by Michael Kerr
Sitting cross-legged on the carpet, he waited impatiently for the actress to reappear. She did, for exactly eight seconds. She was playing the part of a receptionist in some office. Jason, as Frost, asked her something, to which she replied: “The last time I saw Mr Jardine was when he left the office at four o’ clock on Friday afternoon, Inspector.” That was it. She did not appear again.
He had to find out who she was. The meaning of life, or at least his life, had manifested. Hadn’t Michael Caine first seen his wife-to-be in a coffee commercial on TV? Caine had found out her identity and zealously courted her, finally winning her love. He would do the same with Dawn.
After the credits rolled, he had stopped the tape, rewound it to where his angel appeared, and replayed the few golden seconds over and over again. Her every movement and expression made him weak. Her voice was soft and rich. And she did smile at him. Spooky how just the sight and sound of her could be so life altering. He thumbed fast forward to the credits and made a list of every actress in the cast. He hadn’t caught the name of the character she’d played. But he was resourceful, had checked it out later through one of his many contacts, found her number, phoned her, and declared his love.
He sighed, turned a page of the album and feasted his eyes on yet more photographs he had taken of Dawn. No one said it would be easy. So far she had resisted his advances, but anything truly worth having was worth waiting for. He needed to see her. The sight of Penny standing in the buff at her window had given him only fleeting respite. He knew that he was escalating, but was helpless; a prisoner of deeply-seated needs that could not...would not be denied.
He went back out, this time taking the car. Soon after he was parked near Ogilvy House, where Dawn occupied an apartment on the first floor.
At the rear of the building was a tenants’ car park. Bright lights lit it up like a football stadium, enhancing the darkness beyond which would afford him the invisibility he needed.
He looked up to the small balcony, and to the drainpipe that ran down from the roof gutter only three feet away from it. It was firmly bracketed to the wall. He had climbed it on several previous occasions. Keeping fit was the key. He was strong and agile, did weight training and hundreds of sit ups and push ups each and every day. He maintained peak fitness. It was yet another of his many obsessions.
Donning a pair of thin leather gloves, he gripped the solid pipe and jerked it a couple of times. There was no movement. The smooth surface was wet, although it had stopped raining. A quick look left and right along the concrete path. No sign of the security guard, who supposedly made external patrols, should the warning signs be believed.
Hand over hand he ascended the wall; the rubber soles of his trainers giving purchase against the brickwork. Spiderman, eat your heart out!
Once level with the balcony’s balustrade, he reached across with his right hand, gripped hold of one of the iron railings and effortlessly swung across, pulling himself up and over the top to land like a cat outside the double-glazed door that faced Dawn’s bedroom.
There was an inch gap where the curtains had not been pulled fully together. He squatted down and squinted through it. A sliver of moon shed nacreous light into the room. He could make out her bed, but had to stand up to find the right angle to see the shape of her in it.
There she was, facing him with her eyes closed, lips slightly apart, and her hair tumbling over the pillow. Should he bring things to a head? Force the lock with his knife and enter? No. She may become hysterical. He did not want to hurt her, or kill her. The long-term plan was to win her over. He would continue to be patient. That he was only a few feet away from her as she slept was enough, for now. Knowing that should he want to he could take her there and then, calmed him.
He stayed for a while, not taking his eyes off her. She turned over four times. And then she woke up, threw the bedclothes back and got out of bed. Oh, sweet mother of God! Jesus wept! She was naked. He groaned with urgent need as she vanished through the bedroom door. A couple of minutes later she returned, and he was rewarded with an all too fleeting glimpse of magnificence, before she climbed back into bed and covered herself.
An idea came to him. He could break in when she was out one evening, to hide from view in the wall-length wardrobe and be with her for awhile when she returned, to even creep out from concealment and sit next to her as she slept, and then leave before she rose to get ready for work. He knew that she was rehearsing for an upcoming play in the West End, and that she left home at exactly seven-thirty every weekday morning.
