“Why?” said Madeline. “He just needs to be stopped, can’t you see that?”
“Yes, but it’s not the way we work,” said May apologetically.
“We need to know where the sequence of victims begins.” Bryant studied the page of names. “I have some people I can contact.”
“I hope they’re in the Surete,” said May.
“Not exactly. Do you remember the members of the Panic Site?”
“That website set up by Dr Harold Masters, the academic who runs the Insomnia Squad? Arthur, they’re all completely loopy.”
“Obsessives perhaps, but occasionally quite brilliant.” Masters’s group of rogue intellectuals stayed on-line through the night to argue about everything from Quakerism to corn deities before returning bleary-eyed to their jobs in the capital’s museums and art galleries. “They’re affiliated to a bunch of expatriate crime fans based in Nice, most of whom are former coppers. Janice put the number in my speed dial.”
“Can you give them a call?”
“I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea how to use that particular function,” Bryant admitted.
“Give me your mobile. You think they’ll know someone who can run a check on these names?”
“Bound to, old sock. I told you we were looking for someone from a mountain region. Mrs. Gilby is right, he’s probably adept at moving about in extreme weather conditions. If he’s a tracker, he’ll run a sweep from car to car, narrowing down the search until he finds her-and us.”
It was too cold to remain outside for another minute. They settled Madeline and Ryan in the rear of the van and locked them inside, then returned to the cabin to call Dan Banbury, who was better positioned to find out the status of the rescue services. “They’re waiting to try again with the chopper,” he told them, “but it looks like there’s one more really big squall on the way. It should hit you in the next hour or so. After that, you’ll have to hope that the northeasterly wind drops and makes way for rising temperatures. The Devon and Cornwall police say there’s little chance of the snowploughs breaking through until daybreak tomorrow. Part of the road outside Totnes has collapsed, and there have been avalanches large enough to block nearly all of the major routes.”
“Then we really are alone,” said May, dismayed. “Except for a few frozen salesmen, a terrified woman, a handful of practising pagans and a murderer.”
“Who are you calling now?” asked Bryant.
“A friend of mine at the International Bureau of Investigation. Before you start trying with Harold Masters, let me run the list of names past them. We need to see if any of these have been reported. If we can place them in the right order, starting in the French Alps and plotting a path to Dover, they might give us a clue to his real identity. Don’t worry, I’ll fall back on your friend Dr Masters if I have to.”
“Edward Winthrop,” said Bryant, tapping his dashboard. “The name rings a bell. It sticks out from all the others on that list. I’ve definitely heard it before.” He dug a battered alligator-skin address book from his overcoat and flicked through it.
“What have you got in there?”
“Missing persons, murder victims, suspects, Alma’s shopping lists, key witnesses and people who have generally annoyed me,” said Bryant. “It runs into several notebooks, as you can imagine, especially the last category. Here we are. Edward Winthrop, a London lawyer murdered in Marseilles in 2004.”
“Why would he be of interest to you?”
“Because he was killed in a police station,” said Bryant with some satisfaction, “by the young man he had come to represent. It was in all the papers, sparked an extraordinary court case. You have your starting point, I think.”
May connected his laptop to his mobile and began composing e-mails. “I know nothing about the movements and motives of serial killers,” he admitted. “So many other terrible crimes go unreported, it seems they get a disproportionate amount of publicity through books, films and television, yet there are only really a handful.”
“A handful who get caught,” Bryant corrected. “We have no way of knowing how many others are cunning or merely lucky enough to get away with their crimes. Roberto Succo terrorised the South of France in the 1980s, slaughtering anyone who got in his way. He was a twenty-five-year-old Italian who’d been locked in a mental institution for stabbing his parents to death. A supreme egotist-nothing mattered to him, not life or death. He saw himself as already dead, and was so confident that he operated right under the noses of the police. How do you catch someone like that? Andrei Romanovic Chikatilo killed over fifty women and children in Russia. He showed no remorse or even any understanding of his cruelties.” He settled himself into his seat. “Most of the murderers we’ve faced have been desperate men and women who’ve killed to cover their own weaknesses, not murdered indiscriminately. I’ve done a bit of reading in this area and have some statistics here somewhere.” He pulled a handful of black leather notebooks from his pocket and blew the fluff from them.
“Hang on,” said May, “exactly how many of those do you own?”
“Forty-six,” Bryant answered matter-of-factly. “I was going to quote from a few during my convention speech.” He riffled the pages. “Ah, listen to this. Did you know that seventy-seven percent of all serial killers are American citizens, and only sixteen percent are European? Eighty-four percent are white, sixteen percent are black. Ninety percent are male heterosexuals. Sixty-five percent of the victims are female, and ninety percent of all victims are white. A quarter start killing when they’re teenaged, half start in their twenties, the remaining quarter begin in their thirties. But then we have the anomalies, like the elderly Dr Harold Shipman, the world’s worst serial killer with at least four hundred attributable deaths to his name who injected lethal doses of Pethidine into vulnerable English ladies who loved and trusted him. He fitted the pattern of being arrogant and violent-tempered, but many of his crimes remained undiscovered for decades. His wife Primrose supposedly never guessed the truth. Dozens of questions about him remain unanswered, and the authorities are still not sure if they’ve found all the victims.
“A lot of serial killers are boring, mentally subnormal and inadequate as human beings, which rather mitigates against the image of the superior intellectual usually portrayed in films. We’ve never really dealt with psychopathic brutality before. My wits can’t protect me against such an opponent, and this hostile environment makes me realise how vulnerable I’ve become. How do you find, let alone stop, someone like this? The PCU isn’t equipped to locate such people. There are special units to deal with them, I remember, because I took Alma to see
“But the same things happen in cities, where alienation and hardship are just as rife,” argued May. “Look at London, and how conducive its society has been to cruel practises. Children are raised in a paradoxical environment of decadence and restriction. How many of them truly learn to think and behave like rational adults? What are we breeding in our schools and on our streets now that traditional society has been so radically transformed?”
“For once I must agree with you,” said Bryant. “I think the science of rationality is being pushed aside to make way for new superstitions. Look at the move to teach the mysteries of God’s will beside Darwinism under the term ”intelligent design,“ or the reliance on discredited homeopathic drugs to treat cancers we know to be caused by poor diet and cigarettes, or the rise of pyramid-selling religions sold under the guise of lifestyle-improving courses, the blurring of boundaries between greed and honesty. It’s obvious when you think about it. Through the proliferation of deliberately obscuring clutter, our access to hard information is being radically reduced. If you take away knowledge you create myth, not the old myths that help to underpin and elucidate the human condition, but ones with the more sinister purpose of increasing commercial gain.”
May shook his head sadly. “I thought the Internet would transform the world, but it’s fast proving to be just another method of spreading disinformation. This isn’t our field, Arthur. Look how the Highwayman had us fooled, simply because we refused to believe the truth that was right in front of us.”
“Some changes in society are too painful to accept easily,” Bryant admitted, his eyes downcast. “The power of the human mind remains inexplicable.” He was thinking of May’s guarded reaction to the spirit writing. “Where does that leave us now?”
“We may be isolated in a hostile environment, but we have a world of help at our fingertips. He’s just one man working alone in a limited space, and we will catch him. Now, you call Harold Masters, and I’ll call the Bureau.”
