by A. J. Cross
‘Have dinner with me tomorrow night,’ said Corrigan quietly as they walked together. ‘Seems to me we have unfinished business.’
‘Sorry, I can’t.’
Wearing a red onesie with white hearts, her head resting on Hanson’s lap, her iPad propped on her stomach, Maisie’s eyes were fixed on the small screen. Hanson watched a hectic construction exploding across it.
‘What are you building? Don’t tell me. It’s some kind of palace. Or a cathedral?’
Maisie tutted, finger-pointing at curved arches of yellow bricks. ‘I’m changing the cash registers Chel put in. She’s rubbish at Minecraft.’
Hanson’s elevated notion evaporated. ‘I don’t get what it is.’
‘A McDonalds.’
Hanson thought over her meeting with Charlie Hanson. ‘I need to talk to you, Maisie.’
Maisie groaned. ‘I said I’d tidy my room.’
‘No, not that. Remember I said I was going to arrange to see your grandfather?’ Maisie squirmed to look up her. ‘Well, I have.’
The iPad tumbled as Maisie leapt up, hands flying to her mouth. ‘What happened? What’s he like? What did he say? Did he ask about me?’
‘Of course he did. He wants to see you.’
Hanson smoothed the vibrant hair from Maisie’s face. ‘What’s he like? Let me see. He’s a big man. Tall. He’s got a kind face and he’s gentle. Just like I remember.’ She paused. ‘What else?’
‘Come on, Mum!’
Hanson pulled her close. ‘He’s around sixty years old. I think he’s handsome.’ She looked down at Maisie. ‘His hair is mostly dark brown but with a little grey.’ She guessed Maisie’s next question. ‘I couldn’t ask him about the red-haired man in the picture, Maisie. He and I have never talked about anything to do with that.’
She understood Maisie’s need to know. She wanted to know about him too.
‘So? What happens now?’ demanded Maisie.
‘He’s going to come here to the house.’ Maisie looked overjoyed. ‘I said I’d ring him and fix the date,’ she said, fighting to keep her voice even.
‘Ask him to have dinner with us, Mum. Or tea. I could make cupcakes!’
THIRTY-SIX
Nuttall was inside UCU when Hanson arrived the following morning. She sat next to Julian, picking up the drift of Nuttall’s discourse with her colleagues.
‘You’re about to lose the Williams case. It’s heading down there again.’ He pointed to the floor. The basement cold case store. He glanced at the board then gave each of them an intent look. ‘But I’ve told the chief how hard you’re working and he’s agreed to fund three more days.’
Surprised, Hanson looked up at him. She’d revised her initial opinion of him. Watts was probably right when he’d described Nuttall as a time-server reaching his swansong but she suspected there was more to him than that.
Nuttall looked around the table at them. ‘So, what’s your problem with it?’ He didn’t wait for a response. ‘There isn’t one. Forget the attack on the Bennett woman. This is a cold case unit. Focus all your efforts on the Williams murder. Get that sorted. If the attack is connected you’ll have sorted that as well. Job done.’
Hanson looked across at her colleagues. Watts’ eyes were fixed on the table, his arms folded. It was Corrigan who responded. ‘The Williams case is difficult because we don’t have a cause of death and we haven’t established a clear motive.’
Nuttall frowned. ‘Work the physical evidence. Some cases are motiveless. I should know. I’ve come across a few.’
Hanson shook her head. ‘There’s no such thing as a motiveless crime. We might not be able to identify what it is or understand it, but it is there.’
He gave her a direct look. ‘Then you’d better find it. Remember: three days.’
He stood, walked to the door and out.
The silence was broken by Watts, his hands linked behind his head, his eyes on the view beyond the window. ‘Motive.’ He let his arms drop and looked at Hanson. ‘Any ideas?’
She felt all eyes on her. ‘I had the idea it might be a neck fetish.’ She pointed at the board. ‘I asked Julian to do a search of neck fetish offenders in the West Midlands. It produced three hits: deceased or incarcerated for several years.’
