by F. G. Cottam
‘Her skill was rare and her learning accrued over decades,’ the cardinal said. ‘She is a cruel loss to the world. My priority is making her the last loss he inflicts.’
He sighed with exasperation. The men he was among were virtual hermits. Their isolation prevented them from having any real empathy. They never came into personal contact with a living, breathing woman. Womanhood to them was a concept represented most intimately by Mary the Mother of Christ and the Magdalene. They had their spiritual duty. They possessed piety but emotionally they were arid men.
‘I will take the Barry account with me in the hope of finding a practical use for it,’ he said.
They looked at him. Brother Philip said, ‘God help you, your eminence, if you mean to take on Edmund Caul.’
‘I have no choice,’ the cardinal said. ‘It is my fault he is free. I mean at least to try.’
He had to find the time too to perform a requiem mass. There was a protégé to bury. The remains of James Cantrell still lay in a mortuary draw in San Sebastian. A firm of investigators based in Paris was still probing the specifics of his death.
The cardinal felt like a man with a mountain to climb. What he actually was, was a man with a mountain to descend. Assuming he reached the safe refuge of his car without falling, he intended first to take his laptop from the trunk and read the accounts in the English newspapers of the death of the latest victim of the killer the Police there were calling the Scholar. He believed in the old saying about knowing your enemy. This one might have crept from hell, but intuition told the cardinal that Brother Philip had been wrong about their charge in one crucial regard.
He did possess character traits. And it was those traits that made their owner behave in ways that could be predicted. If he was the devil’s spawn, he would be vain and given to trickery. He would be a liar and would have an appetite for games. Apparently he had a talent for mimicry. But the music hall songs he’d crooned as they celebrated their rituals outside his cell door suggested a degree of nostalgia for his own recent past. London was significant. He had chosen to return to it. There were ways in which he might repeat himself there.
It was almost funny. He had not really believed in hell or even in the devil except as metaphors for the opposite of what was good. He had thought Lucifer’s domain an abstract concept and his character an invention of poets like the great Protestant Englishman John Milton in his verse masterpiece ‘Paradise Lost’. He had thought the story of The Fall a mere parable cautioning powerful men against the sin of pride.
Now he thought of Satan as an adversary, he seemed very real indeed. He seemed cunning and plausible and entirely relentless in his quest to envelope the world in darkness. My name is Legion, he quoted to himself. And he wondered how he could ever have become so lazy or complacent to have forgotten that eternal swaggering boast and the grim warning the biblical episode describing it offered to mankind.
The cardinal said his goodbyes to the trio of holy men at the great entrance to their empty bastion. They each performed the obeisance of kissing his ring before he took it off and put it safely in his rucksack. He put on his gloves. Then he embraced each of them warmly. They were old and they were God’s jailers but in the absence of their prisoner he thought there something of the lost child about all three of them.
In their humility, they had shown him the note their charge had left, inked in dirt or blood on a piece of shirting. He had been stricken by the cruel truth of it. The demon’s escape had made their lives a futile waste. He was culpable in that and the guilt pained him greatly.
He hoisted his rucksack onto his back and turned away from them. He needed to concentrate on every measured footstep facing him. The route was steep and in places treacherous. The weather at this altitude, even in the high summer, was capricious. The wind was gusting, though the view was clear and what cloud there was for now, seemed unthreatening. He felt at once energized and focused and every weary day of his 67 years. It was a paradoxical state in which to exist. He thought it only reflected the dubious complexity of the great challenge confronting him.
He got down without serious mishap. He was sweating inside his clothing with the heat and exertion by the time he reached the car. Fabrics suited to the chill of altitude became uncomfortable as the air thickened with oxygen and the wind decreased and the ambient temperature rose.
The ribbon of road glittered under sunlight and he could smell wild flowers skirting its edges in swathes of purple and gold. He was intensely aware that this was a day of which the Englishwoman so recently murdered in Chelsea was deprived. Her life had been snatched away from her and his hubris was largely to blame for the fact.
