Killing the Shadows

by Val McDermid

  Two strides away from the door, the phone on his desk rang. Steve dithered briefly, then turned back. “Steve Preston,” he said.

  “Superintendent Preston? It’s Sergeant Wilson on the duty desk here. We’ve just had a fax from the Spanish Police. Francis Blake’s booked on a flight tomorrow morning from Alicante to Stansted. He’s due to land at eleven-forty-five. I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant. Do we have the flight details?”

  “It’s all on the fax. I’ll get someone to bring it up.”

  “Don’t bother, I’ll pick it up on my way out.” Steve replaced the phone and allowed himself to smile. Now there would be two lines of inquiry running tomorrow. While Joanne searched for the tracks of a killer, Detective Sergeant John Robson and Detective Constable Neil McCartney would be on the tail of someone who might lead them to the same man.

  Definitely a turn for the better, Steve thought, his shoulders noticeably squarer as he headed for the door for the second time.

  WWW

  This was the only place that mattered. This was the sacred place, the sacrificial grove where morality became concrete. Everything in it was chosen. Nothing was accidental except for the shape of the room, about which he could do nothing. There had been a window, but he had covered it with a sheet of plywood then carefully plastered over it so that the wall was entirely smooth. Only the door interrupted the perfect balance of the room. That, however, was acceptable. It rendered the room symmetrical in the way that the human body was symmetrical about the axis of the spine.

  He had papered the walls with lining paper. The wallpaper he wanted had been discontinued years ago, but that was of no consequence. He’d made a stencil of the stylized leaf pattern that had run down it in stripes, had paint specially mixed to replicate the exact hues of green he remembered, and meticulously made a perfect copy. Then he’d covered it in a light coat of colourless yacht varnish, so that any splashes or smudges could be readily cleaned off without damage. That, he felt, was one improvement he could comfortably make.

  The floor had been easy. He’d bought the old parquet tiles from an architectural salvage yard. Maple, the man had told him. From the offices of an old woollen mill down Exeter way. It had taken a few evenings to lay them in the closest possible approximation to the remembered arrangement, but it had been a task more boring than truly challenging.

  The light fitting had come from a junk shop out on the Taunton road. It had been the very first thing he’d bought, the item that had in fact given him the idea for this magical place. It could have been the original, so closely did its three frosted bowls match his memory. As he gazed at it in wonder in the dingy shop, it came to him that he could make the place live again, reassemble it just as it had been, and make of it a temple to the dark desires it had bred in him.

  The furniture was simple. A plain pine table, though the scars on this surface were different from the ones he recalled. Four balloon-backed pine chairs, worn dark along the top from the regular wear of hands pulling them out and pushing them in. A small card table covered in faded green baize, where the tools of his vocation were arrayed, their shining steel glittering in the lamplight. Surgical dissection knives, a butcher’s cleaver, a small handsaw and an oilstone to make sure they were always laser-sharp. Beneath the table was a stack of polystyrene meat trays of various sizes and an industrial-sized roll of cling film.

  The killing took place elsewhere, of course. It didn’t matter where. That was irrelevant to the meaning of the ritual. The method was always the same. Strangulation by ligature was the technical term, he knew that. More reliable than hands, which could slip and slither on skin slick with the sweat of fear. The crucial reason for this choice of means was that it did least traumatic damage to the body. Stabbing and gunshot wounds created such havoc, destroying the perfection he craved.

  Then came the cleansing. Naked to match his sacrifice, he lowered the stripped body into the warm water and opened the veins to allow as much blood as possible to seep out, to prevent the ugly stains of lividity from spoiling the appearance of his oblation. Then he would drain the bath and refill it. The body would be carefully purified with unscented soap, the nails scrubbed, the effluents of sudden death washed away, the body purged of every defilement.

