Cross’s game with Penny Burgess. But someone else was going to be angry too. When he read tonight’s paper, the killer was going to be more than a little put out.
Tom Cross stubbed out his cigarette and slurped from his mug of tea. He folded his paper and placed it on the table in front of him and stared out of the cafe window. He lit another cigarette. He’d set out to provoke the Queer Killer. Provoked, he’d start to get careless, to make mistakes. And when Stevie McConnell did that, Tom Cross would be ready and waiting. He’d show those sorry bastards in command how to catch a killer.
Tony was back in the office by ten to three. Even so, he wasn’t early enough to beat Carol. ‘Inspector Jordan’s here,’ Claire said as soon as he opened the outer office door. She gestured with her head towards his office. ‘She’s in there waiting. I told her you’d be back.’
Tony’s responding smile was strained. As he gripped the door handle, he clenched his eyes tightly and took a deep breath. Nailing what he hoped was a welcoming smile on his face, Tony opened the door and stepped into his office. At the sound of the door, Carol turned away from the window she’d been staring out of and gave him a cool, appraising look. Tony closed the door behind him and leaned against it.
‘You look like a man who’s just stepped in a puddle that’s deeper than his shoe,’ Carol remarked.
‘That’s an improvement, then,’ Tony said with more than a trace of irony. ‘Usually I feel like I’ve stepped in a puddle that’s deeper than my head.’
Carol took a step towards him. She’d rehearsed what she was going to say. ‘There’s no need to feel like that with me. Last night… well, you were less than candid and I misread the signals. So can we please forget the whole thing and concentrate on what’s important between us?’
‘Which is?’ Tony sounded impersonal as a therapist, his question conversational rather than challenging.
‘Working together to nail this killer.’
Tony pushed himself away from the door and made for the safety of his seat, careful to keep the desk between them at all times. ‘That’s fine by me.’ He gave a crooked smile. ‘Believe me, I’m far better at professional relationships than the other kind. Think of it as a lucky escape.’
Carol walked round to the opposite side of the desk and pulled up a chair. She crossed her trouser-clad legs and folded her hands in her lap. ‘So let’s have a look at this profile.’
‘We don’t have to behave as if we’re strangers,’ Tony said quietly. ‘I respect you, and I admire the way you’re so open to learning new aspects of the job. Look, before… before what happened last night, we seemed to be moving towards a friendship that went beyond work. Was that such a bad thing? Couldn’t we settle for that?’
Carol shrugged. ‘It’s not easy making friends after you’ve exposed your weaknesses.’
‘I don’t think showing someone you’re attracted to them is necessarily a weakness.’
‘I feel foolish,’ Carol said, not quite sure why she was opening up like this. ‘I had no right to expect anything from you. Now, I’m angry with myself.’
‘And with me too, I expect,’ Tony said. This was proving less traumatic than he had imagined. His counselling techniques hadn’t rusted over from lack of use, he thought with relief.
‘Mostly with myself,’ Carol said. ‘But I can deal with that. The important thing for me is that we get the job done.’
‘Me too. It’s pretty rare for me to find a police officer who seems to have a grasp of what I’m trying to do.’ He picked up the papers on his desk. ‘Carol… This isn’t about you, you know. It’s about me. I have problems of my own that I need to deal with.’
Carol stared at him long and hard. He felt a quick twitch of panic as he realized he could not read her eyes. He had no idea what she was feeling. ‘I hear what you’re saying,’ she replied, her voice cold. ‘Speaking of problems,’ she added, ‘haven’t we got some work to do?’
Carol sat alone in Tony’s office with his profile of the serial killer. He had left her to read it while he worked next door with his secretary, catching up on the correspondence that had piled up since Brandon had hijacked him only a handful of days before. She couldn’t remember ever having been so fascinated by a report in her entire career. If this was the future of policing, she desperately wanted to be part of it. At last, she came to the end of the main body of text and turned to a separate sheet.
