by Tom Weaver
'If you sit there in silence, I get up and walk out, and I promise you: I don't come back again.'
He started nodding. 'Fair enough.'
'Where's Jill?'
'Why don't we start at the beginning instead?' He ran his tongue along his lips, over a cut on the bottom. Then he used his free hand to hoist up his sleeve, and on the underside of his arm was a scar, almost like a burn mark. 'Isabelle Connors.'
The first woman he killed.
'What about her? She did that to you?'
He looked down at his arm.
'Sweet girl, really,' he said, 'but a nasty temper. A bit… unpredictable. She didn't like the whole…' He used his right hand to wave a couple of fingers in front of his face.
'Came out of her anaesthetic a little quicker than I'd hoped and, before you know it, there's half a bottle of sulphuric acid on my arm.' He stopped. Eyes widened. 'Ouch.'
He touched a finger to the scar. It was mottled and dark pink.
'Lesson I learned? Never buy Sodium Pentothal from Romania. I switched my anaesthetics after that. Got some diethyl ether in from Russia, and that was fine for a while — but eventually I got bored of cleaning up all the puke. It tends to make you feel a bit green around the gills, that stuff.' He paused, studied me. 'Stop me if I'm boring you, David.'
I didn't say anything.
'So it was on to halothane, and that worked well until Sona. Sadly, I once again failed in my job as a part-time anaesthetist. Now you know why they train for seven years.'
He leaned back in his seat as if he was done.
'Are you even a qualified doctor?'
He nodded. 'Five years at medical school, a year of pre- registration, two years of general medical training, a year specializing in plastics. I know how to do a facelift, if that's what you mean. But am I a qualified plastic surgeon? No, I'm not.' He rubbed his fingers against his thumb. 'Opportunities arose in my second year of specializing that were more rewarding than following a consultant around and holding a pair of scissors for him.'
'You mean organized crime?'
'You know how much a plastic surgeon makes a year on the NHS?'
I shook my head, all the time trying to work out his play. Trying to figure out the direction he was headed, and the traps he was attempting to set.
'Bottom tier, probably seventy grand. Good ones, eighty or ninety. The best, around the hundred-grand mark. You know how much I made doing that Russian's face?' He meant Akim Gobulev. The Ghost. He tilted his head slightly. 'David?'
'How much?'
He broke out into a smile. 'I thought you'd nodded off for a moment.'
'How much?'
Two hundred and fifty grand. For one face. I made more in seven hours than the top surgeons in the NHS make in a year. They're busy doing micro-surgery. Worthy procedures like unfucking a guy's leg after a motorbike accident, or transplanting muscle. I'm making twice that and putting in half the effort. Taking his jaw back, augmenting his cheekbones, lifting the eyes, tightening his face, thinning out his nose, moving bones, liposucking and cutting and filling. It's complicated, but…' He put a finger to his lips and made a ssshhhhh gesture. 'He was fucking ugly in the first place, so no one minded that my work looked like shit.'
I stared at him. 'This must feel great.'
'How so?'
You're just like your hero Milton Sykes now.' I nodded at his hand, chained to the metal arch on the table. You can both go down in the history books.'
He laughed. 'True. Only, he didn't bank one and a half million in a single year.'
A smile lingered on his face. One of the nails on his right hand had been torn away. It looked fresh; puffy bruising on the tip of his middle finger. He moved his hand across the table like a spider, the finger out in front.
'It's good to be rich, David,' he said softly.
I ignored him. 'Why the women?'
'We all have certain tastes.'
'Why operate on them?'
He shrugged. Didn't say anything.
'What were you hoping to achieve?'
He glanced at the one-way mirror again and turned back to me, eyes wide. 'I wanted to make an army of lookalikes!' He burst into laughter and leaned back in his seat. Then he stopped, like a light going out. 'No, seriously, I just like cutting up women.'
His words hung in the air, and a silence settled between us. I looked at him. His face was set like concrete. Nothing to read.
'So why didn't you cut up Megan?'
He didn't reply.
'What, you're happy to murder women, but you draw the line at pregnant teenagers?' A flicker of something in his face. 'I know that's not true.'
He frowned. 'And why's that?'
'The container you left behind at Mile End.'
No response.
'One adult heart. One child's.'
I thought of the cask. The police had found it in Healy's car after getting to the woods. Now it was probably in a forensics lab somewhere.
'This ringing any bells with you?' I asked him.
Again, no reply. His face was blank now.
'Who else was pregnant?' Still nothing. Eventually, when it was obvious he wasn't going to be drawn, I turned to the one-way glass. 'Did any of the other women show signs of having given birth? A C-section? Vaginal trauma?' A pause. A click. Then an echoey response from Phillips: 'No.' Silence in the interview room again. I looked at Crane. 'Whose hearts were they?'
