‘You know, Doctor, I am quite easy to upset. I seem to have a high degree of vulnerability, which is bizarre when you think I could kill these people without a second thought.’
‘That’s what the killing is for — to hide the vulnerability, to lock it away… to disguise it with the most potent thing there is, the power of life and death.’
‘I like killing. Like it like nothing else. It’s better than cocaine. It’s like cocaine but with all your faculties absolutely intact. It’s not false. It’s a perfect expression of human emotion. Killing, raping, ripping.’
She heard the band twang three times behind the door. Why was he twanging? She didn’t understand.
‘It feels good to twang. It keeps Nick away, too. Did it not occur to you that it might? Ha! I drove her home, Dr Levene. In my car. I was alone with her in my car. The opportunity was there, but I let her go. I felt so good, letting her go. I felt what virtue must feel like. It was quite a new sensation.’
‘Keep going. Keep working on the strategies. You can heal yourself. You must. You can.’
‘You have amazing faith, Doctor. I wonder what that feels like too. Denise, I have felt lost my entire life. Will it ever end?’ He slapped the elastic against his wrist again.
‘Why are you twanging? Is Nick there?’
‘He wants to be here. Oh, one more thing,’ he said as he stood up. ‘You will be pleased to know, Denise, that when I dropped her at her home and drove away, I felt proud of myself on your behalf, as if you were my mother or my father. It was a nice feeling.’
‘I’m pleased. You did well.’
‘Yes,’ he said. There was something in his voice.
‘What? What is it?’ she said sharply.
‘Oh, you know, Denise. You deny yourself something. You walk away. You feel satisfied, but then the urge just comes back stronger. Much, much stronger. You know.’
‘What do you mean?’
He took something out of his pocket and held it a moment. ‘I have something for you.’
He threw something through the bars. It splattered on the floor. She shivered at the cold red slime.
‘It’s Kimberly’s heart, Denise. She was a lovely, gentle girl. I have no complaints.’
Denise threw herself back against the wall and let out an agonized scream.
‘We worked on the first phase, Doctor, and that worked very well, but we did nothing on the second phase. I drove off, but I still wanted her. I needed to see her suffer. I had no strategies. None whatsoever. You left me quite unprepared.’
Denise was lying on her side, in pain. She started to cry as the monster stared at her through the bars.
‘When you do that, Dr Levene, that crying thing… what is it like? What does it feel like?’
Chapter One Hundred and Six
East Harlem
December 4, 1.30 a.m.
Harper didn’t wait around to watch the body being bagged, humped on to a gurney and rolled over bumpy ground to the waiting ambulance. He didn’t have the heart for anything. He wanted the world to swallow him up and make it all disappear. But he couldn’t say any of it. He snarled at Lafayette, walked away from his building and felt the nausea rising in his belly. He’d never be able to go in there again.
The killer had destroyed his home. Had Sebastian meant to do that? Why did Sebastian want to hurt him so badly?
The face of the corpse had been completely removed. How, they could only half imagine. All that was left was a thin layer of bloody flesh over the bone, and the dark holes of the eye sockets, nose and mouth.
Nothing from which they could identify her until they ran all the necessary tests. The agony was far from over. In fact, it was just beginning. I want you to feel pain, Tom Harper.
Harper took himself away to the East River and sat down to think. There was a riot of painful emotion going on in his head and he could hardly cut out the noise. He was at breaking point but he knew better than to give in to the chaos. He had to do the one thing he knew would keep him together. He had to go to work.
The East River was like black ink, tilting with bright streaks of moonlight. The odd picturesque boat chugged by and anyone might presume that the man sitting at the edge was just enjoying the scene.
In his head, the discipline was at work. Harper had a ferocious capacity for work and now was the time to draw upon it. Ignore the thump and throb of emotion, ignore his self-pity. Ignore everything except the forces of reason.
Only reason would catch the killer. Harper took a piece of chalk from his pocket and on the paving stones in front of him he started from day one. He wrote the names of the killer’s victims:
Chloe Mestella
Mary-Jane Samuelson
Grace Frazer
Amy Lloyd-Gardner
Jessica Pascal
Elizabeth Seale
Nate Williamson
Lottie Bixley
Kitty Hunyardi
Rose Stanhope
Senator Stanhope
Lucy James
Denise?
He took out his notebook and went through the notes he took of each scene. The poetry sprang from the page: Every angel is terrifying; Subtle he needs must be, who could seduce Angels.
Then he wrote: Abaddon. He looked at his list. What was this telling him? Sebastian had killed the Upper East Side girls. Had he also killed Lucy James and Lottie Bixley? Why did Sebastian want Tom to feel pain now? Why? What was the connection? The marks on the pavement were barely visible in the dark but Harper just kept staring. He wanted to know what connected these victims and he wanted to know why the killer was punishing him. A half- thought appeared in his mind. It caught his attention and then waited for him to consider the implications.
His mind had starting going there already, but with it all down in front of him it became crystal clear. It was about Mo, wasn’t it? It had to be. He had gone for Denise because Tom had gone for Mo. Sebastian had loved Mo. He was seeking revenge. What for and why didn’t matter, it just meant that the link was real.
But if he was punishing Harper, he was also playing games. He played a game with Elizabeth Seale. He’d said it was ‘sealed with a kiss’. Maybe Abaddon meant something? Maybe Abaddon meant something about Mo.
Detective Harper spoke the word slowly. ‘Abaddon.’ Abaddon. He recalled something from earlier in the investigation. What was it? The phone call after they released the fake profile. Sebastian had said something about Abaddon, but then he’d said something else. What was it?
Harper flicked through his notebook. He found the transcript of the phone call. There it was. That’s what he said. ‘I’m the American Devil. I’m Abaddon — that’s where I am. I’m a pure breed devil and I was raised in hell.’
Harper had looked up the word Abaddon — it was a name for the angel of destruction and he’d thought no more about it. Now he looked down more intently at the word.
I’m Abaddon, that’s where I am…
It was a curious phrase. Tom had taken Abaddon to be a person, an incarnation of the devil.
The cogs in Harper’s mind turned and clicked. A gear shifted.
He’d gone to Maurice’s room. Harper recalled it in slow motion, trying to picture it in his mind. Yes, he was sure. There was a photograph. Two boys. Obviously connected, maybe even family. The sign was obscured. Just the letter A was visible.
Abaddon, that’s where I am…
