by Will Carver
I look at Eames. ‘Soooo …’ I say, inviting him to finish my sentence, and he does.
‘This is where the magic happens.’
January
AT THIS POINT, I don’t know that this is the start of a spate of serial killings, so I have to treat it as an isolated incident. The papers are labelling it as unprovoked, but it seems to me that it was most certainly planned. All the details from the scene itself point towards it being a very thought-out process. It’s not a simple culling of an innocent girl, my gut tells me that much. This feels bigger than that. There’s something we are not seeing.
The obvious place to start is her work. Acts of passion are not just limited to home life; they can, and often do, extend to the workplace. As she lived alone in her modular heaven I decide to take a trip to the building society that she worked at and question her boss and her colleagues to find out more about her as a person. So far all I know is that she was thirty-five, had no debts apart from her mortgage, paid all her bills on time, had savings of around £500 and a bookcase full of books, but only the Jane Austen novels seem to have any wear on the spine.
The market is on down the Roman Road today, so there is no way of getting my battered old Mondeo down there. I park near to Dorothy’s flat, scraping the kerb as I back into a gap left by a much smaller vehicle, and take a five-minute walk to the building society where she worked.
As I get out of the car I see kids on the opposite side of the road with their faces pressed up against the green school fencing, staring at the house surrounded by police tape, some laughing at my parking skills. It saddens me to know that they have to live in this sort of world and that it has to have an impact on them. I think they should be aware of the dangers out there, but it has to be presented to them in the right way. It’s a problem close to my heart, though I don’t discuss the reasons why at work. My history; my business.
If only Dorothy had been a little more aware, a little more cautious.
I round the corner into the colourful current of people heading to the market to get their cheap fruit and knocked-off clothing. The independent shops are clearly thriving; whether it’s a newsagent or launderette or an amusement arcade or café, the global chains don’t appear to have infected this end of the street. I allow the flow of people to guide me into the bottleneck of the market entrance. I hear the locals refer to it simply as The Roman.
There is a real sense of energy and vibrancy. Traders trying to make themselves heard over the bustle, shouting out prices and weights, exaggerating the word ‘pound’ wherever possible. The Indian traders are a little more reserved, delicately hanging out their faux gold jewellery and batteries, clipping their luminous price tags to the frames of their stalls. People just getting on with their lives, some unaware of the horror that lurks within their proud community. Most, undaunted by the events of last night, desensitised to the reality of such a crime.
Just over halfway down the road I can see the sign of the building society above one of the clothing stalls. I manage to squeeze through and get to the pavement on the other side, where I can enter the building. It’s relatively empty. There are two cashiers on duty, but only one elderly lady with a trolley handing her bank book over to the woman on the right. I move straight over to her colleague on the left.
‘Good morning, sir. How can I help you?’ the woman behind the glass asks me as if nothing important happened today. She looks about fifty-five. Way too much make-up, like she should be selling perfume in a department store. Her hair is a wiry blonde. The kind of blonde you get when you dye grey hair. It’s not a dirty blonde; it’s almost like a dead blonde. Like someone turned down the contrast on her hair. It’s only accentuated by the brightness of her face. But she seems pleasant.
‘I’m Detective Inspector January David.’ I show her my ID. ‘I’d like to speak with the manager, please.’ She looks anxious, taken aback. It’s funny how people’s body language changes as soon as you tell them that you work for the police. They immediately start to look guilty about something, even if they haven’t done anything wrong. It’s the ones who don’t look guilty that I worry about.
She walks off behind a wall and reappears about thirty seconds later. ‘Sorry about that, Detective Inspector. Mr Price will be with you shortly. If you’d like to take a seat he won’t be long.’ She smiles nervously at me, as though she has been embezzling money for years.
I take a seat at one of the desks on the other side of the room.
Four minutes later, a man appears through a code-locked door and makes his way over to where I am sitting. He is in a grey suit that he clearly bought from the market. The trousers are too high in the leg, so I can see his socks, and the jacket is far too big for his frame. Like the school blazer your parents bought you on your first day that they hoped you would grow into in about four years; that way they didn’t have to keep forking out each year during a child’s growth period.
His hair is thinning and his face is round with all the features crammed into a small space in the middle. His fake tan makes him look a little dirty. He’s around five foot eight with a very slim build; his oversized suit jacket only exaggerates this effect as he drowns in the vast extent of shiny, cheap fabric.
He strides towards me with authority, straightening his half-Windsor knotted tie as he approaches. He stretches out a hand. ‘Detective Inspector, sorry to keep you waiting, but we have had one of our girls not turn up this morning and it has been a little manic.’ His voice is quite nasal and irritating.
‘Dorothy Penn?’ I ask.
‘Well … yes. How did you …?’ he stutters. I can’t stand stutterers, they waste valuable time.
I stand up and grab him by the arm. ‘Look, Mr Price. Can we go into your office please? I’m not here to discuss my mortgage.’
