The Intrusions

by Stav Sherez

  ‘How do you know he closed her eyes? We kept that from the papers.’

  ‘The fisherman who found the body described her as looking as if she were asleep. He wouldn’t have said that if her eyes were wide open.’

  ‘Very good. But why are you asking this question?’

  He knew it wasn’t fair to hold back and so he told her about Anna and Katrina – the beach photo, the hostel, the abandoned house.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘The eyes always bothered me too. The eyes didn’t fit.’

  ‘What were the migrants like?’

  ‘Big, rough men. Uneducated, from poor farms out in the Annamite mountains. The kind that treat their wives worse than their dogs.’

  ‘But they confessed?’

  There was a slight pause. ‘I interviewed them first. After we presented the evidence, they admitted to raping the girl but not to killing her. I said maybe she slipped and cut herself and we can call it manslaughter and still they refused to admit to killing her. Ten hours me and my partner worked on them but they wouldn’t admit to the murder. At the end of my shift, my boss took over the interrogation and two hours later they’d confessed to everything.’

  ‘He beat them into a confession?’

  ‘No, there were no marks on them. Maybe they couldn’t tell a woman this and waited until a man came along. Maybe they had a sudden return of memory.’

  ‘These things are known to happen,’ Carrigan replied cautiously. ‘What position did you find her in?’

  ‘Position?’

  ‘How was she lying?’

  ‘She had her arms and legs out, like a starfish.’

  Carrigan felt a current running through his hand, the phone hot against his ear. ‘Do you know if she was part of a group? Travelling with other girls?’

  ‘No. She was with her brother.’

  ‘Did you interview any Western witnesses?’

  ‘Nearly a hundred. There was a full moon rave that night. So many people dancing and having fun while a few metres away someone raped that girl and took her life.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you could email me those files? The names of everyone you interviewed?’

  ‘It would be traced. You’d have to make a formal request and it would take weeks.’ She paused. ‘But, if you said a name to me, I can look the files up on my screen . . .’

  ‘Was Anna Becker one of the girls you interviewed?’

  A moment’s hesitation. The sound of a distant ceiling fan slapping the hot wet air. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Katrina Eliot?’

  Another pause. A slight exhalation. Then: ‘Yes.’

  38

  Carrigan found Geneva and Hoffmann in the cafeteria. Officers were downing cups of tea or eating crisps and sandwiches before their shifts. A muted TV showed Syrian cities reduced to rubble, more ruin than the ancient Roman ones surrounding them.

  Carrigan noticed they stopped talking when they saw him and he quickened his step.

  ‘We were just wondering where you’d got to,’ Geneva said. ‘We thought it better to come down here and keep out of Neilson’s way for the time being.’

  Carrigan nodded and sat down. The table was covered in stacks and fans of print-outs. Carrigan saw PANOPTEASE’s avatar on every one.

  ‘Stupid name.’

  ‘No, not so stupid,’ Hoffmann replied. ‘It’s a pun on Panoptes. In Greek mythology, Panoptes is a giant with a hundred eyes, the God of surveillance if you will. Jeremy Bentham later appropriated the name for his concept of the Panopticon.’ Hoffmann picked up one of the files. ‘I’ve been going through his interactions on various forums, comparing it to the profile and it’s definitely him. This fits the profile to a tee.’ He shoved a stack of papers into Carrigan’s hand. ‘His need to taunt, to overcompensate, to dominate and subjugate – it’s all here. This is exactly how I’d expect a hunter-type like him to behave. Calm, controlled, controlling. He’s obviously educated and shows a certain maturity – the patience to take his time and drag it out and the knowledge that in this very patience lies the ultimate reward. Furthermore, his presence on these forums is evidence he has all the requisite knowledge and capability to do what he did to Anna.’

  Carrigan flicked through the print-outs. ‘That’s a circular argument.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it’s true.’

  Carrigan put the papers aside. He updated them on the beach photo. He showed them the newspaper articles on Lucy Brown’s death and explained what led him to call Bali.

