Cold Killing

by Luke Delaney

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  Sean swallowed his growing frustration. ‘Why did you kill those people? Daniel Graydon. Heather Freeman. Linda Kotler. Why was it so important to you that they died?’

  ‘And you want me to tell you so you can understand me?’ Gibran asked. ‘You want me to take away your fear.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sean responded.

  ‘There’s really no point,’ Gibran said dismissively. ‘I have no answer that could satisfy your need to know why. There is nothing I could tell you that could possibly help you understand. In some ways I wish there were, but there really isn’t.’

  ‘Try me,’ Sean insisted.

  More silence, then Gibran spoke. ‘Tell me, Inspector, are you familiar with the fable of the frog and the scorpion?’

  ‘No,’ Sean answered.

  ‘One day,’ Gibran began, ‘a frog was basking on the banks of a river when suddenly his slumber was disturbed by an anxious voice. When the frog opened his eyes he saw a scorpion standing only inches away. Understandably nervous, the frog hopped away, then a pleading voice stopped him. “Please, Mr Frog,” the scorpion said. “I simply must get to the other side of this river, but I can’t swim. Could I please crawl on to your back while you carry me to the other side?”

  ‘“I can’t do that,” answered the frog, “because you are a scorpion and you will sting me.”

  ‘“No,” said the scorpion. “I won’t sting you. I promise.”

  ‘“How can I take the word of a scorpion?” the frog asked.

  ‘“Because if I sting you while we are crossing the river,” the scorpion explained, “we will both drown.”

  ‘The frog thinks about what the scorpion has said. Won over by his logic, he agrees to take the scorpion to the other side. But as they are crossing the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog.

  ‘With his dying breath the frog asks, “Why did you do that, for surely now we both will die?”

  ‘“I couldn’t help myself,” the scorpion tells him. “It’s my nature.”

  ‘I always feel sorry for the scorpion,’ Gibran continued, ‘but never for the frog.’

  Sean let a few minutes elapse before he spoke. ‘Are you telling me you killed four people for no reason other than you believe it’s in your nature to?’

  ‘It’s just a story,’ Gibran answered. ‘One that I thought might appeal to you in particular.’

  ‘Let me tell you why I think you killed these people,’ Sean said. ‘You killed them because it made you feel special. Made you feel important. Without it, your life felt pointless. Making money for other people: pointless. You felt pointless. And you couldn’t stand that empty feeling, every day having to admit to yourself that you were just another nobody, living a nobody’s life. Every single day, the same feeling of emptiness, of nothingness. It drove you insane.

  ‘You could have been anything you wanted to be. Life gave you all the privileges and opportunities, but you didn’t have the courage to do anything truly special, to do anything that would set you apart from other men. You believe we should all bow down to you merely because of who you are. But nobody did and it made you angry, angry at the world.

  ‘So you decided to teach us a lesson, didn’t you? You decided to show us how special you are by doing the only thing your feeble mind could conceive. Your twisted sense of self-importance convinced you it was your right, your destiny to kill. It excused your crimes – and crimes are all they are, no matter what you may think.

  ‘But committing murder doesn’t make you special. It doesn’t make you anything other than one more sick loser, no better than all the other sick losers locked up in Broadmoor. You can talk about scorpions and your nature and any other bullshit you like, but we both know that, deep down, underneath this polished act, this mock menace, you are nothing. Nothing at all.’

  ‘If believing that makes you comfortable,’ Gibran responded, ‘if it takes away your fear, then you should cling to that belief.’

  Sean knew then that Gibran wasn’t going to talk, wasn’t going to confess and explain all. He had to come to terms with the fact they might never know why. He felt Gibran studying him, expressionless.

  ‘What about Hellier?’ he asked, making one last-ditch effort to bring him back. ‘What was his part in all of this? Were you working together?’

  ‘James could never be anything other than my employee,’ Gibran answered. ‘I would never dirty my hands working with him as an equal. That could never happen. He was a tool to be used by me to achieve what I needed to achieve. He was nothing more than an illusion. James was made by circumstance, a cheap man-made replica. Pathetic, really. I was born to achieve all that I have achieved. The path I was ordained to follow formed while I was still in my mother’s womb.’

