of humanity to everyone that came through its doors. The suspects. The members of your team: Gillman, Drummond, Notman, Harrower, McCaig. You.
Through his entire processing by the state’s law enforcement and criminal justice systems, Horsburgh displayed only arrogance and disdain. The searches of property and assets. The intimate forensic tests. The interrogations. The psychiatrist’s reports. The official charges. He enjoyed it as a game; savoured the embarrassment all round when he confessed to the Welwyn Garden City and Manchester crimes. It all meant so little to him. But it meant so much to you, and Mr Confectioner knew it.
It came to a head on a mid-November Wednesday, three weeks after Britney had been taken. You’d spent hours with this man, trying to find out what made him the way he was. Looked into his soul. Saw nothing. Exasperation got the better of you. — Why? Why did you do it?
— Because I could, Confectioner had replied in offhand candour, removing his reading specs, waving them gently to underscore a point. — It was the sport of it mainly. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I got a lot of pleasure from the sexual side, but that wasn’t the main motivation. Very fleeting, that sort of thing. Besides, this one was a little too young. I prefer them to have some sort of awareness of what’s going to happen to them. His lips trembled in delight, knowing he’d got to you. — It was more the thrill of the chase, stalking them, building up the dossiers, evading you lot. We’re thrill-seeking creatures, are we not?
You had fought to maintain silence and an even stare; to keep looking dispassionately for the clues. We studied our serial killers, nonces and murderers in the same way we did our scientists, intellectuals and artists, looking for answers to the mystery of our nature.
And Confectioner recognised that in you, this fatal curiosity; used it to toy with you. — You’re different from the others, he’d pompously declared. — They just need to know how. How did I lure, overpower, fuck, kill and conceal. But you’re really so desperate to know
The grimly cheerful smile. That rubbery mouth you wanted to tear from his face.
— You know, I had every police force in Britain looking for me for the best part of five years and you didn’t have a fucking clue as to who I was. All this time I’d be lodging complaints at my local station about vandalism or noise coming from pubs, and you’d bend over backwards to help.
It was true. Mr Confectioner, ‘Horsey’, the pedantic Home Office civil servant nobody wanted to be stuck beside on the morning commuter train from Aylesbury to Marylebone, had conned them all. His whole persona was an act, concealing a warped but calculating mind. Photography was his supposed interest, but the darkroom upstairs in his home, out of reach from his crippled mother, was really a laboratory. All his weekend and holiday time was spent planning his abductions and murders. His true hobby was kidnapping, beasting and killing.
Horsburgh would hire a cottage within a couple of hours’ driving distance from his intended target area. Nula Andrews was taken to a place in the Fenlands, Stacey Earnshaw the Lake District, and Britney Hamil to the Berwickshire coast. Horsburgh also told them where the body of a young French girl was buried in Normandy. — A holiday romance, he’d chirped, meeting your seething rage with a television game-show host’s smile. — They never last.
This disclosure resulted in the release of a farm labourer who had been in a French prison for seven years. Crucially, though, Confectioner refused to cooperate when you showed him pictures of other missing children. — Not quite ready to help you there, he’d said genially. But you knew there were more victims.
None of the missing kids was on Horsburgh’s comprehensive database of young girls, or featured in his detailed notes. But also absent were records for Nula, Stacey and Britney; he’d obviously erased them on completion of each abominable mission. How many others were there?
You did find the white van. Horsburgh also had a black one, keeping both in a lock-up garage a mile from his home, using them solely for his crimes. He selected his victims at random, trying for a geographical spread. He also had the tapes he’d made.
If there was one thing more unsettling to you than talking to Confectioner, it had been watching the Britney tape earlier that morning with Dougie Gillman. — That’s five times, his frozen, mordant observation, — he’s fucked her, choked her unconscious, then brought her back for another shot. That’s his thing.
Gillman’s voice and those images snapped back into your head as you stared at Horsburgh’s hands. You buckled under a sharp intake of breath, as you heard the soft, childlike plea escape from somewhere deep within you. — She was only a wee lassie.
The killer looked at you as if you were simple: with pity as well as contempt. Then you realised that Bob Toal had come into the interview room. He nodded for you to follow him outside, steering you into an empty office and closing the door. — You’re losing it, Ray, he warned. — Go and get some lunch. I want to give Dougie a shot at him this affie.
You gripped his forearm. — Just one more session, you begged.
Toal looked over your shoulder into the middle distance. — Okay, Ray, he said finally, — you pulled him, you deserve the chance to see it through. Then he looked down at your hand, shaming you into withdrawing your grip. — But it’s against my better judgement: you’re a mess.
And you couldn’t contradict him. Last night you’d turned up at Trudi’s, a rambling drunk. There was an argument and you’d woken up on her couch, and gone straight into work. — I’m sorry, you told your boss, — I’ll sort myself out.
Toal looked doubtful. — Leave the whys for the shrinks. Find out about those other kids.
— Thanks. I’ll stick to the details, like you said, as you glanced at each other in impasse, both unsure of what to say next. You eventually managed to wheeze out your intention of getting some lunch, and you trooped down to Stockbridge.
Then, in Bert’s Bar, as you watched Sky News, Robert Ellis appeared on the screen. Out of prison, self- educated, well read. Enjoying the new-found status of being the articulate good guy. — I feel sorry for the families of Stacey Earnshaw and Nula Andrews. They deserved genuine closure but instead they were forced to live a lie all those years. Most of all, though, I really feel for the family of Britney Hamil. While I was rotting in jail, this monster was out there, free to do these unspeakable things to that child. Heads will roll, he threatened. Ellis now a hero to those who forgot his vile rant at the grave of Nula Andrews. But you harboured the uneasy sensation that had he been as eloquent several years back, Ellis, instead of instigating bar-room brawls, might have been a man who led nations into war.
You couldn’t stand it: you went to the toilet and snorted a line of cocaine.
When you returned to Fettes, you savoured the cold burn in your veins. Felt that you now had the measure of the beast. In the interview room you had distance back in your voice. — You’d have been pretend-tinkering in the back of the van, looking out for signs of life at the windows. Waiting till Britney had walked past and was blocked by the body of the van from any prying eyes on the other side of the road. You grabbed the kid, bundled her into the back, shut the door, secured her, probably with duct tape, maybe forced some Rohypnol or chloroform on to her, then climbed into the front, right?
— And tore off to my evil lair for the slow devouring. Horsburgh smiled. — You’re a smart one, DI Lennox. Probably an IT background, I’m guessing. A 2:1 at some second-rate, but still decent uni. Perhaps even a master’s—
— Shut the fuck up.
Horsburgh looked offended, then somewhat disappointed as he disdainfully raised his brows. — But you missed stuff. The CCTV footage of the grave. You’ve probably looked at loads of it. Kills the eyes, that sort of thing. How’s your vision?
You sensed you were being played. Were suddenly very aware of your colleagues through the mirror. — What?
— Did you ever look at Parka Man’s debut appearance?
— In Welwyn…
— Sorry, I meant my debut appearance in Edinburgh. He paused for effect. You felt the room grow bigger, Horsburgh receding from you. — The security footage from Burger Palace, at that dreadful shopping centre… you missed it, didn’t you?
