by Val McDermid
Fiona spread her hands. “I don’t know. But I imagine it was probably because the killer wanted his victims recognized quickly. They were neither of them locals, so it might have taken a little longer to identify them if their faces had been damaged beyond recognition.”
He nodded, partially satisfied by her response. He decided to reserve judgement on this woman who apparently had no difficulty in finding ways to discard the conventional wisdom. “I think it’s better if I don’t ask you your theories now,” he said with another flash of his bright smile. “Better to wait until you have seen where the crimes took place, and then perhaps we could go to the local police headquarters. I have established a control centre there for the investigation.”
“You’re not based in Toledo, I think you said?”
Berrocal shook his head. “I work in Madrid normally. But cities like Toledo have few murders in the course of a year, and most of those will be domestic situations. The result is that they have no one with experience of the more complex type of homicide and so they must bring in a specialist from Madrid. Unfortunately, we have more murders in the city and so someone like me is sent to organize the investigation.”
“That can’t be easy,” Fiona observed. “You must have to be careful of local sensibilities.”
Berrocal shrugged, his fingers drumming on the window ledge. “In some respects. In other ways, it makes it easier for the Toledo officers. When I tread on people’s feet, the local men can spread their hands and say, “Hey, it’s not our fault, it’s that stupid bastard from the big city, coming here and stirring things up and rubbing everybody up the wrong way.” Of course, some of the detectives are a little sensitive, they see my presence as a criticism of them, but I just have to charm them.” His eyes crinkled in a wry smile. “But you must be familiar with these responses too. Like me and my team, you are what my wife calls the visiting fireman.”
Fiona acknowledged his idiom with a half-smile. “Sometimes that has other disadvantages too. It’s possible that my unfamiliarity with a place and its local customs may lead me to place more or less significance on something than it should have.”
He shrugged again. “The other side of the coin is that locals can take for granted what strikes you as an alteration in a pattern, I think.”
“Toledo is very much a tourist city, is that right?” Fiona asked.
“That is correct. It is also the seat of the archbishop, so the bureaucracy of the Church occupies a significant share of the buildings around the cathedral. Between the Church and the tourist trade, there is little room for anything else in the old city. With every year that passes, fewer people live in the old part of Toledo, fewer traditional businesses survive.”
Fiona made a mental note and continued, aiming for a tone of casual interest. “Does that cause ill-feeling among those who are pushed out by the demands of the tourist industry?”
Berrocal grinned. “I think most people are happy to trade a gloomy medieval apartment up five flights of narrow stairs for a building with air and light and an elevator. And a patio or a balcony where they can sit outside and enjoy the air. Not to mention constant running hot water.”
“All the same…” Fiona chose her words carefully. “I grew up in a small town in the north of England. Not much more than a village, really. It’s a very pretty village, right in the heart of the Derbyshire Peak District. The perfect place to go walking from, or to visit the caverns that are open to the public. Over the years, more and more tourists came. Whenever cottages went on the market, they were bought up by outsiders and turned into holiday homes. Every shop in the main street became a tearoom or a craft shop. All the pubs were more interested in catering to day-trippers than locals. You couldn’t stroll down the main street or park your car near your own house in the summer months. By the time I left home, half the population would change weekly, holiday makers who turned up with a carload of shopping. All they ever bought locally was bread and milk. The village lost its heart. It became a tourist dormitory. And the locals who were pushed out in the process weren’t happy at all. At a guess, I’d say there must be some native Toledans who don’t like what’s happening to their city.”
Berrocal gave her a shrewd look. He was sharp enough to realize this was no idle conversation. Following on as it had from her easy dismissal of the obvious analysis of the background of the killer, he understood that she was trying to tell him something. “You think someone is killing people because he doesn’t like tourists?” He tried to keep the incredulity from his voice. This woman had, after all, come with the imprimatur of Scotland Yard.
Fiona turned away from his eyes and stared out across the rolling green fields they were now passing through. “I don’t think it’s quite that simple, Major Berrocal. And really I don’t want to theorize ahead of the data. But I do think your killer is motivated by something rather more out of the ordinary than sexual frustration.”
“OK. How do you want to work this?”
“What I’d like to do is precisely what you’ve suggested. I’d like to look at the sites where the bodies were displayed and then back at your incident room, I’d like to look at the crime-scene photographs and read the pathology reports in full. I’d also like to see the guide books that were found at the scenes of the crimes, if that would be possible. And then I would like to go back to my hotel room and think about what I’ve seen.”
He nodded. “Whatever you wish.”
“I would also appreciate it if you could extract from your Toledan colleagues any reports of vandalism against tourist sites or hotels or businesses that cater to the tourist trade. And any attacks on tourists themselves. Going back, say, a couple of years. Solved and unsolved, if that’s possible.” She smiled. “I’ll also need a reasonably detailed map of the city that can be scanned into a computer.”
“I will arrange it.” He inclined his head in a half-bow. “Already you have shown me a different way of looking at these cases.”
