‘
‘How seriously are we going to take this?’ said Lafayette. ‘Every news station in America is going to be down in Union Square after they receive this. He’s just set his stage.’
‘Can he do it?’ said Denise. ‘I mean, is it possible?’
‘Can we evacuate?’ asked Harper.
‘It’s too late and the Mayor thinks it will be a PR disaster to pull the plug on this.’
‘Then what?’
‘We’ll have police on every square inch of the place,’ said Lafayette.
‘And what if it’s a bomb?’ said Kasper. ‘Then what do we do?’
The team looked at each other. ‘Then we’ve got to hope that the sniffer dogs will find it. We’re going to have to scramble everyone — Counter-Terrorism, the army, the Feds — on this. This is going to be big.’
Harper took the piece of paper. He read the email and passed it to Denise. ‘It’s a challenge,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it. He’s already three steps ahead.’
Lafayette looked at Harper. ‘Can he do it?’
‘Anything can be done,’ said Harper.
‘Not with the whole of the NYPD on his case.’
Harper shook his head. ‘You’ve just had a message from a killer saying he’s going to make fools of the whole government as we all pay our respects to the dead. You think we can police this? There’s going to be thousands and thousands of people out there and we’ve got to find one determined and clever individual. He can do anything. We don’t have a chance. Captain, you need to speak to the Commissioner and tell him that if he’s not going to stop it, then he needs to prepare for the worst.’
Chapter Eighty-Three
Karl Leer had sourced the vehicle two weeks earlier. He had found a decommissioned Auxiliary Support Unit Police Truck that was lying unwanted and unloved in a scrapyard.
As requested, Leer had checked out the engine and cleaned it, making sure that the paintwork was neat and without too many obvious scratches. Then he had left the truck outside the garage behind his workshop.
And now the killer was standing next to the big, dark blue truck. He walked around it and looked inside. He opened the back doors: it seemed to be the right size and would suit his plan. He checked over the outside. Because it was one of the NYPD Auxiliary Unit’s trucks, rather than one of the official NYPD trucks, it still had its markings. That was essential. It had to look like the real thing and it would because it
The killer jumped inside and started to pull everything out. He wanted space to hold people. He had a plan and the plan was to make a fool of the NYPD and to try to kill more Jews than he had been able to so far. Shooting people one by one would take too long, but it was more than that. It was affecting him. He wanted more dead. He wanted a bigger impact. The hunger was in him again and he couldn’t control it.
Nor could he afford to let failure happen again. Once the truck was emptied, he got in the back with a tube of sealant. He sealed up any and every joint and hole with silicon. Then he added rubber all around the two back doors in order to create an airtight unit.
He walked back to the lock-up and found a long piece of hose. He measured the length of the truck from the bottom to the top and then halfway across the roof. He cut a length of hose and then found a ladder. He climbed on to the roof and for the next half-hour welded all the air vents shut apart from one. On to the last vent he welded a short metal nozzle. Then he attached the hose to the nozzle and tied it firmly in place with wire. He ran the hose across the roof, taping it down, then ran it down the side of the van.
Finally, he took the other end of the hose and, using another nozzle, attached it to the exhaust. He spent a few more minutes ensuring that each end of the hose was in place, and then painted the hose blue so that it was not so conspicuous. The whole operation lasted under three hours. He stood back and declared himself pleased. Then he went to the engine and switched it on. He let the engine rumble on and he climbed into the back of the van, leaving the door wide open.
Soon enough, exhaust fumes started to fill the space and he began to cough. He jumped out of the truck. This was the way forward. This was much more efficient.
Chapter Eighty-Four
Denise Levene sat at her desk. There was something more to the killings than she had been able to understand in the last few hours that she’d been researching. She was reading through the remaining diaries and looking through the photographs. Gerry Ratten was trying to find Lucy Steller’s online details. Although the killer had taken her PC, many people posted photographs online, kept blogs online, even stored their whole PC backup online. He just needed a breakthrough, but at the moment, there was nothing.
Harper was already out at Union Square Park with half the police in the city. Every time Denise called, he seemed more wired and angry. She called him again. ‘How is it?’ she asked.
‘We’ve got a few thousand people in the square. The face recognition has picked up half a dozen known offenders, but no Heming. It seems smaller than we imagined it would be. We’ve got hundreds of men on the ground and no traffic coming in from any direction, so we’ve done what we can. We just have to hope that he was lying or that we get lucky. What else have you got on Lucy?’
‘Nothing yet,’ said Denise. ‘But I’m going to call Lucy’s friends. They might know something.’
‘Anything more on Sturbe?’
‘I’ve been in touch with Dr Goldenberg. He’s sourced two possible ways forward. The first is a news report from fifteen years ago. A man called Edward Sturgeon was accused of being Sturbe. He lived in Boston. It may be that our killer had some Boston connection, but I can’t find anything linking Heming and Boston.’
‘What’s the other way forward?’
‘There was a book written about Sturbe. It had a very small circulation — in fact, it only went to specialist libraries, or libraries in Jewish areas. Dr Goldenberg has found a copy and guess what?’
‘I don’t want to guess.’
‘This killer is copying his approach almost to the letter. The barbed wire was something Sturbe started in Warsaw. He captured Jews in the ghetto then allowed them to escape through barbed wire or get shot. They dragged themselves through the barbed wire until they got so caught up, they died there. He drowned others. And there’s the rings. He cut victims’ fingers off to get their gold. Our killer seems to have read this book.’
‘Any way of finding a link?’
‘Heming has lived his whole life in Brooklyn. This biography of Sturbe was held in fifteen libraries in the country. The Brooklyn Library had two copies. They had a special Jewish History section.’
‘Is there any record of who took out the book?’
‘We’re going to check.’
‘Anything else?’ asked Harper.
‘I’ll keep you updated,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure how useful this information is.’
