Senseless

by Ed James

  ‘Did you see anything else of him?’

  ‘I was facing away from the door so I never saw him arrive, but . . . every day at the same time, he forced me to drink something. He blindfolded me.’

  ‘That was it? No food?’

  ‘Right.’ A frown twitched on his forehead, then spread to his eyes and nose. ‘The water tasted funny, like off milk. It was thick, like sea water.’

  ‘You said you heard music coming through the wall.’ Corcoran stepped closer to Matt, praying he was right. ‘Do you know what it was?’

  ‘Charlie the Seahorse.’

  Corcoran looked round at Palmer. Another link in the chain connecting the cases. Definitely a third, shared victim. Probably in the cell next to Howard.

  ‘My niece loves the tune. Jen’s brother’s kid. Every time me and Jen babysat Chelsea, she’d insist on watching it. This was before . . .’ He frowned deeply, paining himself. ‘Before we had . . .’ Another frown. ‘What’s my boy’s name?’

  ‘Oscar.’

  ‘God, I forgot my son’s name.’ A mangled cry crept out of his lips, stuck between panic and despair. ‘I tried to recite it, but somehow it became Ollie or Aaron. I’d never call my boy either of those names and I got so angry with Jen for calling him that.’

  A sharp pain dug into Corcoran’s wrist.

  Matt had hold of him, twisting, bending Corcoran’s arm against the way it should go, pushing him down to his knees. ‘Why did you do this to me?!’

  The door clattered open and a huge male nurse burst in. He grabbed Matt’s shoulders and got him to release his grip.

  Corcoran stood up again, clutching his aching arm.

  Dr Yadin was in the room now, a syringe primed and ready.

  Corcoran got in her way. ‘Wait.’ He focused on Matt, fresh pain jabbing at his wrist. ‘Did you see any other cells in there?’

  Matt looked hard at him for a few seconds, then seemed to recover himself. ‘Can’t remember. Heard lots of noise.’

  ‘Hammering?’

  ‘Charlie the fucking Seahorse!’

  ‘Did you see any other doors?’

  ‘One.’ Matt scowled. ‘Howard?’

  Palmer was nodding. ‘What about any others?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Yadin pressed the syringe into his upper arm.

  Matt watched her inject, all the violence draining out of him, then he swung round to look right at Corcoran. ‘Wait . . . As I was taken from the place, I was out of it, my head was swimming. But I saw the other doors. One had Howard on it, but the one in the middle . . .’

  Corcoran nodded. ‘Go on?’

  ‘The name had been removed.’

  Thirty-two

  [Palmer, 15:45]

  Palmer pulled up and let out a groan.

  Up ahead, a crowd had built up round an anti-austerity protest, blocking the road towards her old college. Upended boxes formed a makeshift stage, bookended by giant portable speakers just about louder than the diesel generator belching out fumes, the harsh stink mixing with the smell of falafels from a stall and marijuana from half of the crowd. A man and a woman were singing on the stage, her strumming a guitar, him hitting a tambourine almost in time. ‘Which side are you on, boy? Which side are you on?’ That old anti-war standard, Palmer’s uncle’s favourite song, now used to protest the war on the poor.

  ‘What’s the groan for?’ Corcoran was in the passenger seat, texting someone on his phone. ‘Thought you’d be against austerity?’

  ‘I am, it’s just . . . Come on.’ She got out onto the street, the stiff breeze as firm as an embrace.

  Corcoran took about thirty seconds to haul himself out of the car.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘It’s my bloody hip.’ He grimaced, letting her see through his mask for once. ‘It’s giving me no end of hassle today.’

  Palmer set off, dropping a fiver into a bucket, and pushed her way through the throng towards the college entrance. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Long story.’

  ‘Aren’t they all?’ Palmer stopped by the lodge.

  Dorothy the porter had a colleague with her and they were backed up by some rented security goons who looked like the sort Palmer would usually have helping her in a secure hospital. She flashed her ID and Dorothy waved them through without a second look, her attention focused on the dreadlocked couple dancing a few feet away, taking turns to bite each other’s lips.

