Without Conscience

by Michael Kerr

“Does what he’s written help us, then?”

  “You’ve read it.”

  “I know. But he writes in probabilities, nothing definite. The first murder could have been a one-off; a rape attempt that went wrong. Although that wouldn’t explain the savagery involved. The second one confirmed that we had a real fruitcake. And we didn’t need a trick-cyclist to tell us that.”

  “Ross is painting a picture of the type that did it. It’s the only ball we’ve got to run with. He’s positive that the Sellars woman is connected with whoever’s doing this. He also confirms that it won’t stop, and that the next killing will probably take place on the first Friday of the month and in a similar location to where we found the others.”

  “That’s not a great leap of imagination, boss. It would follow the pattern. I just find it hard to swallow that he knows the mental state of the guy. He seems sure that this is someone in their twenties or thirties, white and a loner, who was abused physically and/or mentally in childhood. He then goes on to say that he suspects it to be an only child from a broken marriage, who may well have tortured animals as a kid, and had a predilection for starting fires. Isn’t that the standard pitch of most profilers?”

  “It’s based on what they know from experience,” Barney said. “This sick type of individual must fit a pattern that Ross has seen many times before.”

  “We need a lot more than he’s given us.”

  “There would be more, if the murders had been committed inside the women’s homes. All we have are corpses that have had their hearts cut out and sharpened branches rammed up their vaginas. So far, we’ve hardly any forensic evidence to work with. There was no matching hair, just a few fibres, and no prints or body fluids, other than those of the victims. Even scrapings from the fingernails came up blank. Neither of the women had managed to scratch their attacker. The scenes were clean.”

  Mike finished his coffee and said, “Knowing the type that we’re looking for isn’t going to stop it happening again, is it?”

  “No. Unless we find the lunatic bearing a grudge against Caroline Sellars, and damn quick, then the tally will go up. Get the team together and make sure that they all familiarise themselves with this profile. I want them to know what type of sick bastard we’re after.”

  By the third week of October, only one prime suspect had been found out of all the names of colleagues, friends and ex-lovers that Caroline had furnished.

  Jason Tyler was a thirty-year-old city dealer; a single man who lived alone in an up-market loft conversion in Fulham, whom Caroline had suffered a brief affair with three years previously. She had ended it due to his brashness, flashes of bad temper, and above all, because of his almost narcissistic personality. She had come to think of him as immature; an overgrown ex-public schoolboy with only one real interest in life, himself.

  The wealthy broker was good-looking, confident, and initially eminently desirable. Unfortunately, the candy coating covered a shallow and pretentious centre.

  “What do you think, Caroline?” Barney said, facing her across the coffee table in the lounge of the safe house that she had been moved to, which was a fifties bungalow located on a quiet, tree lined avenue in west London.

  “I think that Jason is basically a wimp. He would probably faint at the sight of blood. He’s the last person I would suspect of being capable of murder.”

  “You did dump him, though. Right?”

  “Yes. But he was too obsessed with himself to give a shit. He will have told all of his friends that he got bored and ditched me. It wasn’t as though he was in love with me. I don’t think he is capable of loving anyone but himself.”

  “He has no alibi for when either of the murders were committed. We have to assume that he may harbour you ill-will, and that whether you realise it or not, could have committed these crimes and sent you the threatening notes.”

  “How many single men would have an alibi for six o’clock in the bloody morning?” Caroline said sharply, her face reddening with impatience and anger. “I’m going mad, stuck in this rat hole. I feel like a prisoner, Inspector. My life is falling apart around me, and I haven’t done anything to warrant it.”

  Standing up, Barney gave the young woman a hard look. “I can appreciate that you are being inconvenienced, Ms Sellars. Hopefully it won’t be for too long. But having said that, you know that someone has picked you out and fixated on you. At some point if we don’t apprehend him, he will try to kill you in a very unpleasant and probably protracted manner. We want to ensure that he doesn’t find and harm you.”

