he’d call her later, Kanarack abruptly hung up.
Less than an hour later Jean Packard entered the bakery and glanced around. Conversations with two other shop owners and a young boy who happened to see his sketch by accident had pointed here, to the bakery. There was a small retail shop in the front and behind it he could see an office. Beyond that was a closed door that he assumed led to the area in the back where the baking was done.
An elderly woman paid for two loaves of bread and turned to go. Packard smiled and opened the door for her.
Jean Packard nodded and then turned to the young girl behind the counter. This was where the man worked. He would show the sketch to no one here. That would be a tip-off someone was after him. What he wanted was a list of employee names. This was obviously a small organization, with probably no more than ten or fifteen people on the payroll. All would be registered at the central Tax Bureau. A computer cross-check would match names with home addresses. Ten or fifteen people would not be difficult to canvass. Simple elimination would give him the one he wanted.
The girl behind the counter wore a tight short skirt and high heels, and had long, shapely legs covered with black net stockings. Her hair was pulled tight in a knot at the top of her head and she wore big loop earrings and enough mascara and eye shadow for three. She was the kind of half-girl, half-woman who spent most of her day waiting for night. A job behind a bakery counter was not high on her list of turn-ons, it just helped with the bills until a better arrangement could be found.
Ten minutes later Jean Packard left with a half-dozen croissants and a list of the people who worked there. He’d told her he was opening a nightclub in the area and wanted to make certain the local merchants and their employees got first-night invitations. It was good public relations.
13
MCVEY SHIVERED and poured hot water into a big ceramic mug with a British flag on it. Outside a cold rain was falling and a light fog lifted off the Thames. Barges were moving up and down the waterway, and traffic was heavy along the river road beside it.
Looking around, he found a small plastic spoon lying on a stained paper towel and added two scoops of Taster’s Choice decaf and a teaspoon of sugar to the steaming water. The Taster’s Choice he’d found in a small grocery around the corner from Scotland Yard. Warming his hands on the cup, he took a sip of the decaf and glanced again at the folder open in front of him—an Interpol printout of known or suspected multiple murderers in continental Europe, Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There were probably two hundred in all. Some had served time for lesser crimes and been released, others were in jail, a handful were still at large. Each would be checked out. Not by McVey but by homicide detectives in the respective countries. Transcripts of their reports would be faxed to him immediately as they were completed.
Abruptly McVey set the list aside, got up and crossed the room, his left hand balled up into a loose fist, and began absently to twick his thumb with his little finger. What was troubling him was what had troubled him from the beginning, a gut sense that whoever was surgically removing heads from bodies was not someone with a criminal record. McVey’s mind stopped. Why did it have to be a man? Why couldn’t it as easily be a woman? These days women had the same access to medical training as men. In some cases, maybe more. And with the current emphasis on fitness, many women were in excellent physical condition.
McVey’s first hunch had been that it was one person committing the crimes. If he was right, it narrowed the field from possibly as many as eight killers to one. But his second speculation, or speculations—that the murderer had some degree of medical schooling and access to surgical tools and could be of either gender and with perhaps no criminal record at all—tore the odds to hell.
He had no statistics at his fingertips, but if one totaled up all the doctors, nurses, paramedics, medical students, former medical students, coroners, medical technicians and university professors with some measure of expertise in surgery, to say nothing of the men and women who received some medical training serving in the armed forces, even if they stuck to Great Britain and the Continent alone, the figures had to be staggering. This was no haystack they were poking around in. It was more like a sea of grain blowing in the wind, and Interpol had no vast army of harvesters to separate the grain from the chaff until they finally uncovered their murderer.
The odds had to be narrowed and it was up to McVey to narrow them before he said anything to anybody. To do that he needed more information than he had. His first thought was that maybe somewhere he had missed a connective link between the first killing and the last. If so, the only way to find out would be to go back and start again with the most definitive facts at hand: the autopsy reports on the head and the seven headless bodies.
He was reaching for the phone to request them when it rang.
“McVey,” he said, automatically, as he picked it up.
“I don’t know what it means, if it means anything at all,” he said in English. “But in going over the daily reports of my detectives I came across a complaint of simple assault. It was violent and quite vicious but simple assault nonetheless, in that no weapon was used. However, that is beside the point. What caught my attention is that the perpetrator is an orthopedic surgeon, an American, who happened to be in London the same day your man in the alley lost his head. I know he was in England because I have his passport in my hand. He arrived at Gatwick at three twenty-five Saturday afternoon, October first. Your man seems to have been killed sometime late on the first or early on the second. Correct?”
“Correct,” McVey said. “But how do we know he was still in England for the next two days? I don’t remember French Immigration stamping my passport when I landed in Paris. This guy could’ve left England and come into France the same day.”
“McVey, would I disturb as prominent a policeman as you without doing a little further checking?”
McVey felt the needle and gave it back. “I don’t know, would you?” He smiled.
“McVey, I am trying to assist you. Do you wish to be serious or should I hang up?”
“Hey, Lebrun, don’t hang up. I need all the help I can get.” McVey took a deep breath. “Forgive me.” On the other end he could hear Lebrun ask for a file in French.
“His name is Paul Osborn, M.D.,” Lebrun said a moment later. “He gives his home address as Pacific Palisades, California. You know where that is?”
“Yeah. I can’t afford it. What else?”
“Attached to the arrest sheet is a list of personal belongings he was carrying with him at the time he was taken into custody. The first are two ticket stubs from the Ambassadors Theatre, dated Saturday, October first. Another is a credit card receipt from the Connaught Hotel in the Mayfair district dated October third, the morning he checked out. Then we have—”
“Hold on—” McVey leaned forward to a stack of manila folders on the desk and pulled one from it. “Go ahead—”
“A boarding pass on a British Airways London-to-Paris shuttle dated the same.”
While Lebrun talked, McVey scanned several pages of computer printouts provided by the Public Carriage Office, which had answered a police request asking for the names of drivers delivering or picking up fares from the theater district Saturday night, October 1, into Sunday morning, October 2.
“Hardly makes him a criminal.” McVey turned one page, then another until he found a cross listing for the Connaught Hotel, then slowly ran his finger down it. He was looking for something specific.
“No, but he was evasive. He didn’t want to talk about what he was doing in London. He claimed he became ill