He watched me, the forefinger and thumb of his left hand brushing together. A thinking gesture. Finally, he shrugged. 'It's not important to this case.'
'Which case?'
'The six women.'
I studied him. 'Do you mean you've killed more?'
He sniffed. The six women, they were all just practice runs. I cut them up because it felt good. I like cutting people. But I did it in the name of research too.'
'What research?'
'I wanted to see how faces could be changed. Think of those women as the first of two canvases. And the second one was the masterpiece.'
'What do you mean?'
He went to speak then stopped himself. Drummed his fingers on the table. 'I just like blondes, David — what can I say?'
'What research?' I said again, fists clenched.
'I guess it's a Marilyn Monroe thing' He flashed a smile again. 'Or maybe they remind me of my mother.'
'Why would you say that?'
'Isn't that what we're all about?'
'"We're"?'
'Serial killers.' Another smile drifted across his lips. 'Come on, David. You know as well as I do that a serial killer has got to stick to his MO. It's so important. Well, the women ticked all the boxes for me. Blonde. Good, strong features. A few flaws — but nothing that couldn't be rectified with a quick…' He used his free hand to simulate the slash of a knife. They were feminine. Pretty. Slim - but not all skin and bone. I don't like them like that. I like them with a bit of shape. If I wanted skeletons, I'd dig them up.'
'Where did you meet them?'
He looked at me. Still, except for his eyes, which moved across my face. 'I met them around and about. Feisty little Isabelle I met at a workshop I was attending.'
'A medical workshop?'
'No. I was learning how to make masks. Kind of a part- time vocation. After all, I didn't have a day job, and there were only so many Ferraris I could buy with all that dirty money.' His eyes sparkled. 'One of the consultants that I shadowed during my year of specialist training put the idea into my head. Weird little man, he was. He used to order in purpose-made latex masks to put on to dummies, so that we'd always have to look at a face when we were talking about cutting into something. He thought it would be a way of humanizing everything; even mounds of plastic. If you always had to look at a face, you'd always tread more carefully. Except I didn't give a shit about any of that. I just kept looking at the masks and thinking how it would feel to become someone else.'
'So why Sykes?'
'I found him interesting.'
'Becau
se he killed thirteen women?'
'No, because people are still scared of him, even now. You go down to Hark's Hill and mention his name to the old-timers, and they'll fill their pants on the spot. You mention him to the kids that live around there and they might not have heard of him, but they'll know one thing: there's something wrong with that place. I mean, you've been there, David. You've felt it, right?'
I didn't say anything.
He smiled. 'Of course you've felt it. He buried thirteen women in those woods, and no one could find them. And as long as no one found them, that place never lost its power. And all they could do in the end was put up a concrete wall and a fence at one end and let nature take over everywhere else. Try to forget about the bodies, and the house he'd been born in, and the ghosts that wander through that place.' He paused and leaned forward, dropping his voice to a whisper. 'But I didn't forget about them. I had to find those bodies.'
'Why?'
'Let's call it a psychological advantage. Find the bodies, and Sykes has no hold over that place any more. He's no longer the daddy.' He paused. Winked, 'I am.'
'You're fucking nuts.'
'Am I?'
'Listen to yourself.'
'I'm listening.' He cupped his free hand to his ear. 'Oh, I think I sound great, David. I mean, I'm the man who found Milton Sykes's victims. The police should be thanking me. I solved a hundred-year-old mystery.'
'How did you know where they were?'
He leaned forward. Brushed a finger against his broken nose. 'The dog found them.'
'The greyhound?'
'I discovered it wandering around the woods early on. Then it started following me around; bugging me. And then it started digging in that area of the woods day after day after day, and finally it brought back a thigh bone.'
'And you rewarded it so well.'
'I did, didn't I?'
'Cigarette burns, transplanted skin, cutting out one side of its face. Most dog owners just give their pets Pedigree Chum.'
He smiled. 'Some days it annoyed me. Some days I felt sorry for it.'
'I doubt that.'
'It had skin cancer. I took some skin from one of the women's thighs and transplanted it on to the dog. Not very scientific, I'll admit, but what the hell - the girl was already dead.' He shrugged. 'See? Even I can be a nice guy.'
Thirty seconds passed. Neither of us spoke; just looked at one another. Eventually he broke the silence.
'Interesting area, Hark's Hill,' he said. 'A whole other world under the surface of the woods, and most people don't even know it's there. Or they've just forgotten. That's where Sykes took Jenny Truman, you know. He convinced her to leave with him, then smuggled her into the tunnels that fed out from the factories.' He stopped. A flash in his eyes. 'It was a ready-made hiding place. That boarded-up door next to the air vent? That leads all the way to the old munitions factory on the other side of the woods. I brought everything down through there. The supplies. The tools. The equipment. And when I was finished, I welded it shut.'