  “I understand that. But how long―?”

  “Is a piece of string?” Barney said. “Bear with us. The worst-case scenario is that you have to live under protection like that author Salman Rushdi did for so long. And like he did, you’ll just have to adapt. The alternative is literally risking your life every second of every day. It’s your choice. But to be realistic, I don’t think you have one, do you?”

  Caroline lowered her head and hugged her knees. Barney thought that she looked like a small, frightened child. She hadn’t asked for any of this, but no one said life was fair.

  “I’ll keep in touch and let you know of any developments,” Barney said in a gentler voice as he patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “Just hang in there and try to think of this as time out.”

  Caroline looked up, met his eyes and saw compassion. “I needed to be reminded of the position I’m in,” she said. “Thank you for laying it on the line. But I still don’t think that Jason is the man that you’re after.”

  “Maybe not,” Barney said. “But we need to know that he isn’t.”

  Barney left the bungalow, and Mike – who had stayed outside by the car and had been chatting to one of the armed Witness Protection officers – drove them back to the city.

  “Stop when you find a decent looking pub and we’ll have a sandwich and a pint,” Barney said, glancing at his wristwatch and noting the date as well as the time. A part of him was already wishing his life away; he was almost looking forward to retirement. He had the gut feeling that this case would not only be his last big one, but that it was stacking up to be the worst and most grisly he had ever been involved with.

  “Are you all right?” Mike said.

  Barney had drifted; was staring down at the dashboard, his eyes unfocused. Mike had pulled into the car park of an old pub that had survived seemingly unchanged since the early eighteenth century. The crumbling brickwork and weathered marble colonnades of its exterior looked original, and had seen far better days.

  “Uh, yeah, I was just wool-gathering,” Barney said, regrouping. “Is this the best brown jug you could find?”

  “It has character, and they serve a good pint,” Mike said as he climbed out of the car.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  From the little-used B road that ran along the southern lip of the valley, the grand house could have been mistaken for the stately home it had once been. Designed in part by Sir John Vanbrugh in 1716, it had, since 1958, served a far more lugubrious function, which was in all probability causing the many – but no more – Earls of Cranbrook to turn in their neglected family crypt.

  Cranbrook House was now The Cranbrook Hospital for the Criminally Insane, whose inmates, in the main, were not impressed by their palatial and grandiose asylum. Mark had never ceased to be amazed by the establishment, and the lush setting that it seemed to grow from and be a part of. Being an American, he was in awe of British history, and in particular of many buildings that had been erected many centuries before his country had been colonised by whites. He showed his ID to the security guard, and at the touch of a button the chain-link gates rolled back to allow him entry to the grounds. On his right was the Great Lake, which abounded with mallards, swans, greylag and Canada geese, herons and crested grebes. The large expanse of water was also a haven for the bream, roach, perch, tench and giant pike that inhabited its depths.

  Driving through the grey veils of morning mist, along the tree-line
d avenue that stretched away from him arrow-straight, Mark thought the house a sombre, Gothic presence that squatted in threatening fashion in the distance. Its present-day function seemed fitting. As the fictional Hill House – so disturbingly used as a centrepiece by Shirley Jackson in her classic tale – Cranbrook held darkness within its walls. To those with imagination it could have been alive, and undoubtedly evil and insane. Even on brighter days, as the sun bathed it in ochre splendour, it exuded a singularly wicked presence. Could malevolence become somehow infused with the bricks, mortar and timber of such a residence? Had murder, mayhem, suicide and debauchery taken place within its environs down the centuries, for the pain, horror and violence to be soaked up like water or blood in a sponge?

  Mark smiled to himself as he parked, exited the car and cast off the flight of fancy. At the entrance door to the hospital, he tapped in the four digit number to gain access to the west wing, where he collected his security keys from a dour-faced officer and took the stairs up to his office, which was situated on the third floor, above the residential dormitories, cells and the isolation ward.