Hearing Watts’s heavy sigh she added, ‘It’s possible the man who killed Elizabeth and attacked Amy Bennett has a neck fetish and he’s managed to meet that need without coming to police attention.’
Watts gave her a tired look. ‘It’s hard to pick up on that kind of thing. We had a spate of assaults on women a few years back. The bloke knocked them down and took their handbags. They were investigated as muggings. It took us months to realise that what he was after was their lipsticks. When we eventually tracked him down, he had them all lined up on a shelf. Very keen he was to tell us that he didn’t approve of lip gloss. Had to be lipstick. What’s the psychology say about fetish?’
She summarised. ‘Fetish is a link an individual makes between sexual arousal and say, a part of the body, the foot, the neck, or an inanimate object such as a lipstick. It can be anything from the mundane to the really odd. The connection usually occurs early in an individual’s development.’ Mother. ‘Over time it’s reinforced by fantasy. It’s not unknown to examine the early lives of such offenders and find that they showed those behaviours within their family setting.’
‘Any of our POIs strike you as fetish types?’ asked Corrigan.
She looked up at the names listed on the board and shook her head. ‘I can’t say. We don’t have enough information about them. People guard their fetishes because it’s intensely personal behaviour. It’s not as unusual as you might think and it doesn’t necessarily lead to lawbreaking but they can still fear censure from people who might not understand.’
Personal behaviour. Myers had suggested that Elizabeth’s killer was talking about something personal.
‘What about Malahide?’ asked Watts. ‘You saw his flat, the stuff in it.’
Hanson knew she was on uncertain ground. ‘We don’t know a lot about his personal life but what we saw suggests that Aiden Malahide is a highly anxious person, possibly somewhat depressed. The way he lives reflects his need for control.’
Watts asked, ‘Why’s he need the control?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. You’ll need to ask him. He might tell you.’
‘Next chance we get, we’ll do that. I’ve still got him in the frame.’ He went to the board and pointed. ‘I’ve also been thinking about Vickers, Elizabeth Williams’ tutor. He said something which stuck in my mind. See? “Head down, other parts of the anatomy up”.’ He looked at Hanson. ‘You tick me off for not being politically correct but that’s not something I’d say to a young female. We’ve only got his word that he never acted on his initial advance to Williams and he was at it before that, with Chloe Jacobs.’
Corrigan came to the board to encircle Vickers’ name. ‘And like you just said, there’s still Malahide. He’s admitted face-to-face contact with Elizabeth Williams at a time Renfrew was deserted. Who knows what else he might not be telling us?’
Watts looked gratified. ‘And he’s the one with the creepy-looking flat two floors up.’
Hanson rolled her eyes. ‘Did you hear what I just said about him?’
He sat on the edge of the table. ‘The POIs are all we’ve got, apart from the trace evidence, the foot and tyre prints which are no use to us until we’ve got a suspect.’
He gave his face a brisk rub. ‘Right. I’m off Upstairs to find out what they’ve got on Gill and whether there’s any possibility of a link between him and our two cases.’
Hanson glanced at Corrigan who was getting ready to leave. He had more taser training scheduled.
She watched as they left, reflecting on her dislike of all weapons. She’d fired a gun once in her life, during a previous UCU case. She’d done it to protect herself and Corrigan who was lying bleeding on the floor in front of her, dying for all she
knew at the time.
Alone but for Julian surrounded by his textbooks, she took the printed sheets from her briefcase and spread them on the table in front of her.
‘What does all this give us?’ she said to herself.
Julian looked up. ‘Try talking it through, Kate.’
She realised that she’d said the words aloud. How could she explain it when she could hardly verbalise it to herself? She gazed at him, thinking how far he’d come in the last two years. He might get it.
‘You know how in our heads there are impressions, wisps of ideas? We gather in loads of data and it sits there, imperfectly stored because maybe it didn’t mean anything when we captured it? And then other stuff comes along but the wisps stay there, just wafting around.’ She pointed to the sheets on the table in front of her. ‘I’m hoping that by going through all of this I’ll see some connections and it’ll start making sense.’ She looked across at him. ‘I’ve already tried and so far I’m nowhere.’