It was time to leave. As he dropped the last few feet to the ground, a pressure on his shoulder startled him.
“Gotcha!” A gravely voice.
He reacted instinctively, spun round and drove his fist into the throat of the uniformed security guard. The man’s cap shot off as his head snapped back. His eyes bulged and he sank to his knees, dropping the big Eveready torch he had been carrying, to put both hands up to cradle the seat of the crippling pain.
Anger pervaded him, bright and stop-light red. He plucked up the heavy-duty torch by its handle and swung it in a wide arc. It met the guard’s left temple with a satisfying thud that sent shock waves up through his hand and arm. The whooping sound that had been a fight for breath, ceased. The man toppled over.
He brought the torch down again and again, until the yellow plastic casing was awash with blood. Only when it came apart and the lens shattered, did he toss it aside.
The wanker! This would make the apartment building a no-go area. It wouldn’t be safe to approach it for a week or two. Thank Christ he’d worn black. Although some of the blood from ‘Gotcha’s’ head had sprayed onto his face. He lifted up the bottom of his parka, wiped his face, and then bent, grasped the corpse by its ankles and dragged it into evergreen bushes that separated the walkway from the car park. The pool of blood and resulting trail were almost invisible on the wet concrete. But come daylight...
Back home. He stuffed the stained parka, his trousers and the soiled gloves into a bin liner. He would dispose of it when time allowed. He showered and called it a night. In a few hours he would have to let his alter ego attend work. Strange how he could so comfortably live two totally disparate lives. The side of him that presented an outgoing and fun-to-be-with kind of guy was a complete fabrication. It was an act. The mantle of normality allowed him to hide among the sheep and strike from cover, to then merge back into the very flock he preyed upon. Truly a wolf in sheep’s clothing. How many others might be like him? Did he work with closet killers, who could also shape shift their personalities and remain undetected? No matter. What other people did was of no real interest to him. Only his darkest desires were of any significance. He knew that his actions were misunderstood by Dawn and the other women he had relationships with. He would most likely be regarded as an erotomaniac; a love-obsessed stalker capable of killing. But he wasn’t. He was just a regular guy who chose to act out his fantasies and go for the burn in all his endeavours. If you don’t push yourself to the limit, then you’re bound to be an underachiever. Nothing was impossible. Not if you set your mind to it and refused to be side-tracked. And he had oodles of commitment when it came to doing what he did.
Curled up on his bed, he cuddled a large stuffed toy. It was Garfield, the cartoon cat. He had taken it from Dawn’s previous address over eighteen months ago and still thought he could smell a trace of her on it. It was hard to imagine being able to sleep without it, now. One day, soon, he would return it to her, when he had her to hold in his arms at night and no longer needed a stuffing-filled and cotton-skinned substitute.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AFTER an enjoyable meet in a Starbucks with Jack Ryder, Lisa spent the rest of the day at the hospital, attended a care plan meeting and then signed off on a couple of assessment reports before leaving early. The first thing that she did was call in at a branch of Waterstones to pick up a book on the life and art of Hieronymus Bosch.
Back home, once comfortable
in a thick robe, she flipped through the book while eating a microwave Weight Watchers Mexican chilli with potato wedges. The chilli gave her heartburn, but instead of drinking milk to settle it, she plumped for a glass of white wine, before going through to the lounge to switch on the computer.
It was frustrating. She couldn’t settle to the task at hand. She typed up ideas, deleted them, read through the stuff Jack had given her earlier in the day referring to the link between the symbolic acts the killer had carried out and the artist whose work had allegedly inspired him. She turned her attention back to the illustrations in the book. They unnerved her. Malevolent and disturbing details ran like a thread through many of Bosch’s paintings. He was capable of producing images of traditional iconography, sacrilegious and diabolical versions of religious themes, and unfathomable settings crammed with semi-human monstrous figures and extraordinary animals. Much of his work was bizarre, representing his personalised view of heaven and hell. Humanity was time and again portrayed being horribly punished for ignoring divine laws and falling into sin. It struck a chord with Lisa. Many sexual predators of all types had used art at some point in their lives to express their sick fantasies, usually in the form of crude drawings. Perhaps Bosch had been a fifteenth-century serial killer.