  After leafing through an inmate’s file and making himself a coffee, Mark phoned E ward and asked Martin, one of the orderlies, to escort Billy Hicks to his office. In due course the inmate arrived, and thanking Martin, who then left, Mark motioned for Billy to take a seat.

  Billy was due his six-monthly evaluation. It was an unnecessary but required part of his treatment plan, as it was termed. Mark knew that Billy had remained unchanged since the last formal interview back in May, but records had to be updated.

  “Please don’t do that, Billy,” Mark said as the young man slid his hand down the front of his sweat pants and began to masturbate.

  “S... Sorry, Dr Ross,” Billy stammered, removing his hand and looking down petulantly to a spot on the floor between his feet.

  “No need to be sorry, Billy. Just save it for your room. No one is shocked or impressed anymore by your jacking-off in front of them.”

  “Y... You hate me, don’t you?” Billy came back. “You pretend that you c... care, but you despise me. He told me that you’re p... planning to kill me.”

  “Who did, Billy?”

  “The Visitor. He says th...that if I sleep, you’ll murder me in my b... bed.”

  “We’ve been through this before, Billy. You know that the Visitor is just a symptom of your illness, don’t you?”

  “I’ve decided that I’m n... not ill, Dr Ross,” Billy said, his eyes still cast down as he spoke. “It’s you people who are a f... figment of my imagination. I don’t know w... why I talk to you. You don’t exist.”

  “Are you awake or asleep, Billy?”

  “I’m asleep, tr... trapped in a dream by the drugs th...that are forced on me. Only the Visitor is real, and he t... tells me what’s really happening.”

  Billy Hicks was twenty-six. He was tall, gaunt, and wore glasses issued by the hospital, which were fitted with thick plastic safety lenses that made his watery blue eyes appear too large and bulging under the strong magnification. His mousy hair receded from a high, domed brow, and his sharp hooked nose and protruding yellow teeth gave him the look of a rodent, which was accentuated by his quick, jerky movements and mannerisms.

  It had been six years earlier that Billy came to believe that aliens were controlling his parents and younger sister, Vanessa’s, minds. He had been twenty, and the Visitor, which appeared to him in the guise of a coal-black barn owl, had warned him that they would absorb him. He had no choice but to kill them. They were just entities that resembled, talked and acted like his family; impostors. The voice in his head could not be ignored.

  He had phoned the police to report the fact that he had dispatched them. Killing the sleeping doppelgangers with an axe had been easy. He had crept into what had been his parents’ bedroom, and standing at the side of his father’s look-alike, brought the blade down with all his might. The body was still shuddering as he worked the sharp steel head free. And the other alien continued to sleep, lightly snoring and oblivious to what was taking place. A scything slash with the long-handled tool brought a truly deathly hush to the room.

  The Vanessa thing had woken up and was sitting up in bed as he entered the room with the dripping axe. Pushing itself back against the headboard, crying out in terror and pleading in his sister’s voice, had not swayed him from what had to do.

  Confident that the aliens no longer posed a threat, Billy had admitted what he had done, not expecting a medal, but shocked to subsequently be incarcerated in a booby hatch and told that he would probably remain there for the rest of his life.

  He had been diagnosed as suffering from acute paranoid schizophrenia, which in simple terms inferred that he was deranged, showing symptoms of delusional persecution and a disconnection between thoughts, feelings and actions. The vast majority of patients with the disease did not present a threat to society, and once diagnosed, their condition could be stabilised with suitable antipsychotic drugs. That was not the case with Billy. He was a highly dangerous individual, would always be considered as such, and would be monitored continuously and indefinitely. Only the large cocktail of medication administered daily kept him in a manageable and non-aggressive state of mind. Apart from Mark, Billy would only speak spontaneously to one of the male orderlies. Under normal circumstances he was at best surly and uncommunicative.

