by Michael Kerr
“What do we do, boss?” Mike said, meaning what first steps did Jack intend to instigate.
“We nail his arse to the wall, Mike. That’s what we do.”
CHAPTER FIVE
LISA got up at six a.m. It was warm. The central heating had been on for an hour, and the small well-insulated mews house was like toast. She took a shower, blow-dried her shoulder-length raven hair, dressed in a cream, long-sleeved cotton funnel neck sweater and a navy trouser suit comprising single-breasted semi-fitted jacket and unlined trousers. Carrying a pair of low-heeled black court shoes, she negotiated the narrow cast-iron spiral staircase down to the small lounge. It crossed her mind that she needed more space, and yet the converted Georgian stables within a large cobbled courtyard were ideal for a single person. And the location off Spaniards Road was much sought after. Living on Hampstead Heath and having a view of the countryside from her bedroom window was, to her mind, preferable to an upmarket apartment in the city.
After making a cup of tea and watching the early news on the TV in the kitchen, it was time to contemplate the day ahead; to find the frame of mind necessary to sit across a table from Gary Keller and evaluate his current state of mind. He was proving to be one of her most challenging charges; a patient with an IQ through the roof, who made no excuses for the crimes he had committed. He believed that he was the centre of a universe created solely to provide him with all he chose to take from it. His high, if flawed, intellect had produced an extremely dangerous and sophisticated repeat killer.
Lisa switched off the TV, took a folder from her slim Samsonite and reviewed notes that she’d made the previous evening. She needed to interview Keller with a tightly formatted set of objective questions, otherwise he would take advantage of the situation and use it for personal stimulation.
Gary Keller had sodomised, mutilated, and then murdered at least two dozen prostitutes over a four year period.
Satisfied, and as prepared as was humanly possible, Lisa walked out under the porte-cochère to where her Lexus was parked at the kerb. She got in, started up, and let Classic FM keep her relaxed as she headed west in the building traffic towards Hatch End.
The Belvedere Park Hospital for the Criminally Insane was a squat and sprawling two-storey redbrick structure that lacked character and was not endearing to the eye. Its only saving grace was that it was set in acres of pleasant tree-spotted grounds with a large lake to its rear and an arrow-straight asphalt drive that led to the staff car park. A gate complex was integral to the high, beaked wall that surrounded the institution, screening its unattractive appearance from public view.
Lisa parked and walked over to the gatehouse, to enter and approach the window with her ID held up for the uniformed officer behind it to check. Trust no one, she thought as another officer came out and asked to inspect the contents of her shoulder bag.
The high state of security reminded her that the recently opened facility was home to some of the most dangerous inmates in the country. The Belvedere was a prison in all but name, and very few of those incarcerated would ever be released back into society.
Swapping her numbered brass tally for a set of security keys, Lisa was allowed through to the yard that led across to the admin and residential wings.
Her office was spacious and, as her home, minimalist. Apart from the obligatory filing cabinets, computer, and a desk with a swivel chair behind it, there was an easy chair and a small glass-topped coffee table at the end of the room, next to a window. A rubber plant graced a sun-catching corner, rooted in a large and brightly coloured pot of Mediterranean design. A single, framed monochrome print of a timber wolf hung on the wall facing the desk, staring out with an expression of fearless intensity.
Lisa checked her voice mail. One message: ‘Dr Norton. This is Detective Inspector Jack Ryder, Serious Crimes Squad. I’d appreciate your calling me, soonest. We have need of your expertise in regard to a case that...’
He hadn’t gone into detail, just stressed that it was urgent, and left his mobile number. She would phone the Yard to validate Ryder’s call after her session with Keller.
Lisa remembered the DI. He was one of Detective Chief Inspector Ken Maynard’s team leaders; an intensive, rugged-looking guy with enigmatic blue eyes and an abrasive, direct manner. She had not worked closely with him, yet, but adjudged him to be sceptical of the methods she employed to categorise and evaluate an individual’s criminal personality, or to be able to come up with proactive suggestions to lure a wary predator out into the open.