‘Anything I can do?’
She looked at him, thinking that whatever work he eventually chose, he’d succeed. Because he cared about what he did. He was as driven as she was.
‘Thanks for the offer but you’ve got your own work.’ She paused. ‘You like analysis don’t you, Julian?’
‘Yeah. It makes my spirit fly,’ he said with no trace of embarrassment.
‘And what hypothesis have you formed from that?’ she asked.
He grinned. ‘That my future job is almost certainly as a statistical analyst in criminology.’
‘Absolutely,’ she said, knowing that he’d have the whole world in which to pursue it. She said so.
He shook his head. ‘No. I leave that constant moving around to my dad.’
She knew a little about his father, none of it heart-warming. A wealthy man who lived his life in one or other of the three homes he owned on as many continents. He showed little interest in, or commitment to, Julian, his one child.
‘I like stability. I need it,’ he said.
Hanson recalled her twenty-one-year-old self.
No way was I as insightful as Julian is. I didn’t have a clue who I was or where I was heading, even though I was working on my doctorate at the university, Kevin was already in my life and Maisie a not-so-distant promise.
She recalled her recent contact with the man she regarded as her father. It had been too long coming.
Julian stood. ‘I’m going to get some food but I’ll be back.’
Reaching into her bag for a ponytail band, she slipped it onto her hair. She looked down at the sheets and the words of a killer; an attacker who had spoken to his victims. Forget the similarities of the words and statements, she told herself. Look beyond them. Search for the underlying meaning.
‘Come on. What kind of person are you? What are you about? Tell me.’
She studied the printed lines, noting how he’d flagged up his intentions: ‘I’m going to turn you round …’ Amy had described what he did as ‘planned’, a man with ringless hands who’d been gentle at times, reassuring her that everything would be OK. This man who’d attacked her had exhibited some capacity to care. She made a quick note, then ran her fingers across her forehead. On the other hand, Watts was right. That same man had also shown a capacity for violence in his pursuit of what he wanted.
‘What was it you wanted? What was at the heart of all of this? If it was strangulation, why didn’t you do it?’
She glanced at more lines. Myers had described Elizabeth’s murderer as wanting her to do or give him something. According to Amy, he’d shouted at her for ‘spoiling it’. She shook her head. She’d heard similar sentiments from murderers and rapists. They merely fitted the fantasy-based thinking she assumed was at the heart of these cases. They did not reveal the exact nature of the motivation.
Rotating her shoulders, she refocused, one line capturing her attention: ‘I have to see your eyes blaze.’ Amy had described her physical responses during the attack, the pounding in her ears, her difficulty in breathing, the feeling that she was passing out – yet, she’d also described his touch on her neck as gentle. She’d likened it to the touch of her partner.
Hanson stared at the words, drilling down to find their core. Were Amy’s physical responses borne out of fear, rather than anything specific her attacker did?
She traced her finger along a line: ‘… knew he was going to hurt me … like strangle me … but he didn’t.’ Whatever his aim, it had been something he wanted to share with Amy. And to do that her eyes had to be open and on his. He’d told Amy that she needed somebody like him to keep her safe. She went forward a couple of pages, looking for Myers’ words about safety. ‘You could have been safe but you didn’t stay.’
Hanson’s eyes narrowed on the words. She turned back again, to what he’d said to Amy: ‘… see your eyes blaze’. She read the line aloud, adding her own emphasis. ‘I have to see your eyes blaze.’ Or maybe, ‘I have to see your eyes blaze.’
Her heartbeat picked up tempo. She searched her notes, knowing now what she was looking for. She stopped at what Amy Bennett had said: ‘It wasn’t a hard pressure but I felt faint.’ She gasped as half-formed ideas merged. She went back to what Myers had said: ‘… you didn’t stay.’ She placed both hands over her face, sudden realisation cutting through her thinking like a laser. She was on her feet.
‘Myers misheard. It wasn’t “stay”. It was “say”.’