  Inside, the quad was lined high on all sides, the patchy lawn not quite surviving through the harsh winter. And right in the middle of the grass, stretching out like she was basking in Mediterranean sun rather than in the darkness of an Oxford quad, was Professor Zoe Wilson. Eyes shut, meditating.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Corcoran stopped dead, jaw clenched, nostrils wide.

  ‘Aidan, she’s just meditating.’

  ‘It’s not that, it’s . . .’ He took another look at Palmer, then set off. ‘I’m leaving.’

  Palmer raced off after him and grabbed him just by the lodge door. ‘Aidan, what’s up? Are you okay?’

  Corcoran wouldn’t look at her. He just stood there, fists clenched, shaking his head. Couldn’t even speak.

  Palmer had seen a hidden side of him, the impossible drive to save people, to pile pressure on himself so that he could catch the villains. The hero complex that seemed to weigh him down.

  But there was something else to this, something about Zoe.

  ‘Do you know her?’

  Corcoran glanced back into the quad; Zoe was still unaware of their presence.

  ‘Aidan, she’s the foremost expert in the field. She can help us find whoever’s doing this.’

  ‘Anyone but her.’ He flashed a smile. ‘I’ll wait in the car. Good luck.’

  She grabbed his jacket sleeve and held him there. ‘Aidan, I need your help as much as hers.’

  He took his time turning round, still bowing his head. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  But he either didn’t want to or couldn’t.

  ‘Aidan, I’ve taken a back seat until now. You’ve driven this case so far, while I’ve just collected data. Now it’s time to turn that data into intelligence.’

  ‘I’m not stopping you.’

  ‘Aidan, if it’s just me in there, we could miss something. Your brain isn’t wired like mine. There’s usually something us academics either ignore or overlook, something trivially obvious. You know we need help tying our shoelaces.’

  That made him laugh.

  ‘So help me tie my shoelaces. Please.’

  Corcoran took a deep breath and let it go slowly. ‘Marie, I can’t be in the same room as her.’

  ‘Tell me why. Help me understand.’

  He looked right at her, fragile and broken. ‘We worked together. I was a lead detective on a serial abduction case, not a million miles from this one. She was the profiler.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Palmer felt a stab in her gut. ‘Ross Murray?’

  ‘Him.’ Corcoran stared up at the arched ceiling above them. ‘Murray picked up and raped women, then progressed to killing them. I had a suspect and I was sure it was him. But Prof Wilson, she fucked up royally. She argued against me, went behind my back to the SIO, my boss, got him to listen to her theory.’

  ‘You were a DI?’

  ‘Took a demotion to come out here. Can do without all the hassle.’ Corcoran leaned back against the wall and laughed. ‘Frying pan into the fire, though, and I don’t even get compensated for this bullshit.’ He stared through at Zoe, still cross-legged, fingers steepled in front of her. ‘So her geographic profile showed a home location of Brixton. My boss made us focus on that as a base of operations. Trouble is, Ross Murray lived in fucking Norfolk and commuted to south London every morning for work, where he committed the crimes.’

  ‘Was he on your radar?’

  ‘Interviewed him myself. He gave us fake alibis, which I didn’t believe but they checked out. Your mate and my DCI
had a different suspect who lived in Brixton, so Murray was kicked to the side. Then two women turned up in Norfolk, walked into Thetford nick, claiming they’d been captured and had escaped. Their timelines were all over the place, and Ross Murray’s alibi still covered it. So they released him.’ He bit a nail. ‘Trouble was, Murray waited until they were released from protective custody and killed them. I found the first in Islington, dead. Then I caught him murdering the second out in Mile End.’ He rubbed at his side. ‘Got into a stupid chase with him and injured my hip. That’s the least of it, though.’ Another glare back at Zoe. ‘She caused the deaths of two innocent people. If my boss had listened to me instead of her, they’d both still be alive.’

  Palmer took her time digesting the story. ‘Thanks for sharing with me.’ She gave him a warm smile. ‘I know how hard that must be.’

  He nodded without looking at her.

  ‘But you can’t punish yourself for not saving everyone, Aidan.’