Fiona shifted in her seat so she was staring ahead over the driver’s shoulder. “I hope so. When I look at a crime, I don’t look with the same eyes as a detective. I’m searching for the psychological as well as the solid practical elements that link that one crime to others. I’m also looking for geographical clusters. But as well as that, I’m watching out for other signals that can tell me something about the criminal.”
“So then you can figure out the way his mind works?”
Fiona frowned. “It’s not so much his motivation I’m trying to get at. It’s more about developing a sense of how he looks at the world. Motivation is highly individualistic. But what we all have in common is that we construct our own identities based on what we’ve learned of the world. So the way a criminal commits his crimes is a reflection of the way he lives the rest of his life. Where he feels comfortable, both physically and mentally. I’m looking for patterns of behaviour in the crime that give me clues to how he behaves when he’s going about his ordinary business.”
She gave a wry smile and continued. “Some of my colleagues have a different approach which you’re probably more familiar with. They look at the crimes and seek a set of symptoms in an offender’s past that have produced a particular way of life in the present. I’ve never found that very helpful. For my money, too many people share the same sort of background and don’t turn out to be psychopathic serial offenders for it to be a precise diagnostic tool. I’m not saying that my methods necessarily always produce a more accurate result, but that’s more because I seldom have sufficient data rather than that the methods themselves are flawed. There isn’t a magic formula, Major. But my training is so divergent from that of a police officer that I’m bound to look at things from a different perspective. Between us, we see this thing in stereo, rather than in mono. I can’t help believing that has to give us an advantage over the criminal.”
“That’s why you’re here, Doctor.” Berrocal leaned forward and said something in rapid Spanish to the driver. They were approaching a spra
wl of modern suburban housing, the road lined with concrete boxes containing furniture stores, car showrooms and small businesses. He sat back and took out a packet of cigarettes, twiddling them restlessly between his fingers. “Ten minutes more. Then I can have a cigarette and you can go to work.”
This time, Fiona’s smile was grim. “I can hardly wait.” Extract from Decoding of Exhibit P13⁄4599 Uzqhq dftag stfyg dpqdo agxpn qeaqm ek. Upuym suzpq ufarf qzngf uzykt qmpuf tmpnq qzyqe ekmzp rdust fqzuz s…
The document in question utilizes a simple transliteration (am, b=n, etc) and the arrangement of letters into groups of five instead of the normal layout of the words. What follows is a transcription of the coded material, with appropriate punctuation added for sense.
J.M. Arthur, Document Examiner. I never thought murder could be so easy. I’d Imagined It often, but in my head it had been messy and frightening. The reality is quite different. The power surge, that’s what carries you through it. Imagination really doesn’t prepare you for the real thing. The other mistake I made was in thinking murder always had to be part of something else. But the truth is, murder can be an end in itself. Sometimes, people have to pay for what they have done, and taking their lives is the only way to do it. I never thought I was going to be a murderer. I had my life sorted out. Bat then something shifted, and I could see them laughing at me, flaunting their so-called success in my face. I’d be a poor excuse for a man if I just took provocation like that on the chin. Nobody knows how they’ll react when their life gets stolen by people who don’t give a toss who gets hurt. Well, I’ve never been the sort who just sits back and lets things happen, and I’m going to make them pay. I’m going to change the rules. But I’m not going to be obvious. I’m going to be subtle and choose my targets carefully. This time, they won’t be able to ignore me. They won’t be able to write me off. I’ll be writing them off, writing their names in blood, and sending a message loud and clear. They’re responsible for their own downfall, that’s what I’ll be saying. Live by the word, die by the word. It’s not hard to track down thriller writers. I’m used to watching people, I’ve been doing it for years. It doesn’t hurt that they’re all so vain. The Internet is clogged up with their websites and they give interviews right, left and centre. And they’re always doing public appearances. So it made sense to start with somebody who has a really high profile, to make my job as easy as it could be. I decided the best way to make my point was to give them a real taste of their own medicine. It wouldn’t be enough just to kill them. I wanted it to be clear right from the word go that there was nothing accidental about what was going on. And knowing what was coming would make them suffer all the more. Satisfaction, that’s what I want. To make the punishment fit the crime, I have to get the crime right, and now I’ve made my list. I ranked them according to how easy I thought it would be to do them and that’s how I got my candidates for execution.
Drew Shand
Jane Ellas
Georgia tester
Kit Martin
Enya Flannery
Jonathan Lewis Now all I have to do is figure out exactly how to take them down. They put me in this cage. But they should know that caged animals turn savage. They’ve brought this on their own heads.
SEVEN
Fiona scrambled down the narrow path, glad she’d worn flat-soled loafers to travel in. It wasn’t that it was particularly steep, but the beaten ochre earth was dotted with small stones that would have been perilous to the ankles in any sort of heel. She made a mental note to check what footwear Martina Albrecht had been wearing at the time of her death. It might give her some indication as to how willingly she’d accompanied her killer to the scene of her murder.
Berrocal slowed down ahead of her and turned back, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke that reminded Fiona of the dried camel dung fires of the Northern Sahara. “You OK?” he asked.
