The Killing Habit

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Melita?’

  ‘Perera. It’s her name.’ Thorne turned away, but sensed a smirk.

  ‘Fine… but I think we should still find out a bit more about that computer bloke at the dating agency.’

  Thorne hummed, non-committal. Ablett…

  ‘He’s got to be worth looking at.’

  Thorne stared at the can in his hand, flicked at the ring pull. ‘Bloke didn’t set off any alarm bells with me, but I’m starting to wonder if I’m any good at reading people these days. If I was ever any good.’

  ‘Don’t be soft,’ Tanner said.

  Thorne was not in the mood to be easily reassured. ‘Maybe it’s something that just starts to go a bit when you get older.’

  ‘Oh, come on, it’s the exact opposite. I mean… it’s not a knack, is it? It’s about experience.’

  ‘Like having less energy. Less everything. Like your eyesight and your hearing going, like having to sit down when you put your bloody socks on.’

  Tanner laughed. ‘It’s when you have to put your trousers on sitting down that you need to start worrying, mate.’

  Thorne remembered his conversation with Christine Treasure. Her suggestion that these waves of self-doubt were really a form of self-protection. Insulating himself in advance against the chill of a bad result, or no result at all. He took a swig of beer. He sighed and said, ‘You’re probably right. As usual.’

  ‘Be handy if it was him,’ Tanner said. ‘Ablett.’

  ‘Yeah, at least we know where he is.’

  ‘Might close one of our cases, at least.’

  ‘How does that fit with your picture, though? A killer who’s doing his best not to be found and then he’s right there in the first place we go looking.’

  ‘Why not? Plain sight and all that. Ah…’ She held up a finger as though she’d suddenly remembered something and began fishing in her bag for her phone. ‘So, what are you going to do about the website?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Once the forensic team have finished with it. I think Russell’s getting jumpy. Public safety and all that.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ Thorne said.

  With her phone in her hand, Tanner stabbed and swiped, then moved her chair so that Thorne could see the screen as she scrolled through the pictures. ‘Another couple of flats I quite fancy.’

  ‘So you weren’t persuaded by that view of a fence and the ample shed room, then?’

  ‘I’m seeing one tomorrow night. You know, if…?’

  Thorne held up his hands. ‘Sorry, I can’t tomorrow. I haven’t really seen much of Helen the last few days.’ He was thinking on his feet, guilty suddenly. ‘So…’

  ‘Not a problem.’ Tanner moved her chair away again and dropped her phone back into her bag. ‘It’s not like you were a lot of help last time.’

  ‘We should probably just have a quiet night in.’

  ‘It’s fine, Tom, honestly.’

  ‘Quality time, you know?’

  Tanner nodded and, as though taking Thorne’s words as some kind of cue to leave, ducked down again to pick up her handbag.

  ‘The next one, I promise.’ He caught a glimpse of a tired smile as Tanner straightened up, and watching her reach for the coat on the back of her chair, Thorne wondered just how long it had been since she had enjoyed quality time with anyone.

  FORTY-THREE

  There were more pictures now, more names scribbled on the whiteboard that had been wheeled into the Incident Room. More chairs that had been dragged from corners or behind desks and more people than last time waiting: nursing takeaway coffees and pretending to be rather more alert than they were; flicking through the briefing notes that had been handed out ten minutes earlier.

  Then, more faces turned his way.

  ‘I know it’s early,’ Thorne said. He smiled, acknowledging the expansive yawn from a female officer sitting near the front. ‘But hopefully, you’ve had a chance to look at the forensic report on the Made In Heaven computer system. I don’t understand most of it myself, but you can just skip to the end.’ He waited while pages were turned. ‘The site was hacked on two separate occasions and it was made to look like someone was just pissing about. A few hard-core porn shots.’

  A hand was raised. ‘Shouldn’t we get a chance to see those?’ The officer turned the pages of his notes, as if he was looking for something. ‘You know, so we’ve got all the information?’