  ‘You used him as a decoy,’ Sean accused. ‘You crafted the murders so it looked like Hellier had committed them.’

  ‘Murders?’ Gibran feigned surprise. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you were talking about corporate finance.’

  ‘Of course.’ Suddenly it was starting to make sense. Eager to explore the unexplained revelation before it could slip back in to the dark recesses of his mind, Sean continued: ‘I understand now. You gave Hellier his job at Butler and Mason in the first place, didn’t you? As soon as you met him, when and wherever that was, you knew, didn’t you? You knew he was the one you’d been waiting for; the one you could hide behind. And you made sure you had sole responsibility for checking his background, because you couldn’t risk anyone else discovering Hellier was a fraud. Did you even bother to check his references, his employment history, or was it so irrelevant that you didn’t even bother? It wasn’t his financial skills you wanted – you wanted him. You needed to have him where you could watch him, learn everything about him, manipulate him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Hellier was a subordinate, in every way a subordinate, put on this planet by powers you could never understand to be manipulated by people like me,’ Gibran answered. ‘It’s the law of Nature.’

  ‘Really?’ Sean replied. ‘So Hellier is inferior to you? Not as smart as you?’

  Gibran answered with a shrug of his shoulders and a smile.

  ‘But if that’s so, how come he out-smarted you in the end? He’s probably already setting himself up with a new life of privilege and luxury, while you’re sitting here with us, preparing to spend the rest of your life rotting in some prison hell-hole. So tell me, Sebastian, who’s the smart one now?’

  Sean studied Gibran’s reaction, watching as his smile fell away, his lips narrowing and growing pale, his once relaxed fingers beginning to curl into claws. At last Sean had found a way to peel Gibran’s façade away.

  ‘I mean, Hellier practically handed me your head on a plate. He read you like a cheap novel, predicted your every move, and when the time was right he served you to me on a platter.’

  Sean watched Gibran’s breathing grow shallow and then accelerate. Keep pushing him. Push him until he explodes and fills the room with shrapnel fragments of undeniable truth.

  ‘He made a fool out of you,’ Sean stabbed at him. ‘He’s made you look like a damn fool. A predictable idiot, and there’s nothing you can do about it. He’s won.’

  Sean waited for the eruption, certain he had done enough to provoke the truth out of him. But no arrogant rant of self-importance came; no declaration of the genius of his crimes spilled forth. Instead, to Sean’s horror, the smile returned to Gibran’s face.

  ‘That’s very presumptuous of you, Inspector, to declare the winner before the game’s even over,’ Gibran replied, calm now.

  ‘This is no game,’ Sean answered, ‘but it is over. For you, everything is over.’

  Sean knew he was wasting his time. All he was doing was providing Gibran with a stage to perform on. Tired of listening to him talking in riddles, he decided to end the interview.

  ‘Mr Gibran, is there anything you want to tell me? Anything at all?’

  ‘I k
now what you are,’ Gibran said without warning.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Sean asked.

  ‘I smell it on you the way I smelled it on James. You can hide it from others, but not me. You were made what you are by circumstance, just like James. Only you’re not like him. He controlled his nature, his unacceptable instincts, but you suppress yours. You live in fear of it, never embracing it. Such a waste.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘They trained you like a wild animal in captivity,’ Gibran continued, his voice aggressive now, assertive but still controlled. ‘Taught you to conform, beat you into submission with endless counselling and behaviour-suppressing drugs. You could have been so much more than you are.’

  ‘You know nothing about me,’ Sean snarled.

  ‘I know that every time you look at your children you think of your own childhood. It was your father, wasn’t it? Your abuser. It was your father who touched you in those special places, who told you it was a special secret only you and he shared. And as you grew older and didn’t want to be touched, it was your father who forced himself on you, who beat you when you said no.’

  Sean could feel the blood draining from his face. How did Gibran know? How did he know?