I know it’s not the correct way to behave and any normal person would have shrugged me off or threatened me with a lawsuit for assault, but experience tells you who will just take this and help you with your enquiries. I think he was still in shock.
He leads me through the coded door. I see that the lock has five vertical buttons and the code he taps in is top button, middle button, bottom button, turn. I would wager that the password on his computer is ‘password’. In the back of my mind I start to question just how secure my money is with my bank.
He tells me to take a seat and perches himself behind his oversized desk. I question him about the last time he saw Dorothy, what his relationship with her was like, has he noticed anything different about her lately. He tells me how reliable she is, how she is always early for work and how impeccable her service is. He tells me that his relationship with her is purely professional and that he respects her and her work ethic, as do all her colleagues. This sounds a little rehearsed to me, but he is still talking about her as if she is alive.
He tells me that she is pretty constant. Consistently energetic and friendly. He can’t think of any time in recent weeks where she has broken this seamless persona of contentedness.
When somebody dies you often find that nobody wants to say anything against their character. It’s the same with murderers. They are always someone you thought was an upstanding citizen. Someone like you. It can make it difficult to extract information sometimes, but a good investigator trusts their instincts and I know that he is not being totally forthcoming.
‘Thanks for your help, Mr Price. I think that will do for now, but I may have to return at some point to just clear a few things up.’ I scribble in my notebook and I can see him wipe a bead of sweat away from his temple. I know that he didn’t do it, but he isn’t telling me everything. ‘I would like to speak to your staff, though. So I’ll need to use your office for the next half an hour.’
‘That’s fine.’ He squirms. ‘I’ll send Patsy through first.’
I flick my personal mobile on while I wait and see that I have a missed call from Audrey and a message about her Pilates class. She does like to act normal in these situations but, o
ften, it’s a little too normal. You have to acknowledge that these events are real otherwise you put yourself at risk every time you leave the house.
I text her: ‘Not sure when I’ll be home but I will be back this evening at some point.’ I forget to put the kiss at the end and I know she’ll read into that.
The door edges open cautiously and a wiry nest of tangled hair appears through the gap.
‘Come in, Patsy, please,’ I say in a deliberately non-intimidating tone.
Once I have her settled it’s difficult to shut her up. She echoes Price’s sentiments regarding Dorothy’s character and appears deeply upset at the news of her death. She tells me that Dorothy had an experience on the Number 5 bus a couple of weeks ago.
‘There are a lot of Muslims in the area now. It’s really not that safe for anyone. It’s tough for the West Indians who have been here for a generation or so now, but I’m sure you are aware of some of the killings in Bethnal Green.’ She has that faux racism that you get with a certain generation who aren’t completely ignorant about different cultures, but their upbringing was a lot less tolerant than we see now and you have to accept much of what they say because they don’t know any better. ‘Dorothy was on the Number 5 bus a couple of weeks back. She said that a small Muslim boy was sat with his mother making pig noises at an elderly white lady. The mother was embarrassed and kept telling the child to be quiet, but he continued to taunt the old woman. Dorothy tried to intervene, saying how unacceptable she found his actions. She wasn’t really streetwise, you know? These things happen nowadays and you have to just let them go. But she was just too nice to do that, I think.’
My gut tells me this story doesn’t have any bearing on Dorothy’s death. I don’t believe that this was an act of revenge or a racist attack. It was premeditated sadism for some other reason. But I thank Patsy for her help all the same.
I interview the other bank cashier, but glean very little from this. My trip this morning has merely confirmed that Dorothy was a nice, normal girl, living her life, doing her job, building her home. So far, I reflect ruefully, my basic police work is leading me very slowly down a path of no discovery.
If I could just give in to the idea, I’d realise that The Smiling Man was telling me exactly how and where the murder would take place and who was committing this atrocity.
If I could let myself believe.
But I can’t.
I can catch him and I can do it my way.
Girl 4
I BUILT THIS company with little more than a small loan from my father. So, when the De Vere contract negotiations were being finalised, I wanted to be as involved as I could. Not because I want to take the credit for someone else’s work, or because I find it hard to relinquish control and trust my staff to do their job, but simply because new account acquisitions still give me the buzz I used to feel when we were going through our growth stage.
I’ve reached the top and most days feel like maintenance. It’s less proactive than it used to be. Being involved in these meetings stops me from stagnating.
That’s why I do it.
This account will not be worth as much to us as some of the blue-chip companies that we deal with, but it harks back to our humble beginnings seven years ago when we concentrated on hospitality positions and sales roles. This is our bread and butter, our run-rate business. AU Recruitment represents some of the largest banks in the world and we provide high-calibre candidates for executive positions in IT and FMCG. We recruit ferociously in the capital, but have expanded with offices in Nottingham, Bristol and Glasgow over the last couple of years.
It’s a multi-million pound company that I started. I am the managing director and I own the majority of shares. Big enough to handle, small enough to care. That’s our motto. But I’m a little bored of it now; although I’m not sure bored is the right word.