  There were a few more comments after that, pockets of laughter. Waiting for it to die down, Thorne remembered waking in the early hours and kicking off the duvet; staring up at the outline of the light fitting in the warm dark and rehearsing his performance. Putting the words together, the right mix of urgency and confidence. Helen had been lying with her back to him and he wasn’t certain how long she’d been there. He’d called it a night before she’d got back and couldn’t remember her coming in. Perhaps it had been her getting into bed that had woken him, but he was confused, disoriented. He didn’t know if she was awake or asleep, and, when he’d reached across to touch her shoulder, there was no reaction. He hadn’t said anything.

  Now, he looked down at Tanner, who was sitting closest to him. She and everyone else was waiting for him to carry on. ‘The first time the site was hacked, the system was actually compromised at a much deeper level. The hacker was able to gain admin privileges and get into the database. From there he was able to get individual email addresses and, if he’s as good as this report suggests he is, he could easily have accessed their online information, social media messages, the lot.’

  Thorne waited a few seconds.

  Helen had still been asleep when he’d left for work…

  ‘So… that’s how he’s doing it, but as far as his identity goes, we’re now looking at two major suspects.’ Many eyes followed his to the two new photographs on the whiteboard, while others dropped to the black and white copies in the briefing notes. ‘We’ve had a good look at the Made In Heaven team and there’s nothing about Caroline Marchant or Sandra Cook to get very excited about. But Kenneth Ablett, our computer expert, isn’t exactly squeaky clean…’

  ‘He’s never actually been arrested,’ Chall said.

  ‘No, but he’s certainly known to police.’

  ‘He was lucky.’ Kitson turned to Chall. ‘The woman concerned decided not to press charges.’

  ‘Let’s have Kenny in for a chat,’ Thorne said. ‘See how he behaves when we’ve got his admin privileges.’

  The female officer who had yawned so theatrically, but was now looking wide awake, raised a hand. She said, ‘If it is Ablett, why would he bother to hack his own computer system? I mean, if he had access to all that information anyway.’

  ‘Because he’s clever,’ Tanner says. ‘Thinks he is.’

  ‘Oh, Ablett definitely fancies himself,’ Kitson said.

  Chall nodded. ‘He makes it look like someone else got into the system just in case anybody ever traces things back to the agency. He’s protecting himself, basically.’

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ Thorne said. ‘But in the meantime, we’ve still got Aiden Goode.’ This time he walked across to the whiteboard and jabbed at the face in the photograph.

  That trace of a smile, like he was daring someone.

  ‘Only we haven’t got him, have we?’

  Thorne looked across at the young officer who had spoken up. One of those assigned to the team from Kentish Town.

  ‘And it’s not like we haven’t been looking.’

  The young man had a point, of course.

  ‘Goode’s prison record makes it very clear that he’d talked about disappearing,’ Thorne said. ‘Going off the grid. Everything we’ve been told about this individual puts him very much front and centre of this.’ He looked back at the officer and thought about those conversations with Tanner and with Treasure. The self-doubt, real or otherwise. Whether or not he’d lost the ability to read people, he knew a man in need of a bollocking when he saw one. ‘An
d no, you’re bang on, we haven’t got him yet, and I’m really sorry if that makes things a bit tricky for you, if it means you need to get your head down and do a bit more graft than you’re used to… but if you’re unhappy, you’re more than welcome to request a transfer and fuck off back to Kentish Town. Fair enough?’ He looked away as the officer began to redden, as heads began to turn. ‘We work harder, OK? We work harder and longer, and we find him. Aiden Goode is not Lord Lucan… he’s not an international man of mystery. He’s just a pissy little rapist who cuts up animals for a laugh. A loser, who thinks it’s his God-given right to brutalise women and may well have killed five of them already. We all go back to work and we find him.’ He looked from face to face – Tanner, Kitson, Chall – then finally turned his attention back to the young officer from Kentish Town. He waited for him to nod, and nodded back, then pointed to DS Samir Karim. ‘Right then, Sam will be doling out the actions…’

  As everyone began to drift back to their desks, Thorne watched DCI Russell Brigstocke move towards him from the back of the room. Thorne smiled, but he could guess what was coming. His boss looked every bit as jumpy as Tanner had told him he was.