Putting everything she had together, a personality was emerging from the growing mass of information. She was convinced that the man who had committed the crimes against Emily Wallace and Christine Adams was a stalker/killer. He did not strike randomly, of that she was now absolutely certain. The offender’s behaviour was structured. He planned in advance, probably groomed his targets, in the same manner that an Internet paedophile will patiently build a relationship with a youngster via a chat room, before coercing the prospective victim into meeting him for sexual gratification. The criminal mind she was attempting to profile was depraved, but of high intellectual acuity. The elements of the offences gave an insight to his rationale.
Lisa took another break. Thought about Jack Ryder. He was the obverse side of a two-faced coin, diametrically opposed to, and yet a main player in the ongoing battle between good and evil. She went back to sit in front of the screen. The saver was on; Earth as seen from space, which was a beautiful blue planet, rimmed with a corona of life-sustaining atmosphere, suspended, spinning, orbiting a sun of limited life in its small corner of the boundless vacuum of the cosmos. It was hard to look at the miracle of it from such a distance and believe that so much manmade ugliness and spoliation took place on its faraway surface: the surface that she existed on.
Holding the wine glass in both hands, Lisa closed her eyes and let random thoughts invade her mind. Ryder again. Why? Because he was intriguing. She liked being in his company. He was intrinsically different to any man she had ever met. Hell, the truth was, she fancied him, pure and simple. When she had shaken his maimed hand and looked into his eyes, she had been transfixed. He had held her that way for long seconds, and she had felt immobilised. The contact was electric. She might have been plugged into a wall socket. It crossed her mind that she knew she would have sex with him. Some things, good or bad, were unavoidable. Worlds collide. She had the kind of mind that tried to fathom things out, but her sense of being drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet was beyond her ability to rationalise. And she knew he felt the same. Even if there was no future in it, they would have to ride it out. Inevitability was at work.
She hit the return key, and what little she had written replaced the screensaver.
The murderer’s critical offender characteristics were in some ways unique. She entered a bold heading: Control, power and manipulation.
The offender fits uneasily into one specific category.
This is not a man who attains gratification from simply killing. He is not opportunist. These are stranger slayings, in that he will almost certainly not have previously met with his victims before selecting them. It is likely that the two known victims, to date, are very similar in appearance to the woman who is the central driving force and main object of his desire.
He will be delusional and pathologically dependent on a woman who he sees as a love object. She will have no doubt spurned his advances and be unattainable.
There is sufficient evidence to back a supposition of him suffering from a mental disorder. At very least he shows signs of erotomania; a psychiatric state wherein the perpetrator will wholly believe that the object of his affection is in love with him.
Delusional fantasy is the hallmark of this offender. He will come from a severely dysfunctional background, have a deep-seated sense of inadequacy, but be able to function in the workplace and be skilled in social interaction, without presenting his disturbed persona.
Frustration and anger at his primary target is being redirected against others. This is not someone who can or will take no for an answer.
The cryptic messages and symbolic behaviour is most likely carried out to confuse and misdirect.
The unknown subject will be a white male aged between twenty and forty. He will live alone and be obsessive by nature.
The bottom line is, that he is a sadistic repeat killer whose acts will escalate. He has no compassion for anyone, is incapable of feeling guilt or remorse, and cannot be rehabilitated.
Lisa saved what she had written. There was not a lot more she could add. She would go through it again in the morning and polish it. Her first impression was that this predator crossed all boundaries. He had no doubt terrorised his victims for a period of weeks or months, and then murdered them. Had it not been for the amount of phone calls he had made to them, then she would have been inclined to believe that a serial killer of the Sadistic Personality Type was on the rampage. Someone similar to the American, Theodore Robert Bundy: Ted Bundy had been a highly skilful predator, able to adapt and appear to be whatever he needed to be. He had the outward appearance of a model citizen, was a good-looking college graduate, and even got into the University of Utah Law School, by which time he was already a killer.