  ‘She knew the migrants hadn’t killed her,’ he said, remembering the soft rolling voice of the policewoman. ‘She couldn’t come right out and say it but it was there.’

  ‘Yes. Of course! Why didn’t I see it earlier?’ Hoffmann slapped his forehead. ‘We didn’t find any previous victims because we were looking in the wrong place. The wrong country.’ Hoffmann drained his coffee. ‘The positioning. The drugs. Closing her eyes after she was dead.’ There was a note of triumph in the profiler’s tone as he tabulated the evidence. ‘He might be able to change his MO as suits the circumstances but he can’t change his signature. The positioning and closing their eyes mean something to him, something he feels he needs to enact and re-enact until he’s got it right. Of course, he never will, and he senses this deep inside, which is why we see his rage surfacing further with each subsequent victim. The more he comes up against the truth of himself, the more he blames the victims and the worse he treats them.’

  Carrigan took a sip of Geneva’s tea. His back and shoulders yearned for the oblivion of pills but he resisted. He wasn’t going to let either Hoffmann or Geneva catch him at it again. ‘I don’t buy it. There’s just as many differences as there are similarities between the Bali killing and Anna’s murder.’

  Hoffmann acknowledged this with a nod. ‘Yes, of course, but it’s knowing which are important.’

  ‘Lucy Brown was raped. We don’t know about Katrina but Anna wasn’t. I’d say that’s a pretty significant shift in both MO and signature.’

  ‘Of course you would,’ Hoffmann said. ‘But the rape may tell us nothing. These migrants may have raped her, even if they didn’t kill her. Or it may be that our guy raped Lucy and found the experience unsatisfactory to what he needed so, the next time, he forgoes it.’

  Carrigan didn’t agree but he had to admit it was possible. ‘You think he started over there?’

  Hoffmann smiled. ‘Yes, I believe so. Maybe because it’s easier – large groups of unsupervised girls, the wide open beaches and sudden darkness of the islands, the way we do things abroad we’d never do at home. It’s not unusual behaviour. Look at Lucian Staniak and the Vienna Woods Killer. Many murderers get their start on holiday.’

  ‘Then what?’ Carrigan said. ‘He followed the girls here?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘That still doesn’t explain how both Katrina and Anna ended up at the Milgram.’

  ‘Maybe they arranged to meet up in London,’ Hoffmann replied. ‘Maybe they talked about the Milgram. It’s only a coincidence because we haven’t seen the pattern yet.’

  Geneva’s phone buzzed. She checked it and a grin spread across her face. She looked up to see Carrigan and Hoffmann still arguing. ‘Neilson was right. You two are like dinosaurs. You can talk about possible connections between the girls and behavioural indicators another time. None of that matters now – we’ve got him.’

  Hoffmann waited until Geneva was out of earshot then leaned across the table, his voice dropping down to a whisper. ‘A minute?’

  Carrigan shrugged and sat back down.

  ‘I know this isn’t the time nor the place but we’re both stuck here so—’

  ‘What is it you want to say?’

  Hoffmann’s eyes slid away from Carrigan. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry about everything. The way it all turned out. Christ, that’s not what I ever intended . . .’

  Carrigan was about to reply when he realised the profiler wasn’t talking about the case. ‘You made a choice. You
went with someone else’s wife.’

  ‘But the illness? That was something . . . fuck. I’m so sorry.’

  Carrigan studied him for a long moment. ‘So, what you’re saying is that if she hadn’t got sick you would have continued seeing her?’

  ‘That isn’t what I meant.’

  ‘But that’s what would have happened?’

  Hoffmann hung his head and didn’t deny it. Carrigan reached out his hand and brushed the profiler’s shoulder. ‘I would have preferred that, you know. At least I would have known she was happy. It’s those last few hours that keep coming back to me, the utter blackness she must have been feeling, all the thoughts spinning through her mind . . .’ Something struck Carrigan and he looked up. ‘All along? You knew that I knew about you?’

  Hoffmann nodded. ‘Louise guessed you’d worked it out. That you were going to leave her. That’s why she did what she did.’