He read the lead story on the front page of The Sunday Times. The banner headline read: Serial Killer Strikes Again. The sub-head read: Eminent Surgeon Latest Victim. The story was by-lined Sandra Matlock. He had seen her name in other papers and assumed she was a freelance journalist. She seemed to have good contacts she was careful not to reveal. She was at least one individual profiting from what the murderer did. He assumed from this she wasn’t superstitious. But at heart he was a village boy from Sardinia. Londoners probably thought differently about such things.
The serial killer police have dubbed the Scholar struck for the second time in less than a week yesterday when he claimed the life of top neurosurgeon Alice Cranfield. The body of the widowed specialist was discovered at her luxury Chelsea apartment shortly after noon. She had been mutilated in the manner that’s become a hallmark of the murder spate. Once again, the man believed responsible for all five slayings alerted police to his crime with a hand-delivered note.
Sources close to the investigation confirmed last night that the victim had been decapitated in the most gruesome display of atrocity the Scholar has so far inflicted. He is believed to have left his trademark quasi-religious tract daubed in his victim’s blood at the scene of the slaying. Detectives who claimed last week to be pursuing several new lines of inquiry are said to be baffled and suffering low morale at the killer’s apparent impunity.
Home Secretary Susan Lassiter faces a Commons debate tomorrow (Monday) on the failure of the Met to make an arrest or even to name a suspect in the case. Ms. Cranfield, 39, is the fifth victim of a murder spate that Opposition law and order spokesman Dan Crawford said today has left no woman in the capital feeling safe. ‘It’s alarming that a police force with the Met’s unparalleled resources can’t do their basic job of detection,’ he said. ‘This is London in the 21st century. That this killer hasn’t yet been caught is almost inconceivable.’
Detectives hunting the Scholar only went public on the investigation after the discovery of the body of actress victim Julie Longmuir in the early hours of Tuesday morning. In the seven weeks prior to that it’s believed he claimed the lives of three high-class prostitutes. There is speculation that former prima ballerina Charlotte Reynard narrowly escaped death at his hands on Tuesday evening. If he was involved in that alleged incident at her Pimlico home, it suggests he is accelerating his attacks on woman with an increasingly high public profile.
Ms. Cranfield was awarded a CBE in the autumn for services to medicine. She was the patron of the child cancer charity Brighter Dawn, which matches infant sufferers to specialist units for treatment throughout Europe and America. She pioneered several surgical procedures shocked colleagues say have led to the saving of hundreds if not thousands of lives.
Detective Chief Inspector Jane Sullivan, 32, leading the investigation from New Scotland Yard, was not available for comment at time of going to press amid speculation that she is about to be replaced in an effort to re-invigorate the hunt and make a breakthrough before the killer strikes again.
It was sensationalist stuff. But the cardinal thought that more because of the subject matter than the writer’s style. She had gone fairly light on the adjectives. The facts spoke stridently enough for themselves.
There was a photo-splash on an inside page documenting the murdered surgeon’s
achievements. She had been attractive and stylish as well as accomplished. There was a piece speculating on the taking from the murder scene of anatomical trophies and what that signified about the killer’s psychology. There was a piece by a feminist polemicist about what the murders said about male attitudes in the 21st century towards women. The cardinal did not bother to read that. He had nothing against feminism, but thought there was very little of the 21st century about this particular killer.
Most interesting, he thought, was a side-bar about two experts the Metropolitan Police had engaged for technical assistance in their investigation. One was an Oxford Professor of ancient languages called Dominic Carter. The other was a young theologian with a failed priestly vocation called Jacob Prior. Prior had boxed at university, when he had become the amateur middleweight champion of England. He’d won 17 of his 20 fights by knockout. Carter was voluble with his quotes. Prior had refused to make any comment at all.