She was at the board, the multiple fragmentary statements, questions, directives, ideas and assumptions she and her colleagues had heard, discussed and written down over many days sending her brain’s neurones scrambling to transmit informational links across synapses via multiple electrical signals. She closed her eyes. It all came down to five words.
Look at me. Blaze. Say.
She had the motive.
She breathed deeply for what seemed like the first time in hours. Her eyes drifted over the board, halted by a single line.
‘I should have seen the assumption. He went straight to murder.’
The final connections came on a crescendo of triggers and signals inside her head. Safe as a false promise. Clothes to conceal. It was about sex after all. Sex of a kind. The kind which links sex to a particular part of the body, in these two cases, the neck. Elizabeth Williams died because her killer had a compulsion. He expressed it through a rhythmic stopping of her breath, a calculated hold-and-release-hold-and-release. It was deadly because he was driven to witness the shadow of death in her eyes.
‘For him, it’s the ultimate experience,’ she whispered.
Dazed by the speed of the realisations, she turned from the board then back. ‘He as good as told me. He said it, loud and clear but I was too busy looking at the person, rather than listening to the words. Why did it take me so long to get it?’
She rested her head against the cool board. He was dangerous. He had to be stopped. But I have to be sure.
At the desktop computer she summoned a list of hire firms, her heart sinking. So many. Too many. She didn’t have the time and couldn’t see a way to obtain the details she needed. It didn’t matter. She was sure. It’s how it had to have been. He’d gambled on Elizabeth Williams remaining concealed long enough to obscure any signs of what he’d done. But UCU had the words he’d said to her in death. They had Amy Bennett’s testimony in similar words. Would it be enough to stop him, send him for trial?
He has to tell me what he did.
She was on her feet. Watts and Corrigan weren’t available. There wasn’t time to look for Julian but his belongings were still here. He would be back. Going to the board she added words and a name in big letters. She trusted Julian. He was a nimble thinker. He would see it. He would understand.
Reaching for her keys she was out of the door and heading for her car.
THIRTY-SEVEN
There were no windows open on any floor. No sign of human activity anywhere. Was she too late? One of the garage doors was slightly open. Hanson went
to it, pulled it open and peered inside. A Shogun. She left the door as she’d found it and walked on to the main entrance. She reached for the doorknob. One turn and the door swung slowly open. Someone had to be here. She stepped into the hall. The whole building was silent.
She paused at Aiden Malahide’s sumptuous office, glanced inside then behind the door. It was empty. She thought of the pale wool rug now at headquarters. One person knew the significance of that rug gripped tight by a young woman as air left her chest and none replaced it.
One of the desk drawers was slightly open. She went to it. Inside was a passport and money. He couldn’t be allowed to leave, to disappear because his compulsion would create future victims.
She walked the straight hall and through the rear door into sun, scents and heavy buzzing. Pollen-heavy bees were hovering over the lavender. She looked at the summer house, its windows blind, dead eyes. She knew what had happened to Elizabeth Williams and to Amy Bennett. She knew why. She knew his secret.
Despite the heat out here she felt cold. She’d seen his passport but was it possible that in a rush of remorse he’d used his compulsion to self-destruct? Had he created a kind of poetic justice in all of this?
Hardly breathing she approached the summer house and stood, listening. There was no sound from within. If he was inside, destroyed rather than fled, she had to know. She pushed the handle, paused then gave it a sharp tug. The door resisted. Another tug and it gave. The internal heat hit her face. She went inside.
There was a narrow bed covered by a large, woven quilt, its folds reaching the floor. She gazed down at vermillion splotches, the colour of paw prints on pale tiles. She felt perspiration ooze onto her face. She ran her finger over one of the splotches. Dry. Dust-laden. Paint.
If there was a self-destructive finale here, she knew it wouldn’t be bloody. It would be corded, knotted, maybe swathed in plastic. Rising, she looked at the bed and the hanging folds of the quilt. If he was beneath it she had to know.
She grasped its folds and tore it away, letting it fall limp at her feet. She went to her knees, ready to confront whatever lay in the dark space. There was nothing. It was empty.