  ‘You’re finished.’ He spat the words at Gibran.

  ‘I was born the way I am,’ Gibran snapped back. ‘You were made by circumstances, but made you were. How long can you deny your nature? How long before your own hands reach out towards your children? How long before you and they share a special secret they must never tell Mummy? That’s why you were able to see James for what he was, because every time you look in the mirror you see James Hellier and all the other so-called killers you’ve locked away staring back at you. But you never saw me, did you? You and he are mere reflections of each other, whereas I am something you could never begin to comprehend.’

  Sean tried to jump to his feet, his hand already clenched into a fist. He felt a heavy arm across his chest. Donnelly eased him back into his chair.

  ‘Play your games, if you like,’ Sean said, back in control of himself. ‘But it’ll take more than games to stop you from going away for a very long time.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Your arrogance is your undoing,’ Sean told him. ‘You didn’t think you could make mistakes, but you have. DS Jones is alive and she will recover. And when she does, she’ll confirm it was you who attacked her. Why? Because she saw your face. You wanted her to see it was you. You wanted her to see her killer. You wanted them all to see your face. Wanted it to be the last thing they ever saw. You were too proud of yourself to hide behind a mask. The moment you allowed DS Jones to escape, it was over for you.’

  ‘I doubt DS Jones had more than a fleeting glimpse of her attacker,’ Gibran argued. ‘And I understand the attack was at night, probably in poor light. How could she be sure of anything? Her identification would be useless.’

  ‘And there’ll be security tapes from the underground,’ Sean continued. ‘Tapes that will show you following Linda Kotler. Now we know who to look for, it’ll be only a matter of time before we find you on those tapes.’

  ‘So maybe you can prove I was in the area. Hardly enough to convict a man of murder.’

  ‘There’ll be tapes from the club Daniel Graydon was in the night he died. And what about the bouncers there? What if they can pick you out of an identification parade?’

  ‘What if they can, Inspector?’ Gibran smirked. ‘You have nothing.’

  ‘You’re forgetting about the visit you paid DS Jones in Intensive Care. The police constable you killed there. You were still wearing his uniform when you were arrested. Mistakes, Sebastian. Too many mistakes. Too much evidence to explain away. Not to mention the syringe taped to your chest.’

  ‘A harmless, empty syringe,’ Gibran explained.

  ‘We’ve already spoken to the medical staff. If you’d injected air into Sally’s bloodstream it would have almost certainly caused a heart attack or stroke. She would have died and nobody would have known it was murder. With DS Jones dead, you could have melted into the background, leaving Hellier to take the fall.’

  ‘Theories and hopes, Inspector. That’s all you have.’

  ‘And the uniform you were wearing?’

  ‘Then charge me with impersonating a police officer.’

  ‘You killed a man and took his uniform.’

  ‘Prove that, can you? That I killed him? Do you really have indisputable evidence of that? My fingerprints on the murder weapon? My DNA on his body? Maybe CCTV of me in the act, so to speak? But you don’t, do you?’

  Sean sat silently considering how best to play his final trump card, trying to guess how Gibran would react. Would he grow angry and reveal his true self? Would he be humbled and confess? Would he continue his calm ambiguous denials? Slowly, deliberately he pulled a transparent evidence bag from his jacket pocket where it hung over the back of his chair. He casually tossed the bag containing Sally’s bloodied warrant card across the table.

  Sean saw Gibran glance down at the bag. For the first time he thought he saw a hint of confusion in his face.

  ‘DS Jones’s warrant card,’ he said. ‘Found hidden under the lining of a desk drawer in your home. How did her warrant card find its way into your house?’

  Gibran lifted the evidence bag and studied the contents. ‘It appears I’ve underestimated your determination,’ he said.

  ‘How did it get there?’ Sean repeated the question he knew Gibran couldn’t answer.

  ‘We both know that’s not important,’ Gibran answered. ‘You will try and convince a court that I took it as a trophy. That I took it because of a need to maintain a connection to my victim. That I used it to help relive the night when she should have died. They may believe you. They may not.’