‘A paradoxical young man.’ the cardinal said to himself.
The phone call Jane Sullivan took outside the Prince of Wales in Cleaver Square had come from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner himself. It had been to inform her of three significant developments. The first was that she was back in charge of the investigation. The second was that she would no longer answer to the DC, who was being re-assigned duties which would remove him altogether from the Scholar case. The third was that she was ordered to attend a meeting in Whitehall the following afternoon to brief the Home Secretary on the progress so far made.
‘Or otherwise,’ the Commissioner said. ‘It seems to me that progress might not be the most appropriate term.’
‘Then sack me, Sir,’ she said.
‘I can’t, Jane. The Home Secretary thinks that the hunt for the Scholar needs to be headed by a woman officer. It’s partially symbolic and partly political, but I can see where she’s coming from and find it hard to disagree with her. On a percentage basis, you’ve the best conviction rate of anyone on the murder squad. You’re certainly the best female detective I’ve worked with. You’re the woman for the job. The Home Secretary concurs.’
‘Thank you, Sir.’
‘That’s unless, of course, you’d like to resign?’
‘No, Sir. I wouldn’t like to resign.’
‘Good luck tomorrow afternoon, Jane. You’re in for a rough ride.’
She thought a rough ride no more than she deserved.
Had she not taken the Commissioner’s call, she thought she would probably have slept with Jacob Prior. She’d felt extremely sorry for herself when they’d met up. She’d had more to drink with him than she would ordinarily consume. She’d enjoyed the kiss they’d shared. It was a long time since she’d kissed anyone and he was rather good at it. Plus he’d done it like he meant it.
She’d told the truth in saying a sexual encounter with him was a complication she didn’t need, but that was after the Commissioner’s call, with a ministerial meeting scheduled for the following afternoon. Had she still been off the case, she thought the prospect of spending a night in Jacob’s arms a very appealing one. He was easy on the eye and he was genuine and she sensed the attraction he felt for her had nothing to do with her status. She thought him probably the least status-minded man she’d encountered.
She didn’t feel particularly resentful about the Chadwick subterfuge. If he had an intelligence contact, and she’d have bet money he did, he’d shown initiative in using it to learn what he could about the man. Jacob wanted to nail the Scholar and so did she. There was no conflict of interest. He needed to learn something about protocol and methodology but was still far more of an asset than a liability to the investigation.
She was deciding what to do with the information Jacob had given her about Chadwick on Sunday morning when her mobile rang. She assumed it would be him. It wasn’t. It was Charlotte Reynard.
‘I need to see you.’
‘Is it urgent?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve slept on it, though there wasn’t a great deal of sleep involved, to be honest. It doesn’t really make any sense. I still need to talk to you about it. I can’t relax or rest until I do.’
‘What time do you put the kids to bed?’
‘They’re little ones. They’re fast asleep by half-seven.’
‘I have a meeting this afternoon. It could run on. I’ll see you after it, though. Expect me any time between eight o’clock and midnight.’
‘The witching hour,’ Charlotte said.
‘You’re far too pretty to be a witch, darling.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
She called Jacob Prior. She said, ‘Work on this place in the Pyrenees.’
‘I really enjoyed kissing you.’
‘That makes one of us.’
‘You cheered up last night, before I kissed you.’
‘I’m back in gainful employment, which is why I’m asking you to find out what you can about that place in the mountains.’
‘I’ll find out anything I can.’
She spent an hour going over the case file on her laptop. She drank two mugs of strong coffee and then spent a further hour researching the career of the Right Honourable Susan Lassiter. She had never met the Home Secretary either in a formal or social capacity and wanted to be as prepared as she realistically could be for a meeting likely to be testing and possibly confrontational.
The woman was a career politician. She had never really done anything else. She had become a researcher for the party after leaving Cambridge with a higher degree in economic history. After three years of that, she’d contested a safe home-counties seat and become an MP. Her maiden speech had been on the subject of penal reform.