Shortly prior to being executed in the electric chair of the Florida State Penitentiary at Starke on the twenty-fourth of January 1989, Bundy stated to officials that he had killed beautiful young women because he wanted to, because he enjoyed it, and because it gave him satisfaction. Lisa had read that Bundy had also once told a detective, ‘I’m the most cold-blooded son of a bitch you’ll ever meet’.
Lisa thought that the sadist they were now trying to find might be a Bundy in the making; just as arrogant, and convinced that he could fool all of the people all of the time. Hopefully he would be stopped before the body count rose to the thirty that Bundy had been officially linked to.
Hiking her shoulders up, Lisa swivelled her neck to each side, then down to her chest and back as far as it would stretch. Groaned. It ached. Sitting tense and fully concentrated for long periods did that every time. She massaged the nape of her neck to try and loosen the muscles, before getting up and going through to the kitchen for another glass of wine. It was eleven p.m., and she was still wide awake and a little wired. The cottage seemed too quiet and too empty. She turned the tuner of her midi-system on and pressed the preset buttons until she heard Phil Collins singing: You’ll Be In My Heart. It was a bit slushy, from some Disney film; The Lion King or Tarzan, she couldn’t remember which. But it pushed back the oppressive atmosphere that working on the profile had generated. She steeped herself in second-hand violence, either by studying and assessing the individuals who had committed horrific crimes and were now under her jurisdiction at the hospital, or by consulting with the police to hopefully develop a profile that would give them investigative avenues to follow up. Unfortunately, it was not an exact science, although sometimes supposition and gut feeling were as illuminating as the evidence gathered from crime scenes. The intensive, specialised study of mental illness of the criminal variety gave her the ability to use creative thinking to mind hunt repeat murderers.
Her head felt too full of bad thoughts; like an abscess in need of drain
ing. Maybe she was reaching meltdown point and needed a large shot of whatever passed for normality, like going shopping in a mall, or to the movies, or just out for a decent meal. She had become too insular and knew it. She was thirty years old, damnit! At this rate she would all too soon end up middle-aged with grey hair and a body sagging in all the wrong places, as she wondered what the hell had happened to her life. Funny how as a teenager, and then even in her twenties, she’d thought that life was all in front of her; that she had all the time in the world. Thirty had been a psychological barrier that she had passed through unwillingly, with no choice in the matter. It was a sobering experience. There was so much she wanted to do, but hadn’t got round to, like maybe swimming with dolphins, seeing the Grand Canyon, and exploring the sights and back streets of Paris.
The late night love station was now playing Lone Star. The vocalist of the group was plaintively singing that he wanted to ‘spend the rest of my life with you by my side’. Why did Ryder’s face coalesce in her mind on hearing those sentiments?
She went through to the kitchen, rinsed the glass, upended it and placed it in the dish rack on the drainer. On a whim she went over to the calendar hanging on the wall next to the fridge. She lifted up the ballpoint that was hanging on a length of string from the same hook as the calendar and wrote, ‘GET A LIFE!’ across it. And then her mobile trilled and she dropped the pen, which dangled and swung like a hanged man on the gallows.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AT eight p.m. Jack updated Ken with the Bosch connection to the killings.
“Great. So we’ve got a sociopath on a mission,” Ken growled. “Almost as hard to bust as a fucking hitman. What are you doing about it?”
“Working it, Ken, what else? He’s studied this artist. He’ll have books and stuff on the bloke’s work. We were going to call round and check who stocks it. But we might end up talking to the killer without knowing it. He could be in the trade and might own or work in a book shop or an art gallery, or be an artist himself. It’ll have to be a shoe leather job. If we get lucky, he’ll be a punter, and might have ordered specific books and left his name and address. Or maybe he paid for them with plastic. It’s a lead.”