‘Is anybody keeping an eye on you?’ Paula asked, suddenly anxious. Tony might be on the far side of odd, but she’d grown fond of him over the years. She’d lost one friend in the course of duty and she knew enough about that kind of grief. Tony had reached out a hand to her then, a hand that had stopped her falling, and she still felt she owed him. There were some debts that could never be paid.
Tony nodded. ‘So I’m told. There’s been a surveillance van outside the house since before I got home yesterday and there’s a very polite young man who’s keeping tabs on me on foot.’ He made a face. ‘It’s reassuring, I suppose. But I don’t think Vance is coming after me. Simple revenge isn’t his style. He’s much more twisted than that. But how precisely the twist will manifest itself, I don’t know. So it’s been quite good for me to have your case to think about. It keeps me from fretting.’ He peered at her, blinking like an owl in the light. ‘Tell me – what’s your take on Carol? How’s she coping?’
‘You’d never know there was anything else going on except for these murders. She’s got her work face on and that’s that.’ She gave a sad little smile. ‘It would kill her to show vulnerability to the likes of us. She needs us to believe in her so she can convince herself she’s indomitable.’
Tony’s eyebrows twitched up and back again. ‘Have you ever thought of a career in psychology?’
‘What? And end up like you?’ Paula laughed out loud.
‘They’re not all like me.’ He mugged at her. ‘Just the good ones. You could do this, you know. You’re better than you know.’
‘Enough, already. What do you make of it? Is it the same killer, do you think?’
‘I don’t think there’s much room for doubt. It’s the same person, Paula. The tattoo is postmortem. It’s signature behaviour. But that’s about all that fits the typology.’ He pulled a spiral-bound notebook from his battered leather briefcase. ‘There’s no clear evidence of him having sex with his victims. Kylie had unprotected sex with four men, we don’t know about Suze because of her immersion in the canal, and Leanne’s body has no traces of semen. There isn’t any at the site either.
‘Then there’s the victims themselves. There’s common ground, obviously. They were all selling sex. They were all, in effect, street hookers. I know Leanne was working in the lap-dancing club, but her acts of prostitution were not controlled by a pimp or in a brothel. So from that perspective, she was in the same category as the other two. But here’s the thing about his victims. It’s like he’s moving up the social scale of prostitutes. Kylie was as low down the pecking order as you can go. Suze had dragged herself off the bottom of the heap. And Leanne – well, Leanne was as near as you can get to a respectable woman. Now, I know there’s a rule of thumb in this kind of crime that says an offender starts with the most vulnerable of victims and grows in confidence with each kill. But in my experience, that confidence doesn’t generally grow so far or so fast. Leanne is a big jump from Kylie. And that’s odd.’
‘Maybe he’s just more emotionally mature than some of the killers you’ve dealt with.’
Tony shrugged. ‘It’s certainly possible. But my gut reaction would be that, if he’s that emotionally mature, he wouldn’t need to be doing this.’ He spread his hands. ‘But what do I know? I just missed a major trick doing a risk assessment of Vance, so I’m not feeling very bloody infallible today.’
‘So is there anything you can tell me that might point us towards the killer?’
Tony looked disconsolate. ‘The only thing—’ He stopped himself, scowling at the table.
‘The only thing …?’
He tutted. ‘I shouldn’t say this. Because it’s based on nothing more than a feeling.’
‘As I recall, your “feelings” have worked out well for us more than once. Come on, Tony. Don’t hold out on me.’
‘It’s as if he’s throwing down a gauntlet. Like, “None of you are safe. It’s not just the bottom feeders, it’s all of you.” Like nobody’s safe on the streets with him around. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, he talked about cleansing the streets. It’s as if this one has a similar ambition. He wants to scare them off the streets.’ He absently picked up Paula’s coffee and took a drink. ‘I don’t know. And there’s something else that’s really bugging me and I don’t know what it is. There’s something about the crime scenes, the murders themselves. It’s bothering me and I don’t understand why.’
‘Well, he’s doing something different every time. That’s unusual, isn’t it?’ Paula took her coffee back.
‘Yes, to the degree he’s doing it. But that’s not what’s bugging me. I’m aware of the degree of difference, that’s all filed away under “unusual but explicable”. There’s something else and I can’t put my finger on it and it’s bloody annoying.’
‘Leave it alone. It’ll come to you when you’re in the thick of something else.’
Tony grunted, unconvinced. ‘It’s weird. I’ve almost got deja vu about it. Like I’ve seen it all before. But I know I haven’t. I can’t even think of a case in the literature where the killer tattoos his victims postmortem. I wish I could shake the feeling, but it’s bugging the hell out of me. Have you made any progress with the investigation?’
Paula told him about Sam’s discovery the night before. ‘Stacey’s working on it. If there’s anything to be got, she’ll get it.’
‘You might want to ask her to see if she can find any courtyard-style motels between the Flyer and Dances With Foxes. This is clearly territory he’s familiar with. And they do like to stick to where they know. Suzanne Black was drowned somewhere he didn’t have to take her past a receptionist. I don’t think he took her home to his place. He doesn’t take chances like that. But one of those motels where you check in at an office and the rooms are like apartments that open off the car park – that would fit the bill.’
‘Good idea. Thanks.’ She drained her coffee and pushed her chair back. ‘I’m going to miss them all. We’re all going to be tossed to the four winds by Blake. I’ll never get another berth like this again. It’s like the end of an era.’
‘Blake’s an idiot,’ Tony said. Just then, his phone beeped. He patted his pockets till he found it. ‘Message from Carol,’ he said. ‘She wants me to come in so Chris can debrief us.’
‘What’s she been up to? I haven’t seen her since yesterday lunchtime.’
‘She’s been tracking down the other three cops who worked with me and Carol on putting Vance away. They needed to be warned personally, not left to hear about it all on the news.’ He stood up. ‘I’d better get over there.’
