy, as Mr. Quinn so eloquently pointed out, at least we now have some kind of deadline we can anticipate and plan for. Was that your idea, about becoming part of their team?”
“Stafford asked me. I thought it might be useful.”
“Did he? Did he indeed? He seems to be taking quite an interest in you, Kathy. But yes, it may be useful.”
There was a loud rapping of keys on Stafford’s formica-topped table. “End of act two, please. Let’s get it right, finally, then on to the beginning of act three.” The conciliatory tone had gone. People scurried off the floor.
All My Enemies Page 20