Points to pursue:
1. Had any of the victims ever mentioned to a friend/ relative that they had been the subject of an unwanted homosexual approach? If so, when, where and from whom?
2. The killer is a stalker. His first encounter with his victims probably takes place quite a long time before he kills – weeks rather than days. Where is he encountering them? It may be something as banal as where they take their dry-cleaning, where they have their shoes heeled, where they buy sandwiches, where they have tyres or exhausts put on their cars. Given that they all lived close to the tram network, I think we should check whether the victims regularly used the trams to go to and from work, or to go out in the evenings. I suggest that in-depth background checks are done, going through bank accounts, credit-card statements and anecdotal evidence from colleagues, girlfriends and family members. This may help develop suspects.
3. Is there any indication that the victims were keeping the night in question free for any particular purpose? Gareth Finnegan lied to his girlfriend about it – did any of the others?
4. Where is he doing his killing? It’s unlikely to be in his home, since he will have calculated the possibility of being arrested, and will have taken pains to avoid leaving forensic traces there. It’s also got to be big enough for him to build and use the torture engines we are assuming in these cases. It may be an isolated lock-up garage, or a unit on an industrial estate which is deserted at night. Bearing in mind that he almost certainly lives in Bradfield, it’s possible that there exists an isolated rural property that he has undisturbed access to.
5. He must have found out about instruments of torture somewhere so that he could construct his own. It might be worth checking with bookshops and libraries to see if any of their customers has enquired about or ordered books on torture.
Carol flicked back a few pages, rereading a couple of paragraphs which had particularly struck her first time through. She found it hard to credit how quickly Tony had assimilated the stacks of files she’d delivered. Not only that, but he’d drawn out of them the key points that created for the first time in Carol’s mind a picture, albeit shadowy, of the man she was hunting.
But the profile raised questions in her mind. At least one of those questions didn’t seem to have occurred to Tony. She wondered if it wasn’t referred to because he had dismissed it out of hand. Either way, she had to know. And she had to find a way of asking that didn’t sound like an attack.
F ROM 3' DISK LABELLED: BACKUP. 007; FILE LOVE. 013
I hated to keep Gareth hanging on, but I had to leave him for one little errand. In his car, I’d found a few of the Christmas cards his company sent out to favoured clients, already signed by all the partners. Inside one, with a fountain pen, a stencil set and Gareth’s blood, I’d written in block capitals, ‘ A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL YOUR READERS; YOUR EXCLUSIVE CHRISTMAS GIFT IS WAITING IN THE SHRUBBERY OF CARLTON PARK BEHIND THE BANDSTAND. COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON FROM
SANTA CLAWS.’ It wasn’t easy to write with the blood; it kept congealing on the nib, which I had to clean every few letters. Luckily, there was no shortage of ink. I addressed a Jiffy bag to the editor of the Bradfield Evening Sentinel Times and put the card in it, along with a video I’d made a couple of weeks before, when I’d started to plan what to do with Gareth. I’d already decided to change my modus operandi slightly. Temple Fields was bound to be risky now; even if the queens were too drunk or stoned to be vigilant, the police would be keeping an eye open for more than the occasional cottaging poof. But the nature trail through the shrubbery of Carlton Park is almost as notorious a pick-up area.
Early on a rainy Sunday morning, when there was nobody about, I’d driven out to Carlton Park with my camcorder. I started off by the wrought-iron bandstand. I walked around it, filming it from every angle. It wouldn’t take long before somebody in the BEST office recognized the landmark. After all, Carlton Park is the biggest park within the city boundaries, and there’s a brass-band concert there every Sunday from April to September. I deliberately kept the camcorder at chest level rather than on my shoulder; I’ve read of instances where correct estimates of height have been made simply from the angle photographs have been taken from. If some forensic scientist was going to draw any conclusions from this video, I wanted to be sure they would be the wrong