  ‘A word,’ Brigstocke said.

  Tanner caught Chall before he sat down again. He didn’t appear thrilled to have been intercepted.

  ‘How’s it going, Dipak?’

  The heavy sigh made it clear he knew she wasn’t talking about the dating agency case. ‘Well, you weren’t wrong,’ he said. ‘About how tedious it would be.’

  She followed him to his desk, stood behind his chair when he sat down. ‘I never meant for you to do it on your own.’

  He turned to look at her. ‘Are you kidding? I’ve got a couple of nice keen trainees working on it with me.’ He nodded towards two officers, phones pressed to their ears at the far end of the room, then moved the mouse and clicked to open up a folder on his desktop. ‘I reckon they’ll probably quit altogether after this.’

  ‘Well then, everyone’s happy,’ Tanner said. ‘You’re making all the necessary job cuts single-handed.’

  Chall said, ‘With respect, boss,’ and stuck up his middle finger.

  ‘So, what have we got?’

  The DS quickly opened half a dozen different documents, then shrunk them so that Tanner could see them all at once. ‘You any idea how many of these things there are for sale?’

  ‘It’s a growth industry,’ Tanner said.

  She peered at the first one; an image of a minuscule mobile handset pinched between two fingers. Another was dwarfed by a Coke can, while others had been pictured alongside standard-sized mobiles or matchboxes. All had much the same advertising copy.

  World’s Smallest Phone!!!

  Mini Phone 100% Plastic.

  Best-selling Spy-Phone.

  ‘Spy-phone, my arse,’ she said.

  ‘Arse is exactly right,’ Chall said. ‘Look at this crap.’ He pointed to all the buzzwords that were highlighted; the key search terms that were being used to market the phones. Micro, Cell, Jail, Discreet, Fool the Boss. ‘How is having a small phone supposed to fool your boss, anyway?’ Both already knew that the answer to the question was irrelevant. That, in the context of these knowing adverts, BOSS actually stood for Body Orifice Security Scanner. ‘Like they’re small enough to slip in your top pocket or something, when we all know exactly where they’re supposed to go. Seen this?’ He pointed to the list of additional features on one item. LOW RING TO AVOID UNWANTED ATTENTION. ‘Right, because you don’t want the Star Wars theme tune going off when one of these is rammed up your jacksy, do you?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Tanner said.

  Chall turned to look at Tanner. ‘Most of them are on eBay, but there’s plenty of other sites selling them. Hundreds of them.’

  ‘You’ll get there,’ Tanner said.

  ‘So, we’re tracking down the sellers one by one —’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘… and having to deal with sodding eBay.’

  Tanner reached across him to move the mouse and leaned in to look at several more of the items for sale. ‘Got to be done.’

  ‘And I mean it’s not like we haven’t got plenty to do on the dating agency case. Well, you heard.’

  ‘Sorry, but the Duchess is the only person who can give us so much as a chance of clearing the Jandali murder up, and until someone has a better idea, this is our best chance of finding her.’

  Chall shrugged, rolled his head around. ‘Yeah, well. I could do with the overtime, tell you the truth.’

  ‘So, there you go then.’ Tanner rested a hand on the DS’s shoulder for a second, before turning away. ‘Don’t say I never do anything for you.’

  FORTY-FOUR

  Brigstocke closed his office door and said, ‘So, what’s happening, Tom?’

  ‘You heard,’ Thorne said. ‘We’re bringing Ablett in and we’re going after Goode. Specifically, we’ll be targeting his family and known associates, significant anniversaries. Going back to double check with the Border Force and all the other major databases…’

  The DCI waved for him to stop then sat down and watched Thorne run out of steam.

  ‘I’m talking about the dating site.’

  Thorne took a seat. ‘Well, once this is put to bed I’ll be very happy to see the whole poxy business closed down. Probably be a few lawsuits flying about, once everything gets out.’