  Finally, he could set about his task. Once the process had begun, he could afford to waste no time. Rigor would start within five or six hours of death, making his job both more difficult and less precise. The body, laid out on the table, pale as a statue, was his votive offering to the strange gods of obsession that he had learned must be placated all those years ago.

  First, the head. He sliced through the sinews and complex structures of the throat and neck with a blade so fine that it left a trace no thicker than a pencil line when he removed the knife to exchange it for a cleaver to separate the skull from the first vertebra. He put the head to one side for later attention. Then he made a Y-incision like a pathologist. He peeled the epidermis back, carefully rolling the body so he could remove the skin from neck to toe, stripping it off like a wet suit till he had revealed a cadaver that resembled an anatomy illustration. The shucked skin went into a bucket at his feet.

  Then he plunged his hands into the still-warm mass of the abdominal cavity, gently lifting the intestines and internal organs clear before slicing them free and placing them in a pile to one side. Next he broke the diaphragm and carefully removed the heart and lungs, putting them symmetrically on the other side of the torso.

  He moved down to the wrists. He severed both neatly, the disarticulation causing him no problem. His career in the butchery trade had provided him with all the basic skills, which he’d refined to an art, he confidently believed. Never had the human body been so perfectly dissected nor so reverently.

  The feet were next. The elbows and knees succeeded them, followed by the separation of the remaining upper limbs at hips and shoulders. Now he was working swiftly and surely, jointing the torso with the efficient movements of an expert at home in his specialism. Time flew by as his hands worked methodically, until all that remained was a mound of jointed meat, the head facing outwards at the top of the table.

  Now, his excitement was at a peak, his heart pounding and his mouth dry. With a soft moan, he took his penis in his blood-slicked hands and carefully slid it into the open mouth that sat like a totem in front of him. Holding the head by the hair, he thrust into the slack-jawed orifice, his body shuddering with his ecstasy.

  All passion spent, he stood with his fists on the table, leaning forward and breathing as heavily as a marathon runner at the finishing tape. The sacrament was over. Nothing remained but the disposal.

  For most killers, that would have presented insurmountable problems. If Dennis Nilsen had managed to develop a more practical way of getting rid of his victims, he would probably have been reducing the homeless statistics of London for years.

  But for a man who owned a wholesale butchery company, it was a simple matter. He possessed dozens of freezers filled with packs of meat. Even if anyone ever made it through the padlocks of the freezer that his staff knew was his own private cache, they would see nothing more suspicious than dozens of freezer packs. Human flesh, fortunately, looked much like any other kind once it was slaughtered.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Dusk on Hampstead Heath had never lost its magic for Fiona, especially at this time of year. By early October after a hot summer, full daylight exposed the dust dulling the turning leaves, the faded tones of the grass, the parched grey of the earth. But as the sky purpled in a hazy sunset, the colours resumed their depth and richness, providing maximum contrast with the city spread out below her.

  Unlike the Heath, the London streets lost all definition in the gathering twilight. The dying sun dazzled off occasional windows in the taller office buildings, flashes of fire studding the amorphous grey mass like synapses sparking in a brain. It wasn’t the wild and varied landscape of the Derbyshire hills, not by a
ny stretch of her imagination, but it reminded her that such places not only existed but were part of her mental map, there to be regained at need. It was a refreshment, of sorts. In the week since she’d read the news of Jane Elias’s death, Fiona had made her way to the Heath at least once a day. Now she settled on a bench at the top of Parliament Hill, content to do nothing more demanding than people-watching for a while.

  Some of the passers-by were familiar from her walks on the Heath; dog-walkers; joggers; a gaggle of skate-boarding boys about to broach their teens; two elderly women from her own street who strode briskly past with a nod of acknowledgement; the bookshop assistant practising her race-walking. Others she’d never seen before. Some were obvious locals, often deep in conversation with partners or children, feet automatic at every junction on the path. Some were obvious tourists, clutching maps and frowning over their struggles to identify landmarks in the dim vista below. Some refused to fit neatly into any category, their pace anywhere between an aimless stroll and an intent hike.