  ‘And what will you tell the court?’ Sean asked. ‘What will you tell them to convince them you’re not what I say you are?’

  Gibran leaned forward, smiling confidently. Sean thought he could begin to smell the same animal musk leaking from Gibran he’d smelled on Hellier.

  ‘For that, Inspector,’ Gibran said smugly, ‘we’ll all have to wait and see. Won’t we?’

  Donnelly joined Sean in his office, where the pair of them sat listening to the recording of Gibran’s interview. When it concluded, Donnelly was first to speak.

  ‘He told us fuck all.’

  ‘He was never going to talk,’ Sean said. ‘But I needed to be near him for a while. To watch him. Listen to him.’

  ‘And?’ Donnelly asked.

  ‘He’s our man. No doubts this time. Hellier was nothing more than his pawn.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Donnelly said. ‘He must have spent years planning this. What sort of man spends years planning to kill strangers?’

  ‘One who never wants to stop,’ Sean answered. ‘He knew we would catch him eventually, unless we weren’t looking for him; and we’d only stop looking for him once we had someone locked up. Someone we were convinced was guilty of the murders. It nearly worked, too. I took the bait like a fool. Let my feelings towards Hellier blind my judgement. I almost sent the wrong man to prison.’

  ‘No one would have cried too much for Hellier,’ said Donnelly.

  Sean shook his head. ‘That’s not what bothers me,’ he said. ‘The only safe place for Hellier is behind bars, but I almost missed Gibran, almost handed him the whole game. If Sally hadn’t survived, who knows? Maybe we would never have caught him.’

  ‘But we did catch him,’ Donnelly reminded him. ‘You caught him.’

  ‘I know, but how many people would still be alive if I hadn’t wasted so much time chasing Hellier?’

  ‘None of them,’ Donnelly answered unwaveringly. ‘Gibran was a bolt of lightning. He came from nowhere. We couldn’t have caught him any sooner. It wasn’t possible. We did what we always do. We followed the evidence, concentrated on the most likely suspect. We shook trees and waited to see what would fall out. And eventu
ally the right man did.

  ‘If it had been anyone else in charge of the case, Gibran would still be out there and Sally would be dead. You need to know that.’

  ‘All the same, this doesn’t feel like a success.’

  ‘Does it ever?’ Donnelly asked.

  ‘No. I suppose not.’

  ‘By the way, Steven Paramore turned up.’

  ‘Who?’ Sean asked, the name wiped from his memory.

  ‘Remember, the guy recently released after serving eight for the attempted murder of a gay bloke?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. I remember now.’

  ‘Immigration nicked him coming back into the country on a false passport. He’d been enjoying the pleasures of Bangkok for a couple of weeks. Another suspect eliminated – not that you ever thought he was, right?’ Sean didn’t answer. ‘How did you know, by the way? How did you know Gibran would go after Sally?’

  ‘Something Hellier said: that it could only be one man. Only one man knew so much about him. Then I remembered Sally telling me about her meeting with Gibran, the things he’d said about Hellier, deliberately feeding our suspicions. It suddenly became so clear to me. Clear who the killer was and even more clear that he would have to get to Sally, even if it meant revealing that Hellier wasn’t the real killer. At least he’d have stopped us discovering it was him. You know, if Sally hadn’t survived the night she was attacked, Gibran would still be out there and we wouldn’t have a bloody clue. Sally getting out alive collapsed the foundations of everything Gibran had built.’

  ‘Why do you think he chose Hellier?’ Donnelly asked.

  ‘Somehow he knew what Hellier was. The moment he met Hellier, he knew. There was no way he could have pinned his crimes on some clean-living man on the street. He needed someone we would believe in. Hellier was perfect. Maybe he even found out about Hellier’s real past. Who knows? But once he found him, he showed his patience, his control. He spent years watching him, learning all he could about him. Even made sure he was employed by Butler and Mason so he could keep him close. And Hellier never suspected a thing, not until right at the end.