The diagram on the wall was repeated in actual size on the floor. Two chalk lines extended from the back wall into the room. A third line connected them, forming a square. There was a wooden board on the floor, two pallets of bricks, and bags of sand and cement.
Having finished cutting his steel poles, which were going to be perfect tubes, he removed his shirt and undershirt. He took a spade from the side of the room and ripped open the cement bag. He poured it on to the board, and then added a shovel of sand. In the heat he went over to the hose and doused himself liberally first, before filling a bucket with water.
He used the spade to form a cavity in the sand and cement mix, then threw in water from the bucket, folding it in with the spade.
When he was happy with the consistency, he took a trowel and started to lay a thin line of mortar between the chalk lines. He then took the point of his trowel and formed a V in the mortar. From the block of twelve bricks he took the first one, laid it flat side down on the mortar and pressed it firmly into place with a slight twisting motion. He laid the second brick along from the first, filling in the joint between them, then placed his spirit level on top to check that they were flat. He continued until the walls were nearly all built.
The killer could see that the evolution of the species only worked if people destroyed what was weak. If not, humanity would continue to be diluted by impure genes. He lifted another brick and placed it on top of the mortar. He was still depressed about missing the children, but now he had Lucy. Second attempts were good enough.
He thought about Section 88. They were amateurs. Fools, most of them. They had been useful, but they hadn’t understood him. Not at all. If there was one thing he knew better than anything else, it was how to keep a fire burning. It had burned through the last twenty-five years, it had grown through any slight, any injustice, and become a raging, tormenting anger.
The truth — if there was such a thing as truth — was that he now felt bad if he didn’t kill. He felt cowardly, and as though he, too, was weak. Once you started to kill, the need was impossible to stop. It was mechanical and vast. It consumed him.
The killer heard a bark, then a whole series of barks. Someone was outside. He stood and reached for his gun.
A moment later, a knock rapped on the door. He unlocked the door and opened it.
‘I got what you asked for, Sturbe,’ said Martin Heming.
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Harper slept three hours then walked back to the station house, his head full of dark images. The news media had just picked up the story and the panic and rage were building.
There were no reporters outside the precinct and the investigation room was nearly empty. It would take Forensics another day to get anything from the Auxiliary Truck, but Harper already knew that there would be nothing. The killer was too good, and the purpose of the attack was unmistakable — it wasn’t just to kill, it was to prove his superiority to the police.
Denise Levene sat in the circle of light from a low desk lamp in the corner of the room. She looked asleep. Harper moved across, his feet making no sound on the old carpet. Denise turned quickly as he approached. ‘Tom! Are you okay?’
‘I’ve never seen anything as bad as what I saw in that truck, Denise. We’ve got to find this guy. He’s escalating beyond anything I could’ve imagined. Five kids gassed in a police van.’ Harper threw himself into a seat. ‘Anything coming together here?’
‘I’ve got nothing new. We’ve been working all night.’
‘No leads on Lucy?’
‘We haven’t found anything. He’s cleaned all traces.’ Denise stared up at Harper. ‘It’s always darkest just before dawn,’ she said.
Harper smiled in response and stared down at the book that Denise was looking at. ‘What is it? Your high- school scrapbook?’
‘It’s my casebook. I keep a close eye on the Abby case. I keep every detail, every article.’
‘You really feel for her, don’t you?’
‘Sure, don’t we all?’
Harper picked up the casebook. He held it as he crossed to the coffee pot and poured out a fresh cup of coffee. ‘Interesting,’ he said.
‘What is?’
‘Looking back over the life of a case.’ Harper sat and started to flick through the images. He saw outrage, hope, despair, page after page. The turns and dead ends of a fruitless investigation. At the end, the presumption of death.
‘They look alike, don’t they?’ said Harper, staring at a picture of Abby Goldenberg smiling in a high-school shot and the photos of the murder victims on the wall.
Denise stood up and stretched. ‘Yeah. There’s definitely a type he goes for. No question.’
‘No, I mean Abby and Lucy.’
‘They do,’ said Denise.
‘I don’t understand how Lucy could be a target,’ said Harper.
‘Why?’
‘She’s not Jewish, is she? He must’ve been going for Capske, but then why come back for Lucy?’
‘Because she saw something the night he was taken, something that would lead us to him.’
‘Yes. I thought of that,’ said Harper, ‘but if she was only taken because of some accident, then it’s damn strange that she’s a dead ringer for Abby. I don’t get how this fits together.’
‘I don’t get it either, but Lucy had something he wanted to keep from us.’
‘Another thing, if we’re working on the assumption that the killer is Heming, then why does it matter if Lucy saw him? It makes no sense. We know it’s Heming, don’t we?’
‘No, but he’s all we’ve got.’
‘He’s smart, right? Smart enough to find a police safe house and kidnap two kids, smart enough to leave no evidence. You met Lucy. She’s not a difficult target. She seemed kind of lost in her own head. Why did he feel the need to take her?’
‘Could be part of the escalation,’ said Denise. ‘He’s not thinking straight.’
‘You read about Heming and his wife. She went off with a Jew. You don’t think that’s what’s happened here, do you? Lucy was going out with Heming, maybe after the marriage broke up. Maybe lightning struck twice for him. She was dating him and then left him for a Jewish boy.’
‘Could be,’ said Denise. ‘But they don’t seem to be a good match.’
‘No, and again, I can understand him wanting to punish her, if that’s his psychosis, but why take the hard drive and the diaries?’
Harper flicked through Denise’s casebook and stopped at a picture of Abby standing next to some boyfriend from her past. He turned to Denise. ‘Our killer knows the children can ID him, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So he’s confident he’s got alibis and he’s confident that there’s no physical evidence to link himself to the crime. We didn’t even get a strand of hair from the Becky Glass murder. He didn’t rape her either, even though it looks like he wanted to. Perhaps he’s afraid of leaving his DNA. I mean, maybe he’s on file so he’s got to keep the scenes clean. He certainly knows how to clean a crime scene. If it was Heming, the children could ID him from a photograph.’
‘If the psych team allowed us.’
‘He doesn’t know that.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘The only thing that can put our killer at the scene is the children. And the only other person who is linked to