  Which category had Susan Blanchard’s killer fallen into, Fiona wondered? Suddenly alert, she asked herself what had prompted that thought.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t visited the Heath regularly since the murder, although she had tended to avoid the path that passed the crime scene. But why had that thought popped into her head now?

  Fiona scanned the path in both directions, convinced she had registered someone or something that had subconsciously triggered thoughts of the murder. It couldn’t have been the thirty-something couple, the man with their baby strapped to his chest. Nor the middle-aged man with his black Labrador. Nor the two roller-blading teenage girls giggling over some anecdote. Puzzled, she looked around.

  He was hunkered down in a hollow about fifty yards away, perhaps twenty feet from the path. At first glance, he looked like a jogger. Lightweight sweat pants and a T — shirt, training shoes. But he didn’t appear to be breathing hard, as someone who had toiled up the slope would inevitably be. Nor was he staring out at the view. No, he was watching the two girls on the roller blades as they swooped in circles round a wide junction of paths, their voices shrieking laughter and insults at each other.

  When the girls moved off, their bodies hidden from his line of sight by a clump of bushes, he stood up, gazing back along the path to see who else was coming. For a few minutes, no one seemed to capture his attention. Then a pair of adolescents strolled into view, arms entwined, the girl with her head on the boy’s chest. At once, the man’s pose became more alert. His hands thrust into his pockets and he dropped back into his crouch.

  Fiona watched the boy and girl out of sight, then got to her feet and took several paces in the direction of the man. She ostentatiously stared across at him and took out her mobile phone. As soon as he realized what she was doing, he straightened up and started running down the slope towards a path that wound through dense shrubbery.

  Fiona put her phone away. She’d had no intention of calling the police, but it was enough that he thought she might be going to. What could she have reported, after all? A man who appeared to have an interest in watching teenage girls. He had done nothing threatening, nothing particularly out of the ordinary, nothing that couldn’t be explained in tones of outraged protest. Even his sudden departure could be easily justified; he’d paused in his run and was sufficiently rested to continue.

  Innocuous though his behaviour could be made to sound, it had been enough to set Fiona’s antennae jangling. It wasn’t that she suspected the strange man of being anything more than a rather timid voyeur. But it reminded her that Susan Blanchard’s killer must have scouted his killing zone thoroughly before he had struck. He would have walked the ground, not cycled it, taking in every detail of landscape, plotting his escape routes, selecting his victim. He might have been sophisticated enough to disguise his interests entirely, but Fiona doubted it.

  She wondered where he was this evening. The urge to kill again would be strong in him, she reckoned. Where would he be walking now? What reconnaissance would he be making? How would he choose his next location? Would he come back to the Heath? Or would he try another nearby site? Highgate Cemetery? Alexandra Palace? Or did he know his city well enough to move further afield? Where were the borders of his mental map? She knew the limits imposed by his psychology; they were evident in his actions. But where did his geographical boundaries lie?

  Questions she couldn’t answer crowded into her head, shattering the peace she had come to the Heath to find after a trying day at work. Time to walk back home through streets of substantial houses with their grubby stucco and grimy yellow London brickwork turned gloomy by the dirty orange of sodium streetlights. Time to enjoy her own voyeuristic pleasure by glancing in at the lit windows she would pass, savouring glimpses of people’s lives played out in brief snatches caught in her peripheral vision. And of course, the feeling of superiority she couldn’t stifle when she noted some particularly tasteless interior.

  “You should get a life, you sad girl,” she muttered as she spotted a newly decorated living room that incorporated three clashing wallpaper patterns, and made a mental note to share it with Kit later.

  As she pushed open the front door, the phone began to ring. Fiona hurried through to the kitchen and grabbed it on the fourth ring. “Hello?” she said.

  “Dr. Cameron?” The voice had the tinny echo that mobile phones sometimes produce.