  ‘No . . .’ Another long sigh, one that didn’t take much pushing. ‘But I can punish myself for letting myself get fooled into trusting the wrong person.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trust anyone.’ Palmer stepped closer to him, trying to make it impossible for him to avoid her gaze. Even so, he still managed to. ‘Look, I know what Zoe can be like. She was my PhD supervisor. We’ve had our run-ins, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t see any choice here.’ She waited for him to look at her again. ‘I’ve got your back, Aidan. I don’t play games. I want the same thing as you, to catch whoever’s doing this to those poor people. I need to stop him, bring him to justice. Then I’ll help him.’

  Finally, he smiled. ‘Back to that?’

  ‘I’ll never let go of it. But we need to work with Zoe. Play devil’s advocate all you want, Aidan, but at least play.’

  Corcoran looked at her, a hard edge in his eyes, then he walked over to Zoe. He stood on the grass a few feet away.

  Zoe looked up at Corcoran, blinking in the light, her red hair glowing. ‘Aidan?’ She raised herself up without using her hands, in one fluid movement. ‘Aidan Corcoran?’

  He grimaced. ‘Not often you see a professor meditating in the open.’

  [16:03]

  Palmer took a seat in the office. ‘Well, at least you’ve tidied.’

  Overnight, Zoe had cleared her floor of books and filed them away, though there were still several stacks around the floor near the door. While it freed up a lot of space, the room still needed a deep clean. Dust danced around in the light breeze from the open window.

  ‘After your midnight visit, Marie, I decided the mess was obstructing my flow. But it takes so much time. I kept having to pick up and examine every second book. Half of them I’ve either not read or just dipped into, so I’ve got a lot of reading to catch up on this summer. I simply had to meditate to clear my head.’

  Corcoran stayed standing. ‘Can we get started?’

  ‘Ah, of course.’ Zoe walked over to a giant map of the south of England pinned to the wall. Contoured, with colour-coding marking out cities, rivers, forests, long dashes separating the counties. She stuck a sheet of paper to the wall, filled with chunky handwriting, then started sticking red pins into the map. ‘These are our abduction sites.’

  Devon in the south-west, Cambridge in the north-east, then east London almost due south.

  She stood back, hands on hips. ‘Do you see anything?’

  Corcoran shrugged. ‘Pretty far from a straight line.’

  ‘I don’t see a pattern.’ Palmer grimaced. ‘Unless we’re missing other victims.’

  Zoe nodded slowly. ‘As it stands, that’s a random distribution. Cambridge to Exmouth is over two hundred miles, right?’

  Corcoran’s turn to nod. ‘I checked it last night. Two hundred and twenty-seven miles by road.’

  ‘Okay, well that very randomness implies that he’s probably targeting his victims by some non-geographical means.’

  Corcoran narrowed his eyes. ‘Explain?’

  ‘He isn’t luring people into a trap. Instead, he’s attacking them. Your lack of obvious connections implies there’s a deeper one, which we just don’t see yet.’ Zoe looked back to her sheet of handwritten notes. ‘Marie’s assumption is that these abductions are precisely navigated points in the flow of the victims’ days. For example, the spot where Sarah was taken is a CCTV blindspot.’

  ‘Same story in Brighton.’ Palmer checked her notebook again. ‘The release site was in an area of damaged CCTV cameras. Well publicised, so it was common knowledge. Also the abduction site in London was during night-time roadworks.’

  ‘We’re getting ahead of ourselves here.’ Zoe gave a curt smile. ‘The varying torture methods suggest meticulous planning.’ She took another set of pins from a tub on her desk. ‘And there’s a long gap of time between abductions. Matt in October, Sarah in January, Howard in late February.’ She paused, frowning. ‘But the releases . . . There’s no cooling-off period like you would expect with a serial killer. He’s released all three over three days. Monday morning, early Tuesday morning, then Tuesday night just before ten. Thirty-four hours apart, give or take.’

  Corcoran stared at his watch. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘As per Marie’s second assumption, this is someone working to a mission. Like the abductions, his release schedule is clearly planned. Evenly spaced and drawing attention to what he’s doing, yet he hasn’t taken credit for it. Don’t you think that’s curious?’

  ‘Look, this is all stuff I could get from Dr Palmer. You’re not adding anything to our case.’

  Zoe ignored him and started sticking blue pins in for the release sites: Witney over in the west, Rugby further north and closer to the middle, then Brighton down on the south coast and south of London. ‘Again, quiet locations, correct? No eyewitnesses?’