Lisa was already waiting, seated at the table when Keller was escorted into the interview room. Being there first was a ploy to subconsciously stamp her authority. It established that he was entering her territory. The orderly nodded to her, backed out and closed the door, to stand outside and watch the proceedings through the thick laminated plastic window in the top half of it. The interview was also being monitored by CCTV from the ECR; the Emergency Control Room, which was housed separately from the wings.
“Please sit down, Gary,” Lisa said to the monster that inhabited an unexceptional body.
Gary Keller was a slightly built man of five-foot-seven, and gave no outward sign as to his capacity for violence. Lisa glanced at his smooth, unlined face, and then down to the small, narrow hands, the thumbs of which were hooked in his waistband. He had very short, mousy hair, and the white T-shirt and blue jeans he wore were freshly laundered. His feet were encased in hospital issue black leather loafers that he had polished to a high gloss. He cared about his appearance and personal hygiene.
“I have only met you on two previous occasions, Dr Norton,” Gary said, disregarding her request and electing to remain standing, “For a total of sixty-eight minutes in all. Does that entitle you to drop all formality and address me by my Christian name?”
“What would you prefer I call you...Mr Keller?”
“It’s of no real importance to me. What’s in a name? Maybe I should call you Lisa. We could delude ourselves that we are friends, rather than doctor and involuntary patient, or gaoler and prisoner.”
“Feel free to use my first name, Gary. Now, please...” She nodded to the chair.
Gary said, “Does it bother you, being looked down at?”
“It makes me think that you may be feeling a little hostile and not in the mood to discuss your current state of mind. Do you want me to reschedule and see you another day?”
Gary gave her a fleeting smile, pulled the chair back from the table, dropped into it and placed his hands palm down on the cream Formica tabletop. “I am not a guinea pig, Doctor,” he said. “Don’t delude yourself by thinking that I can be used as a learning tool, so that you might better understand the workings of like-minded individuals. I have absolutely nothing to gain by answering any moronic questions that you might pose. The system you represent has decided that I will die behind bars, which does not give me any incentive to be benevolent.”
“Isn’t it stimulating on some level to have an interest taken in you?” Lisa said. “Or would you prefer not to merit any inquisitiveness?”
The smile returned to his sculpted lips, drawing them back to disclose white, even teeth. “Tell me, Lisa, why do you refrain from wearing any makeup or perfume?”
She chose to answer him, to break down his defensiveness. “Because I didn’t want to torment or inflame you.”
“And the power suit. Same reason?”
“Yes.”
“You underestimate the depth of my imagination, Lisa. I choose to see you totally nude, and to smell your natural fragrance. I can almost feel the texture of your skin on my fingertips, and the engorged slick lips of your vagina gripping my penis.”
“Why did you murder those prostitutes, Gary?” Lisa said, unfazed by his attempt to disconcert her.
“Because I could. They manipulated and controlled men. Made profit from men’s natural instinct to copulate. And more importantly, they were susceptible; creatures of the night that propositioned strangers and put
themselves in harm’s way. Easy prey, if you will.”
“Why sodomise them?”
“I chose to humiliate them, which is not easy. And then I removed their sex and cut their throats. They died in mental and physical agony. But why do you ask? You’ve seen all the reports, the photographs, and the trial transcript. What do you want from me?”
“I’d like to know why? You have a fine intellect, Gary.”
“True. I’m as bright as a new pin. But you know what motivates men like me. I was and am obsessed; a predator by nature. And being a shrink, you are also aware that there is no single psychoneurological explanation for why people commit these acts. It’s a choice. It’s how I got a rush...temporary fulfilment.”