“Fine,” she answered, catching up and using the pause to scan her surroundings. They were in a narrow, flat-bottomed valley that curved away from the road. The high bluffs on either side had already cut off the line of sight to the viaduct that carried the circunvalacion around the southern bank of the Tagus. From here in, there would have been no chance of being caught in the headlights of a passing car. The sides of the valley were covered in scrubby vegetation, with a few small trees straggling up the gentler slopes.
“We are almost there,” Berrocal said. “You see those bushes ahead? It’s just past there.” He set off again, Fiona in his wake.
“He must have had a torch,” she observed as the tall shrubs closed around them, almost meeting over their heads. Berrocal’s smoke was forced back into her face and she tried to avoid breathing through her nose until they were in the open again.
“I don’t think she would have come with him otherwise,” Berrocal said. “There’s no sign of a struggle anywhere by the road or on the path.”
“What was she wearing on her feet?”
Berrocal turned and flashed her a smile, as if rewarding a bright pupil.
“Flat sandals. Yes, she probably walked into the trap without thinking twice about it.”
They emerged on the other side of the bushes in a small clearing. On the far side, a pair of gnarled olive trees flanked the path. A single uniformed officer stood in the shade at the entrance to the glade. He started forward, his hand going to his pistol butt. When he saw it was Berrocal, he snapped a salute and stepped back. The whole area was still enclosed in the familiar plastic crime-scene tapes, now looking weatherbeaten and untidy. Fiona could see the irregular reddish-brown stain on the path and the surrounding vegetation, the only obvious sign that this had been the scene of violent death. Incongruously, she could hear the twittering of birds above the distant hum of traffic. She always found herself marvelling at the way the world managed to continue apparently oblivious to the tragedy that had played itself out only yards away.
After Lesley, she had found herself walking the streets of the city where it had happened, angry and frustrated that people could carry on as if nothing had changed, as if it was nothing to do with them. Of course, in a narrow sense, it was no direct concern of theirs. But Fiona had believed then as she believed now that societies got the criminals they deserved. Brutal crimes didn’t spring from nowhere; their seeds lay in the wider crimes of the community they impinged on. It wasn’t a popular view among law enforcement, and when she was working with the police, Fiona kept her views to herself.
So she looked around without comment. There wasn’t much to say other than the obvious. And Fiona had never liked stating the obvious.
Berrocal pointed to the bloodstained area, grinding his cigarette butt underfoot. “She was found lying towards the rear of the blood, not in it. It adds weight to the theory that he was behind her and she was standing up when he cut her throat. Mercifully quick, the pathologist says. Then, it looks as if he stepped back and let her fall.”
“The vaginal injuries were postmortem?” Fiona asked.
“Yes. He straddled her, we think. The grass is flattened on either side of her hips, as if someone had kneeled there. He cut her panties away, probably with the same blade. There were smudges of blood on the material. Then he broke the wine bottle on the ground and’—Berrocal cleared his throat ‘he inserted the broken bottle into her vagina. With considerable force. Several times. The glass fragments are on the right-hand side of the body, which supports the idea that he was right-handed.”
Fiona crossed to the side of the clearing and looked at the crime scene from the point of view the killer would have had. “The thing that strikes me most about this is what I mentioned earlier. The sexual mutilations are postmortem, which is unusual. There’s no sign of any kind of sexual activity before the attack. He went straight for the kill. No foreplay.”
Berrocal nodded. “You think this is significant?”
“It’s a marker of someone who feels very lacking in power. There’s nothing tentative about it either. It reveals a great deal of an
ger. So when I’m looking for linked crimes, I’ll be bearing in mind that they will probably exhibit similar markers.” Fiona hitched up her trousers, crouched down and studied the ground. There was no particular reason for her to do this. In truth, she learned very little from looking at crime scenes. She had never discovered anything that wasn’t covered by the files she would read later. But police officers expected her to absorb something from where the body had been found. It was almost a superstition, and so she’d long ago decided it was easier to humour them rather than start a partnership wrong-footed.
She stood up. “Thanks for letting me see this.”
“Does it tell you anything you didn’t know before?” Berrocal asked, stepping to one side and indicating she should precede him up the path.
The dreaded question. “It confirms one hypothesis,” she said. “Your killer knows his territory well. This isn’t the sort of place that a casual visitor would know about.”
“A local man, then?”
“I think that’s a safe assumption,” she said firmly. “He doesn’t just know about the existence of this place, he knows what happened here and what it means.” She heard the click of his lighter. Berrocal was clearly determined to get his blood-nicotine levels back to normal after an hour’s confinement in the car.
As they rounded the curve and the road came into sight, Fiona stopped abruptly. A miniature train with a string of grubby white carriages was grinding its noisy way across the viaduct. She could hear the tinny sound of a commentary, although it was too far away to make out any of the words. “What on earth is that?” she asked, pointing to the train and turning to Berrocal.
He raised his eyebrows in a world-weary expression. “They call it the Tren Real,” he sighed. “The Royal Train. It takes tourists on a ride through the old city and round the circunvalacion.”