  “Is there anything you want to talk about?” Mark said.

  Billy gave him a sly glance before looking around furtively to check that the door was closed. “I know all ab... about the red-haired aliens who w... were terminated in Regent’s park,” he said, leaning forward and talking in a whisper.

  Mark felt a sudden coldness in his innards, and fought to control his emotions and remain outwardly impassive, though his heartbeat quickened. “How do you know about them, Billy?”

  “I r... read one of the orderlies’ newspapers, and it w... was also on the radio.”

  “And what do you want to tell me about it?”

  “Th... That whoever is doing it is a fu...fucking hero. But he has to be careful, or he’ll end up being caught and p... put in a place like this.”

  “Okay, Billy. You can go back to the day room now and watch some TV,” Mark said, pushing the call button under the top of his desk.

  As the orderly opened the door, Billy rose and turned to leave. “Bye, Doc,” he said. “I know it’s still y... you in there. I can always tell by the eyes.” He shambled out into the corridor, trying to think what day it was. One day a week they served liver and onions for lunch; his favourite.

  Before the door closed, Mark saw that Billy’s right hand was already down his stained pants, manipulating his ever-turgid member.

  On the morning of the last Saturday in October, Mark drove to Amy’s to spend the weekend. And being almost positive that a third murder would take place on the following Friday, he had cleared his desk, rescheduled a long-standing appointment, and arranged to be off duty on that day. The plan was to return to Richmond on Thursday evening, to put him within easy reach of the scene, when what to his mind was almost inevitable came to pass.

  By-passing Sevenoaks, he joined the M25. Chris De Burgh’s Lady in Red came on the car radio, immediately concentrating his mind on Gemma. She had been wearing a red dress when he had first seen her at a ‘do’ at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. George W. Bush had still been President at the time, and was in attendance. Mark had been on short-term secondment to protection duties, during a period when the top dogs at headquarters thought that interdepartmental experience would give them more versatile, multi-layered agents. The idea had been lousy, lowering levels of effectiveness rather than enhancing them. FBI and Secret Service personnel were not interchangeable; rather two disparate species, whose similar external appearance in dark suits and neckties was all they had in common.

  Mark had found himself focused-in on a young woman, attracted to her in a way that surprised him and played pinball with h
is hormones. She had felt his intense stare, looked around and made eye contact. Instead of politely averting his gaze, he smiled, and continued to appraise her.

  They may never have seen each other again, but fate decreed that they should be together, at least for a short while. The next encounter was on the roof of The Kennedy Center during the intermission of the long running comedy: Shear Madness. It had been running in the Theater Lab since nineteen-eighty-seven, but Mark had never been to see it. Only at the insistence of Alma Merrill – a girl he had been dating sporadically for a year – had he weakened and gone along that evening.

  Sipping Scotch on the rocks and watching the jets drift down over the Potomac to land at Reagan National, Mark had seen his Lady in Red again, wearing a black sheath dress on this occasion, and standing looking out towards the Watergate Complex.

  The guy with her was Neil Kaplan, an investigative journalist with the Post, who Mark knew and determined at that moment to call the next day to find out the identity of the girl who had captivated his heart. It transpired that Neil had been her escort for the evening; no more than a good friend. He told Mark that her name was Gemma Sinclair, that she was English, an embassy official, and most importantly, single and not involved seriously with anyone. Through Neil, Gemma and Mark had met up a week later for a candlelit meal at the Bistro Françoise in Georgetown. If there was such a thing as love at first sight, then they were both smitten before the evening was over. Within six months they had married, and shortly after, Mark quit the bureau. His priorities had drastically altered. He was no longer alone and on a single-minded mission to seek out the beasts that existed in the underbelly of society.

  The meeting with the Memorial Killer – who raped and strangled teenage girls and left them to be found at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Constitution Gardens – had been the final straw; the push that concentrated his mind and gave him the jolt needed to leave the darkness and step out into the light.