At least I have the wedding to plan. Something to look forward to. Something else that I can build from scratch. This company was once a thing that hindered my relationships with men. It was the most important thing in life. It had to be. Other men have suffered as a consequence, men I would not like to see again and would not like to see me. My priorities are changing, though, and I know that January’s are too. We’re different people.
The meeting concludes, we shake hands and it’s official. AU Recruitment will handle all the recruitment needs for De Vere, from the pot-wash to the chefs to the hotel management team. The buzz I get is short-lived, but I feel pleased for Michelle, who brought this account to us, and she completely deserves her new-business commission this month for her effort alone.
I take the stairs up to my office, while Michelle takes the client down in the lift. I can’t understand why people use a lift if they are only going up or down one flight of stairs. They say obesity is the biggest killer in the country, but I think it’s laziness.
I push through the door on to the sales floor where my reps are busy with prospects and arranging candidate interviews. It is totally open-plan; everyone has a flat-screen monitor and desktop computer that is no older than three years. This is a peak time of day for outgoing calls and the hubbub in front of me suggests that they are all doing what they should be doing, rather than surfing the Internet or updating something on a social networking site.
As I walk through the aisle to my office at the other end of the room, some people look towards me and smile, some keep their head buried and some just continue with their good work. I tell my assistant to go out and buy a bottle of champagne for Michelle, then sit down at my desk to check my e-mails.
The first mail I open is from a company called Guy’s Works. They organise fireworks displays for special events. They offer me three packages for the wedding. The bronze will last for seven minutes and will cost £850. Silver will last for twelve minutes and costs £1,500, but does include some spectacular elements that a bronze package will not cover, such as whistle and flash candles. Gold is £3,000 for eighteen minutes and the platinum package is really reserved for large corporate events. It costs £7,250 and lasts for twenty minutes. Although it’s only two minutes longer than the Gold package, it does include a Cracking Star and Brocade Shells salute at the start. There are special effects mines, a barrage of aerial bursting shells, rockets that fly over a thousand feet high with an emphatic finale bouquet of five hundred separate projectiles being launched and firing on five separate levels. It finishes with a titanic burst of shells. For an extra £250 I can have something that lights up with our initials inside a heart.
I respond saying that I will take the Platinum Package and give the initials for inside the heart. The wedding is three months away, so this should give them more than enough time to arrange. It’s my treat for Jan. He doesn’t know it yet, but he will love it.
I’ve had a free rein on the organisation of the day. Jan trusts me to get on with it. He doesn’t care about the fine details, just that I am happy and that the day proceeds as I have always imagined it. It is my money that is paying for it, after all. I deserve the ideal, from this relationship, from this day, and I’ll do whatever it takes to have it. So I bought the Vera Wang Fairy Princess ivory organza cut-petal bodice gown with vanilla grosgrain sash, we will toast with Drappier Carte d’Or Brut Champagne 1986, and we shall have a meant-for-corporate fireworks display in the evening.
It will be perfect.
Once I have finished the joy of confirming final wedding details I sit back into my chair, slouching, and stare at the bold font that jumps off the screen telling me that I have over eighty e-mails that are work related. I swivel around in my chair a few times to kill a couple of seconds. I see that January has messaged me back when I switch my phone on. I knew that he would be all right and was just bogged down with the case, but it wouldn’t have hurt him to put a kiss at the end of the text. It’s only one extra button.
I look back on the first half of my day and it’s difficult to pick a highlight.
Eames
WHEN SOMEONE SAYS th
at ‘Satan gets into people and makes them do things they don’t want to,’ that’s not me.
That’s just an excuse. I want to do it.
When someone cries, ‘Forgive me Lord for I know not what I do,’ that’s weakness. That’s a lie. That really isn’t me at all. I know what I do.
When I read in the newspaper that a woman has been cuffed to a bed and shot in the face at point-blank range, that she was possibly raped, that this was a random, mindless act of a deranged sociopath, I can’t believe that they are referring to me.
I have never raped anyone. I couldn’t do that to someone. To say that this was random or mindless is a gross insult to the effort it took to plan such an accomplished piece of art. I chose Dorothy Penn from a long list. I stalked her. I got to know her before we had even met. It had to be her for a reason.
To look at that crime scene and suggest that any of it was arbitrary or casual, that it was performed without method or conscious decision, is only an indication of their stupidity.
*
I do not kill children.
I do not rape women.
I do not beat up pensioners.
Every kill has its reason. Whether the reason is that your mother tried to expel you from the warm protection of her womb or that she just had the wrong name. Whether you want to give death some meaning, you feel like you are helping somebody in the long run or that you believe it to be the ultimate act of creation. Killing is always about love.
The papers, the police, they don’t understand this yet. Until they do, they are never going to catch me.
Until they notice me for what I am doing, they are misdirected.
So I write them a letter.
January
PAULSON ASKS ME if I mind having strippers.