“You must have come to a point when you could have chosen not to do it.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Gary said, now slowly rubbing his hands together. They were sweating profusely, and bright red patches had blossomed on his cheeks. “Ask an alcoholic why he has to drink. Ask a smoker why he lights up, even if he wants to quit. Or a junkie why he snorts coke or shoots up. They know the risks, but they are addicted. Some things are beyond rationality. You don’t choose to fall in or out of love, do you? It all goes to show that we do not have absolute control over our feelings.”
“That’s too glib an answer, Gary. You didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to go out and kill some whore for the hell of it. I want to understand what instigated such extreme antisocial behaviour.”
His tongue darted back and forth between his lips. He was in his element and said, “You mean you’re looking for a precipitating stressor; the underlying motivating force that triggered me like a loaded gun?”
“Yes,” Lisa said. Oh, he was very clever, and most likely had an extensive knowledge of her field of work. Even this session with her was an exciting aside for him. He was attempting to impress her, to demonstrate to her that he was her equal.
“Sorry if I don’t fit readily into any of the pat categories you mindhunters dream up,” he said. “I was not abused, neglected or unloved as a child. I just got past the stage of pulling the wings off flies. I progressed to wiping out a significant number of rats at the local landfill site with an air rifle. It seemed a more worthwhile and enjoyable enterprise than playing football, stamp collecting or climbing trees. After that, there was no holding me back. I moved up to neighbourhood pets.”
Lisa saw a dreamy gleam in Keller’s pale eyes. The reminiscing was stimulating him, physically and cerebrally.
“But you didn’t kill a human being until you were thirty,” Lisa said.
“Didn’t I?”
“You mean―”
“No. That’s it, Lisa. You want more, then wear a skirt and perfume the next time you want to chitchat. Life is all about give and take. I don’t see you giving me dog shit off the sole of your shoe. You disrespect me.”
Back in her office, Lisa felt used. Keller had fed off her presence and the questions she had asked him, to enjoy a junket at her expense. He was both manipulative and still highly dangerous. Her experience told her that his type could not be rehabilitated. Sex killers like Keller were inherently evil, had no compassion, and were incapable of feeling remorse for their acts. An eminent American clinical psychologist, who specialised in the motivational forces of habitual criminals, was convinced that the rehabilitation of sexual predators and child molesters was an impossible challenge. His view, which Lisa concurred with, was that to rehabilitate is to restore to a former constructive capacity or condition. But serious sex offenders are like bad eggs. Rotten is rotten. You can’t make a silk purse... She compared Keller’s type to being sentient cancers that had to be excised from society.
Walking over to the window, she looked out. It was raining, and drops of water hit the glass and ran down it, looking like silvery long-tailed tadpoles or spermatozoa.
Lisa felt chilled to the marrow. Belvedere and places like it were synonymous in her mind to stoppered bottles full of noxious and deadly contents. If the glass should break, then what horrors would be unleashed? The most frightening realisation was, that for every caged fiend, maybe a hundred, or perhaps a thousand others were free to predate and consummate their unholy fantasies. Another thought materialised. If the patients were obsessed with taking life, then wasn’t she just as obsessed in wanting to understand why they did it? Would examining her own ruling passion aid her in grasping the compulsion that drove the Kellers’ of this world? It was food for thought.
Back at her desk, Lisa wrote-up her report on Gary Keller. She carefully selected the appropriate terminology to describe his current mental state, though would have been happy to just write him up as being a fucking maniac who, given hindsight, should have been put down at birth.
CHAPTER SIX
IT was noon when an outside call was put through to Lisa’s office.
“I have a Detective Inspector Ryder asking for you,” Margie, the switchboard operator, said.
Shit! She’d forgotten all about the voice mail she’d received. “Okay, Margie, please tell him I’ll call back.”
Lisa waited sixty seconds and then punched in 9 for an outside line and dialled 020 7230 1212, which is Scotland Yard’s number. Gave her name to the operator and asked to be connected with Detective Inspector Ryder.
After thirty seconds. “Ryder.”