  Carrigan’s cup rattled against the saucer. ‘What the fuck do you mean? She killed herself because she couldn’t face the coming months.’

  Hoffmann cradled his head in his palm. ‘She did it for you. She did it so you wouldn’t have to suffer, wouldn’t have to see her screaming in pain every day. She knew you’d found out about us and she felt it was unfair to put you through all that. She was too weak to leave you by then. She thought about it for several weeks. It wasn’t some spur of the moment thing, a sudden low spell, nothing like that. You knew Louise. She would never do anything without thinking it through.’

  ‘She told you all this and you didn’t try to stop her?’

  ‘She sent me a letter. It arrived . . . after.’ Something had gone from Hoffmann’s eyes, a spark that had previously animated even his grimmest comments. ‘I know it’s dumb and irrational but I keep thinking if I hadn’t been with her, if none of that had happened, would the rest have?’

  ‘You made her happy. I’m glad she was happy. Let’s just leave it at that.’

  39

  Carrigan made his way up to the small cramped space off the main incident room, his brain still reeling from Hoffmann’s confession. He forced himself to shut it down and concentrate on what was in front of him.

  On the screen next to Neilson – an empty room.

  They sat and watched. Time ticked off in rain splatter and thunder crack.

  Then they saw her glide across the screen, a willowy suggestion of a figure, nothing more than a slight disturbance in the colour field, too fleeting to fully apprehend. ‘All good on our end,’ Neilson said into the mike.

  As Carrigan watched, the figure came back, stopped halfway across the room and sat down in front of the computer. DS Singh’s face filled the screen. Neilson nodded, pressed a key and the screen flipped to another angle, another room, another woman. This was DC Roth, one of Nielson’s constables. She was standing in front of a mirror directly in the computer’s sight-line. She was straightening her blouse and smoothing down her trousers.

  ‘We’re all set,’ Neilson said, crumpling up the chocolate wrapper and pulling out a wet wipe. ‘Singh’s in our room downstairs. It’s made up like a bedroom for exactly this kind of procedure. Roth’s on her day off but she agreed to help us from home.’ Neilson turned to Carrigan. ‘You ready to start?’

  Carrigan tried to shake away Hoffmann’s words, the deep vaulted ripples they were spreading through his stomach, the fact he’d got everything wrong, including his own life. ‘How do we know he’s going to go for it?’

  Neilson hitched her shoulders. ‘We don’t, not for certain, but luckily for us, PANOPTEASE is a compulsive slave-trader. In the last three weeks alone, he’s acquired thirty-two new slaves. We spent a couple of hours analysing the clips he’s posted and working out his preferred type.’

  ‘Singh?’

  Neilson nodded. ‘He likes thin women with long hair. So, that’s what we have for him. Whether he goes for it or not depends on whether his libido trumps his paranoia. He’s online at the moment and posting on several boards since late last night so we know he’s active. He’s been arguing with other Ratters, trolling and flaming for hours.’

  ‘It doesn’t get him thrown off?’

  Neilson laughed. ‘In this place? It’s a badge of honour. More importantly, he has the goods. No one’s going to throw him off as long as he posts content like those Anna clips.’

  Neilson went back to the keyboard. She started typing, the words appearing in a small box at the top left-hand corner of the screen. ‘I’m posting a general message to all board users,’ she explained. ‘It would be too obvious to target him directly.’

  ‘Won’t it seem weird anyway? You not being a regular member?’

  ‘People from other forums always cross-post. I’ve used one of our identities from a stalking forum, one we’ve had a presence on for a while now.’ She resumed typing and the small box filled up.

  Hey! Popped over from allyoucanhunt.com, heard good things about you guys here. Need something a little new. Got some stuff to share – enjoy!

  ‘Now, we wait.’ Neilson reached for another bar of chocolate. ‘I’ve uploaded two twenty-second clips of Singh and Roth. You’ve got to post original stuff on these forums or they kick you out. These are just ones of Singh and Roth typing, nothing too explicit, but it shows I have some goodies in my hard drive.’