More silence. We looked at each other. He had the same blank expression on his face again; no hint of emotion, no clue as to what he was thinking. He pushed a strand of dark hair away from his eyes and then sniffed gently, as if inhaling something sweet.
'Why leave the necklaces behind?' I asked.
'Because it was fun.'
'It was what got you caught.'
'Was it?'
'If it hadn't been for the necklaces, no one would have tied the women to each other, or to you. You gave yourself away.'
He shrugged. 'I wasn't far off finishing my little project.'
'Meaning what?'
'Meaning the necklaces were a vital component of what I was doing. I liked the idea of leaving something for the police to find. A little calling card. Something to tease them and test them. But it wasn't going to last for ever. One more after Jill, then my research was done.'
'You were just going to walk away?'
He smiled. 'Not exactly.'
'Then what?'
'I hadn't decided yet.'
I studied him. He was running the finger of his free hand along the edge of the table, the skin making a crackling noise as it caught on the chips in the surface.
'How many have you killed?'
He sighed, running his finger along the table in the opposite direction. 'I don't know, David,' he said, looking up at me. 'How many have you?'
There was a hint of a smile on his face. The coffee had been sitting on the table next to me the entire time, steam curling up from its surface. I took it and sank a few mouthfuls. Then I placed it down and leaned forward, hands flat to the desk.
'Is Aron Crane even your real name?'
He shrugged and sat back. 'Names, numbers, they're not important, David. They don't matter. A name is just a piece of paper. You can give yourself whatever name you want, and it won't make any difference to who you are, or what you do. A name's just a vehicle getting you from one place to another. Another little stage.'
'So Aron Crane was just a stage?'
He nodded, gazing at me, wanting me to look away, as if it would be a victory. But that wasn't going to happen. He wasn't going to win. Not now, not ever.
'Why bring Markham in?'
He sighed. 'I'm sure you know why.'
'You used him after things went wrong at the warehouse in Bow.'
'Correct!' He slammed his unchained right hand down on to the table. Then, suddenly, he was still. Straight- faced. Eyes on mine. 'There were cops undercover in the Russians, and Drayton's operation was getting a little… leaky too. Sooner or later they were going to move on me. Frank White got in the way, and so did that other stiff, so I killed them and went on my way.'
'As easy as that.'
'Anything's easy when you do enough of it.'
His eyes widened again and then he leaned back in his seat, the handcuffs locking into place.
'Where did you find Markham?'
'He came to my attention when I first started following Megan. I'd been watching her for a while. She seemed…' He leaned forward again, whispering. 'She seemed like my type — know what I mean?' He winked. 'I needed to step back after White snuffed it, and Markham seemed to fit the bill. He was friendly with Megan, she trusted him — plus his wife was a fucking nutcase, which meant he had a soft centre.' Eyes narrowed, face straightening. 'People you love tend to be your weakness.'
Something flashed in his eyes, and then it was gone again.
'After Frank White died, there was a lot of coverage about him on the news. I mean, kill a copper and it's the A-bomb dropping, right? Interviews with the people he'd shared an office with, his family, friends - then eventually Jill. The tearful widow. I liked the look of her straight away. She fitted the bill. So I started getting my morning coffee from the same place as her. After a week of giving her the eye, she eventually said hello. After a fortnight, we were chatting. After a month, I had her in the palm of my hand. I can be really quite charming when I want to be.'
'Why not get Markham to bring her to you?'
'I was getting itchy feet watching him do all the fun stuff. Plus, he couldn't keep up with my… appetite. To be honest, he was a whiney piece of shit. I had to treat him like a child, just to get him to understand all the rules and regulations. Cutting him to pieces did us all a favour, believe me.'
He paused. Made a show of clearing his throat.
'I saw you going into the Carvers' house about a week and a half back. Let's just say, I'd been keeping a close eye on everything to do with Megan. Making sure I was still insulated. As long as the investigation rumbled on, everything was fine.' He nodded sideways at the one-way mirror and then dropped his voice — but loud enough so it would be picked up in the next room. 'They didn't have a clue who I was, David. Not a clue.'
That's why he came to the support group. To keep me close.
'So you were watching me?'
'Basically, yes. When Jill started to trust me, I floated the ide
a of the support group, so I could actually meet you. But then I realized I needed to know more about you, your skills. So I persuaded her to play on your conscience and get you to look into Frank's death.'
'Why take the risk?'
'It wasn't a risk. Everything you said to her got back to me. Much better than stumbling around blindly trying to work out what you did and did not know. Just that one evening at the support group was enough to get the measure of you. Which is probably just as well. I mean, let's face it, that group is where ambition goes to die.' He winked again and smiled. 'No offence intended, of course, David. I'm sure it's helped you get over seeing your wife lose her hair and her dignity.'