“It’s Dr Norton. You were trying to contact me.”
Jack thought she was a smart cookie; on the ball. Most people would’ve taken his call and accepted that he was who he professed to be. She was not most people. He was impressed by the security conscious tactic that she had employed.
“Yes, Doctor. Ken Maynard says the case I’m running with has aspects to it that you may be able to help us with. We’d appreciate your assistance.”
Lisa smiled. Ryder’s voice was soft and sounded sincere. She looked up at the wall and studied the picture of the wolf. She had the feeling that Jack Ryder was trying to play her, using charm and a trace of patronisation to gain her attention. She took on consult work irregularly, if her workload at the hospital allowed, and if she considered a case would benefit from her involvement.
“One moment,” she said, and put the receiver down, opened her desk diary and flipped through the pages. She had nothing pressing for a few days. She had agreed to testify as an expert witness at a rape trial, which was listed for hearing at Southwark Crown Court on the eleventh of December. But it was believed that the trial would be deferred until after the Christmas period. There was every possibility that she would not be called until sometime in January, or not at all if the accused acknowledged the weight of evidence against him and changed his plea to guilty.
She closed the diary and picked the phone up. “Initially, I’d be happy to look at the paperwork,” she said. “How about I drop by later, say three o’clock, and you can run through it with me.”
“That would be fine,” Jack said. “You know where we hang out?”
“Yes, in the men’s room, among other places,” she said, then cradled the phone.
Jack stared at the burring receiver as though it was a snake he was holding by the tail. Her comment had taken him by surprise. He grinned. Shrinks didn’t say anything without thinking first. Her parting shot had been a measured quip, intended to impart her ability to be ‘one of the boys’. She had used a little reverse psychology on him; tried to wrong foot and unsettle him. Maybe he could work with her.
The small, shared office was dusty and stale-smelling. Jack opened the window to the full extent of its governed limit, which was no more than six inches. Cold air flooded in. He then cleared the desk, returning files to their alphabetically denoted cabinets. DI John Roach might be a good cop, but he was a slob. The surroundings he worked in were a reflection of the man himself; scruffy, rundown, and in need of a serious makeover. John always wore the same crumpled suit, his cleanest dirty shirt, and invariably sported a few days’ growth of beard, that in a younger man would be labelled desig
ner stubble. John was dated, no longer comme il faut with current departmental requirements. Like a dinosaur, he was facing extinction. He took a back seat to Jack these days, happy to let him effectively oversee everything.
“We might have something, boss,” Mike said, entering the office and shaking a few sheets of copy paper in the air.
“Music to my ears,” Jack said. “What’ve you got?”
“Phone records. There were a lot of mobile calls made to both crime scenes. They all check out to people who had their phones stolen, or to pay-as-you-go phones that we can’t trace. We have dates, times and duration of calls.”
“And you believe it’s related?”
“Yeah. He was contacting them.”
“Any record of either victim reporting nuisance calls?”
“No.”
“And you’re checking out all the punters who say their phones were stolen?”
Mike nodded. “And friends, work mates and ex-boyfriends. Christine Adams recently broke up with a guy by the name of Kyle Foley. Eddie and Donna are out taking a statement from him. He’s the nearest we’ve got to a suspect so far.”
“Anything back from forensic or tox?”
“All toxicology came up with was the condom lubricant. Forensic found a mixed bag of hair samples from several unknown individuals. There were no prints. Fibres might be helpful, if we ever get lucky and find anything to match them to.”
“Not if, Mike, when. This guy is an attention-seeker. He’ll lead us in. And luck has got fuck all to do with it. Did Document Section make any sense of the messages he left?”
“Not yet. They’re working on it.”
“So far, so good,” Jack said, using a stained tea towel as a duster.
“Why the big clean-up?” Mike said. “You expecting Prince Charles to drop by for a cup of Earl Grey?”
“You know Lisa Norton?”