Too far too fast, had been the gist of her thinking. She was consistently strong on law and order. She had campaigned to secure statutory compensation for victims of violent crime. She had become Home Secretary at the age of 41 two years earlier and since then had personally intervened in two criminal cases where she thought the sentences eventually handed down were too lenient.
She was married to a philosophy don she’d met at university. They had two teenage children, a house in a Berkshire village and a holiday home in the Dordogne. Her hobbies were riding and skiing and she had written a fairly well-received book about the 19th century Prime Minister William Gladstone. On Desert Island Discs she’d plumbed for choral and chamber music and only the one popular song by Coldplay. On Question Time she’d opined that more female High Court judges would be a good idea because they were tougher than men.
She struck Jane as a joyless sort of woman, a predictably high-profile achiever who saw life more as a mission than as something to be enjoyed. Politicians had to be like that, though. Without the drive and seriousness, they stood no real chance of succeeding. Mrs. Lassiter was clever, demanding and intolerant of failure and fools.
Jane went to the gym to try to work off some of the tension she felt. Then she went over the specifics of the most recent killing in her mind. The sense of shock at being confronted by the victim’s severed head had not really left her. She had learned to compartmentalize shock so that it did not become ungovernable trauma. But she thought it would be a long time before the sight of the head, with its features pried away by the point of a knife, would fade as an image from her memory.
She was sure it had been put there deliberately for her to find. It was a comment from the Scholar as direct as the note with the song lyric he’d sent her. She tried to assess the mentality of someone who would carry out the killing and the mutilation and then make of his own blood work a grisly practical joke. She couldn’t do it, but she didn’t think that the Scholar was insane. Jacob Prior had called him delusional, but he wasn’t mad. He had a perspective on what he was doing. He was working to a plan.
And he was evolving as a character. The subject of the Yeats poem was apocalyptic, which gave it thematic consistency with the other messages. But it was also a departure. You’re educating yourself, Jane thought. You’re learning
new things and can’t help showing off the fact. It was a hunch only, but she felt fairly sure of it.
She walked over Westminster Bridge to Whitehall and her meeting with the minister. She wore her dress uniform for the occasion. It was a Sunday and so civilian clothing would have been permissible and possibly even expected of her but she wore the uniform as a symbol of seriousness and respect for the station of the woman who had summoned her on what was still, for parliamentarians, traditionally a day of rest.
The minister greeted her attired in a black trouser suit. She did so with an unexpectedly warm smile and a handshake that suggested she was a tactile woman by nature. There was a coffee percolator in the office she was using and she poured them both a cup. Then she sat in a chair opposite the one she gestured for Jane to occupy and said, ‘Bring me up to speed.’
‘We have no firm leads. His strength and agility suggest he’s under the age of about 40. He’s conversant with a range of ancient languages and knowledgeable about Christian theology to an extent that makes him an expert. He isn’t a secretor.
‘He’s an exhibitionist in both senses. The most recent crimes are deliberately sensational in terms of the victims. And the crime scenes have all been tableaus of atrocity.’
‘Are there other character traits?’
‘There’s his sense of superiority. We learn about each killing from the notes he sends us. He thinks he’s in control of the situation.’
‘It strikes me he’s right, so far.’
‘When people think they’re omnipotent they become arrogant or complacent and make mistakes.’
‘Was it him at Charlotte Reynard’s address on Tuesday evening?’
‘There’s no conclusive proof but I believe so, yes. She was targeted for her charity work. He wanted to make an example of someone morally good. It’s why Alice Cranfield was murdered on Friday evening.’
‘No forensic evidence?’
‘Nothing so far and no pictures from security cameras either. No witness statements. We can’t computer generate or photo-fit a likeness. This week we’ve ruled out three hardcore death metal fans guilty of past acts of violence against women and a renegade priest who may or may not have a grudge against the Catholic Church.’