  ‘You’re not daft, Tom, so don’t make out like I am. You know very well I’m talking about now. What are you going to do about that website, right now?’

  Thorne closed his eyes for a few seconds. He had known this was coming but had been trying not to think about it. It was going to be a fight he had not trained for and he would need to rely on ringcraft, knowing very well that Russell Brigstocke had plenty of his own.

  He said, ‘If we shut it down now, we’ll lose him.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that.’

  ‘He’ll know we’ve sussed it.’

  ‘Sorry, but we might have to take that chance.’

  ‘So he’ll stop, for a while and find some new way to work.’

  ‘You said it yourself, out there.’ Brigstocke pointed towards the Incident Room. ‘He uses that website to find his victims, to select them. Even a three-year-old could figure out that while it’s still up and running, while people are still signing up to Made In Heaven and going on dates, there is a significant threat to life.’

  ‘Well —’

  ‘A three-year-old, Tom.’

  ‘Shutting it down doesn’t eliminate that threat, though, does it?’

  ‘As far as I can see.’

  ‘It moves it somewhere else, that’s all. He’s not just going to think, Oh, well, I’ve had a good run, and knock it all on the head, is he?’

  Brigstocke looked at him. ‘Have you any idea how much shit we’d be in if we didn’t do anything? If another woman was killed and it came out later on that we knew?’

  ‘Oh, a fair amount, I reckon.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you agree with that, at least.’

  ‘Thing is, are we really going to be in any less trouble if we shut it all down here and he turns up six months from now and kills a woman somewhere else? Kills several more women? I mean, even a three-year-old can work out that shit is always shit.’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Tom —’

  ‘Someone else’s, maybe, but those shitty footprints are still going to lead back here.’

  They had done this before, plenty of times. Any number of hard-fought arguments. For Thorne, whenever Brigstocke was passing on pressure from above or trotting out procedure, the outcome was usually about the degree to which the simple thief-taker his boss had once been was subsumed by the demands of management. Could Thorne work his way into the cracks between those two very different roles? How shamelessly could he appeal to the copper that he knew was still lurking in there somewhere?

  Sometimes, it just came down to the mood the DCI was in.

  ‘Publ
ic safety has to be our primary concern.’

  ‘I get that,’ Thorne said.

  Brigstocke picked up a piece of paper and waved it; reached for a mug and held it up. ‘It’s on the bloody logo, for heaven’s sake.’

  THE MET: WORKING TOGETHER FOR A SAFER LONDON.

  ‘He’s the threat to life,’ Thorne said. ‘The man that’s doing this. Which is why I want to catch him —’ He flinched when the mug was banged back down on the desk.

  ‘I want to catch him, too.’ Brigstocke shook his head. ‘Jesus… look, you need to give me a contingency, all right? You want to carry on with this, we have to find a way forward that eliminates risk.’

  ‘OK.’ Thorne waited. It was usually a good idea to see what Brigstocke came up with and negotiate from there. It was all he could do on this occasion, when he had no suggestions of his own.

  ‘We need to take complete control of this website,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Set our own parameters.’

  ‘Right…’

  ‘You’ll need to contact all the agency’s clients. If he’s hacked into their emails, it’ll need to be done by phone, obviously.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘Do I look like I’m kidding?’

  ‘What if the killer’s registered himself?’

  ‘Again, we’d have to take that risk.’

  ‘We’d actually be warning him off personally.’

  ‘Have you got a better idea, mate? Have you got any ideas?’

  Thorne began scrabbling for some. ‘We’d only need to make contact with anyone who’s been matched since Alice Matthews was killed. That’s how it’s been working so far. Each victim has been selected from the matches made since the last one.’

  Brigstocke considered this for a few seconds. ‘OK, I’ll buy that.’

  ‘And just the women, right? No reason to think any of the men are actually in any danger.’

  ‘Fair enough. Still has to be done, though.’

  Thorne turned to look out of the window. A fat pigeon was hunkered down on the ledge. ‘What exactly are we supposed to tell them?’