  ‘Almost.’ Palmer joined her by the map and pointed at Brighton. ‘A drinker spotted someone here.’ Then up at Rugby. ‘A man attacked Howard when he was released. In both cases, there was a van.’

  Zoe wasted no time in going on the attack, looking over at Corcoran with that look. ‘Have you got detailed witness statements?’

  ‘Not from Brighton yet.’ Corcoran kept his cool, training his focus on the map. ‘These things take time. The Rugby one was a kid.’

  Zoe’s smile showed she was taking that one as a victory. ‘Looking at the release shape, it’s possibly a diamond centred around Buckinghamshire.’ She swept her finger across the map, hovering over the county. ‘That could be his home.’ She looked around the area, her smile broadening. ‘It gives a sufficient geographical scale over which he could operate. Or it could be a moving location.’

  Corcoran stepped away, yawning as he checked his phone.

  ‘Well, I’m doubtful of that.’ Palmer looked at the shape again, trying to have faith in Zoe’s method. She pressed her finger into the area south of London, the chunk of M25 they’d sped around earlier. ‘Assuming it’s a diamond, the fourth point would be somewhere between Croydon and Sevenoaks.’

  Zoe was nodding vigorously. ‘That’s a possible release site for another victim. It’d fill the right side of the diamond.’

  Corcoran looked up, rolling his eyes. ‘But it could be a kite shape. Or the first few prongs of a trident . . . Or whatever a twelve-side . . . thing is called.’

  ‘A twelve-sided polygon is a dodecagon.’ Zoe beamed wide. ‘And you’re talking about a regular one.’

  ‘Whatever. This feels far too cute.’

  ‘Cute?’ Zoe chuckled. ‘I could point out seven cases where that cuteness is the exact scenario. People are unimaginative and follow unheeded biases in these situations.’

  Corcoran pocketed his phone and folded his arms. ‘We’ve still got nothing, though.’

  ‘No.’ Zoe’s eye twitched. ‘The map shows that he’s a commuter.’

  ‘He’s doing this for work?’

  She held up a finger. ‘A commuter is the technical term for someone who
travels into the area they’re targeting. In a German study, they showed that abductors who drove tended to travel six times as far from their home sites as those who walked.’

  ‘They’re hundreds of miles apart! Even I could’ve told you our guy’s driving!’ Corcoran laughed. Then his forehead tightened and he frowned at the map for a few seconds. ‘The car . . .’

  Palmer joined him, trying to follow his gaze as it darted across the map.

  He tapped on the map on the eastern edge of Buckinghamshire. ‘Yesterday morning, I visited a site where the SUV possibly used to release Sarah was found. A VW Tiguan. Thing had been stolen and was burnt out.’ He tapped the map again. ‘It was just outside Amersham in Buckinghamshire.’

  ‘That lends more credence to Bucks being a possible home base.’ Zoe stuck a pin in and stared at it for a few long seconds. ‘And if it’s there, then he’s either got an accomplice to collect him or he walked from that site.’

  ‘Meaning he’s left a trail.’ Corcoran set off towards the door but stopped. He turned and nodded at Zoe. ‘Thanks.’ Then he left.

  Zoe’s shoulders slouched.

  ‘It’s okay.’ Palmer gave her an encouraging smile. ‘Him even being here means a lot. And that could be the lead we need.’

  ‘Part of me hopes I’m wrong, and your guy isn’t kidnapping someone else from Buckinghamshire. But that part still wants you to catch him.’

  Thirty-three

  Dawn

  The train’s rhythm is a familiar sound now, the repeating loop of the wheels against the tracks just like the Doctor Who theme. It weaves round a bend and I chance another glance at him. Big guy, muscly arms, almost a whole carriage away. He stands up and slips on his black biker jacket, then heads over to the door.

  I get out my phone and hit dial. ‘Hey, Caz, it’s me. I’m starving. Could you stick the oven on?’

  ‘Sure thing. You just about home?’

  I look out of the window and see the familiar sights of home. Sure enough, the announcement speaker chimes. ‘The next stop is Princes Risborough. Next stop, Princes Risborough. Thank you for—’ The rest of it is lost to the hubbub of people packing up and getting ready to leave. Stowing away laptops and designer headphones.