  They sat and clock-watched and typed into their phones. Geneva composed a long text to Jim then deleted it. She wrote to her mother to say she’d call later. She looked over and saw Carrigan frowning over his phone, reading something, his mouth taut and strained.

  ‘There he is!’ Neilson rocketed her chair forward as a red light went on in one of the consoles attached to her mainframe. She smiled. ‘He’s had a look at the clips.’

  Geneva rushed over to Neilson’s desk. ‘You can tell?’

  ‘We’ve got the board cloned in real time on our servers. Means we can see what people are watching and when.’ Neilson pointed to the screen. ‘He’s just watched the clips again for the second – no, third time.’

  Carrigan and Geneva looked at the sidebar. A list of usernames was scrolling down its length, each one currently accessing the Singh/Roth videos. PANOPTEASE’s name appeared three times in the last five minutes.

  ‘He’s definitely interested. Time to reel him in.’ Neilson began typing. Words appeared in the small blue box.

  Got these slaves I’m tired of. Anyone want to take them off my hands?

  They waited. Carrigan fielded calls and ignored others. Geneva briefed uniforms and kept checking her phone. Over a hundred users had now watched the clips and twenty-one of them had asked for more footage but Neilson ignored them. She was busy on another computer, studying long rolls of code, and then Carrigan saw a smile crack her face.

  ‘He’s just posted on another forum, an extreme porn one, asking if anyone’s heard of me. He’s checking my bona fides, which means he’s definitely interested.’

  ‘Won’t that give the game away?’ Carrigan said.

  Neilson shook her head and typed fast. ‘He’s just had me confirmed as a genuine member by three other users of that site. They all vouched for me.’

  ‘They don’t know you’re a cop?’

  ‘They don’t exist. I control all three accounts. Remember that New York Times cartoon? On the Internet no one knows you’re a dog? – well, no one knows you’re a pig either.’ Neilson smiled at her own joke and hit the Return key. ‘Good. He’s watching them again.’

  ‘He’s not going to suspect it’s a trap?’

  ‘Desire always wins out over logic for these guys. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t be here in the first place.’ She looked up at the screen. ‘And here we go.’ A line of text appeared in her blue box. It was in a different font.

  PANOPTEASE: I like what I see.

  LOOKATYOU: I only have the highest quality. None of that skank meat here.

  PANOPTEASE: You have a live feed?

  LOOKATYOU: That and much more.

  PANOPTEASE: You should p
ost it, then. You shouldn’t play games. That’s not the way it works. You’re making a choice and you should be aware that for every choice there are consequences and that those consequences will sit on your shoulders and no one else’s.

  LOOKATYOU: Bad boys don’t get to see nothing.

  PANOPTEASE: How do you know I can’t see you now?

  Neilson looked up from the screen. ‘Let’s give him a couple of minutes to stew.’

  ‘That exchange won’t have put him off?’

  Nielson laughed. ‘They thrive on it. These boards, it’s nearly all male – teenagers to boot – and so it’s all about insults and what I’ll do to your mother.’

  They waited and watched the blue box. Nothing happened for five minutes and then PANOPTEASE couldn’t hold back any longer.

  PANOPTEASE: I want to see more. You wouldn’t have posted those clips if you weren’t ready to share. So, please, for your sake, stop playing games.

  LOOKATYOU: £

  PANOPTEASE: You aren’t even remotely aware of what I can do to you, are you? You don’t realise I can destroy your entire life in five minutes. Without moving from my seat. If you have a wife, I will turn her against you with what she finds on your computer. If your parents are still alive, I’ll send them a message saying all the things you’ve always been too scared to say. How much you detest them. How they are small and stupid and wrong. And if you have children, I’ll show them things that will make them no longer children.

  ‘He’s just tried to get into our system,’ Neilson said as she continued typing. ‘Trying to steal the images and fuck up our hard drive. Good luck to him with that.’

  ‘Switch off the Singh/Roth clips,’ Carrigan said and Neilson immediately saw what he was thinking and did it.

  PANOPTEASE: I know where you live. I’ve already learned more about you than even your closest friends know. Don’t let me use it to hurt you. I don’t want to do that but I will.