  “Is that Major Berrocal?” Fiona asked uncertainly.

  “Si. I am sorry to trouble you at home, but we have some developments here I thought you would want to know.”

  “No, that’s fine, it’s no trouble. Have you found Delgado?” As she spoke, Fiona shrugged out of her jacket and reached for the pad and pen kept by the phone.

  “Not exactly. But we have found where we think he has been hiding out.”

  “That sounds like progress.”

  “Si. And it is thanks to your idea.”

  “He was living in a mausoleum?…A tomb?” Fiona felt a quickening of gratified pride.

  “Not exactly, no. There is a big cemetery to the north of the city that fitted the suggestion you made, so we persuaded the local police to make a search of it. There were no signs that any of the tombs had been opened, so the officers decided we were truly crazy and Delgado was not to be found there. But one of my officers, he is what my wife calls a bulldog, and he went back there today.”

  “And he found something?” Fiona urged.

  “Si. There is a small shed that used to be used by the workmen to store their tools. It has been empty for some years now, but my officer discovered that the boards nailed over the window had been loosened. He went inside and he found what we think is Delgado’s camp. There was food, water, a sleeping bag and some clothes. We compared fingerprints we found with the ones on Delgado’s possessions in the apartment, and the match was perfect.”

  “So, you know he’s been there.”

  “Si. I have men watching the cemetery now, but I fear he will not return. The fruit in the shed was starting to rot, and so I think he must have seen the local police searching and now he will not go back there.”

  “What a disappointment for you,” Fiona said. “So near, and yet so far.”

  “Close, but no cigar, huh? I think he will be dangerous on the run, no?”

  Fiona thought for a brief moment. “I don’t think he’ll panic. So far, his reactions have been quite controlled. He knows the city and the surrounding area well. He probably has a fallback position in mind.”

  Berrocal grunted noncommittally. “What I am afraid of is that he will feel cornered and he will decide to go out in a blaze of glory. Something spectacular. He has nothing to lose now. He knows we know he is the killer. Maybe the best he can hope for is to make his point in one final dramatic way.”

  “You’re thinking a spree killing? A massacre?” Fiona asked.

  “It’s what I fear,” Berrocal acknowledged.

  Fiona sighed. “I can’t think off
hand of another case where a serial killer has moved on to a spree killing. But then, most serial killings are primarily sexual homicides, and I’ve felt from the start that these murders stemmed from a different motive. I honestly don’t know what to say, Major. I have to say your reading of the situation seems plausible to me.”

  There was a long pause between them. Then Berrocal said, “I will make sure the city is on full alert. It’s not a big place. We should be able to find him.”

  Whistling in the dark, Fiona thought. Everyone who deals with serial offenders ends up doing it. “Sit down with someone who has an intimate knowledge of Toledan history,” she advised. “Ask them about sites in the city connected with violent death. If he’s going to strike again, either with a single murder or a spree, that’s what he’ll focus on. And that’s probably where you’ll catch him.”

  “Thank you for the advice.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m sure you must have worked it out for yourself, though. Let me know how you go on.”

  “Of course. Good night, Doctor.”

  “Good night, Major. And good luck.” As Fiona replaced the phone with heavy heart, she heard the click of the front door opening. “Kit?” she called, surprised.

  The door closed and her lover’s familiar voice replied. “Hi, babe, I’m home.”

  He walked into the kitchen and enveloped her in the suffocating hug she had come to find comfort in. Fiona tilted her head back to kiss him, her hazel eyes bright with pleasure. “I wasn’t expecting you till late. I thought you were all going out for supper with Georgia after her event.”

  Kit let her go and crossed to the fridge. “That was the plan. Only, no show without Punch.”

  “What? Georgia decided she needed her beauty sleep more than a night of drunken revelry with reprobate crime writers?” Fiona teased, taking down a couple of glasses for the wine Kit was opening.