same mistake.’
‘Usually, they’re either deluding themselves or they’re emotionally unstable and dependent on the killer in some way. Neither of which would have applied in this case.’ He gave a tired smile. ‘Anyway, tell me about what your Michael uncovered.’
‘The computer was a total goldmine. She’d kept her own diary of the stalking and the murders. It even says that she wanted it published after her death. Can you beat that?’
‘Easily,’ Tony said. ‘Remind me to show you some of the academic papers I’ve got on the subject of serial killers.’
Carol shivered. ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I got a printout of the diary for you. I figured you’d be interested.’ She gestured to the envelope. ‘It’s in there. Also, as you’d surmised, she had video-taped the killings, and as I suggested, she’d imported them into her computer and manipulated the images to keep the fantasy alive. It was absolutely gruesome, Tony. It went way beyond nightmare.’
Tony nodded. ‘I won’t say you get used to it, because you never do if you’re going to be any use at this job. But you do get to the stage where you can lock it away, so it doesn’t jump out and wreck your head unawares.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘That’s the theory. Ask me again in a few weeks,’ he said grimly. ‘Was there anything in there about how she chose her victims?’
‘Just a fucking bit,’ Carol said bitterly. ‘She’d been at this for months before she even picked out the first victim. She worked for the phone company, a computer systems manager. Apparently, she used to work for a small private phone company back in Seaford, which gave her the experience to get the job in Bradfield. She was what they call a super-user of the computer system, so she had access to every piece of data in there. She used the phone company’s computer to extract all the residential numbers who had made regular calls to sex chatlines in the past year.’ Carol paused, letting the obvious question hang in the air.
‘It was research,’ Tony said wearily. ‘I published a paper on the role of chatlines in the development of fantasies among serial offenders. Someone should have told Angelica not to jump to conclusions.’
Reading his remark as a veiled reproach, Carol moved on. ‘She cross-referenced that against the electoral roll and came up with men who lived alone. Then she just checked them out by watching their houses. She had a clear picture of the physical type she wanted, and she wanted one with his own house, a decent income and good career prospects. Can you believe it?’
‘Only too well,’ Tony said grimly. ‘Her rationale was that she never wanted to kill them, she only wanted to love them. But they made her murder because they betrayed her. She kept telling herself that what she really wanted was a man who would love her and live with her.’
Don’t we all, Carol thought but didn’t say. ‘Anyway, once she’d decided on the likely candidate, she paved the way with the dirty phone calls. She got them on the hook that way, on account of all you sleazy men can’t resist anonymous sex.’
‘Ouch,’ Tony said, wincing. ‘In my defence, I’d have to say that a large part of my interest was purely academic. I was interested in the psychology of a woman who would do what she did on the phone.’
Carol smiled tightly. ‘At least I know now that you were telling the truth when you said you didn’t know the woman who was leaving the sexy messages on your answering machine.’
Tony looked away. ‘And the discovery that a man you were attracted to was getting his rocks off in kinky telephone sex with a stranger must have been delightful for you.’
Carol was silent, unsure what to say. ‘I’ve heard the tapes now,’ she admitted. ‘Yours are very different from the others. You were clearly uncomfortable a lot of the time. Not that it’s any of my business.’
Still unable to meet her eyes, Tony spoke, his voice clipped and clinical. ‘I have a problem with sex. To be precise, I have problems with achieving and maintaining an erection. The honest truth is that only part of me was treating the calls with professional interest. The other part of me was trying to use them as a kind of therapy. I know that makes me sound like a pervert, but part of the trouble with doing the job I do is that it’s virtually impossible to find a therapist I can respect and trust who isn’t connected in some way to the world I work in. And however much they verbally espouse the principle of client confidentiality, I’ve always been reluctant to expose myself to the risk.’
Realizing the difficulty Tony had had in making his confession, Carol reached out for his hand and covered it lightly with hers. ‘Thank you for telling me that. It won’t go any further. And if it makes you feel any better, the only people who have heard the tapes in full are me and John Brandon. You don’t have to worry about what people are saying about you behind your back within the force.’
‘That’s something, I suppose. So, go on. Tell me about Angelica’s phone calls to the other victims.’
‘It was obvious that the men thought this was sex without any commitment or comeback. Angelica’s analysis was completely different. She’d convinced herself that their responses meant they were falling in love with her. Unfortunately for the guys, they decided otherwise. As soon as they showed any interest in another woman, they signed their death warrants. Apart from Damien, that is. She killed him to teach us a lesson. You were going to be the other lesson.’
Tony shuddered. ‘No wonder she had to go abroad for the sex-change operation. The NHS psychologists she saw must have had a field day with her attitudes and aspirations.’
‘Apparently, they decided she was not an appropriate candidate for a sex change because of her lack of insight into her sexuality. They concluded that she was a gay man who couldn’t cope with his sexuality because of cultural and family conditioning. They recommended counselling with a sex therapist rather than a sex change. There was an ugly scene at the time. He threw one of the psychologists through a glass door,’ Carol revealed.
‘Pity they didn’t press charges,’ Tony said.
‘Yes. And you’ll be pleased to hear they’re definitely not going to charge you.’
‘I should think not! Like I said, think of the taxpayers’ money I’ve saved. Maybe we should have dinner to celebrate when I get out of here?’ he asked tentatively.
‘I’d like that. There is one other good thing that came out of all of this,’ Carol said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Penny Burgess took the day off yesterday to go walking in the dales. Apparently, her car broke down and she got stranded in the middle of a forest all night. She missed the whole shooting match. There’s a dozen by-lines in the Sentinel Times tonight, and not a single one of them is hers!’
Tony lay back and stared at the ceiling. Papering over the cracks, that’s what they were doing. He suspected Carol knew that as well as he did, and he wasn’t sorry for the effort she was making. But he’d had enough for now. He closed his eyes and sighed.
‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ Carol said, getting to her feet. ‘I wasn’t thinking. You must still be exhausted. Look, I’m out of here. I’ll leave you this stuff to read when you feel up to it. I could drop in tomorrow if you like…’
‘I think I’d like that,’ Tony said wearily. ‘It just comes over me in waves sometimes.’
He heard her feet cross the floor and the click of the door opening. ‘Take care,’ Carol said.
The door closed behind her and Tony pushed himself back up till he was leaning against the pillows. He reached for the padded envelope. While he couldn’t cope with conversation, his curiosity wouldn’t let him ignore Angelica’s diary. He pulled out a thick wedge of A4 paper. ‘Let’s see what you were really made of,’ he said softly. ‘What’s the story? How did you justify, what did you hide behind?’ Hungrily, he began to read.
Wading through the outpourings of the psychologically damaged was normally a routine exploratory experience for Tony. But this was different, he realized after only a few paragraphs. At first, he couldn’t pin down what it was. The writing was more literate, more controlled and more immediate than most of their ramblings, but that didn’t explain why his response was so different. He moved on a few pages, fascinated and repelled equally. It was no more or less self-obsessed than other things he’d read, but there was a chilling relish here that was unusual. Most killers whose writings he’d read had gloried far more in their own bloody role, reflecting less on what they’d done to their victims and its effect on them, but here was someone who identified herself as much in terms of them. But even that couldn’t entirely explain why he felt so unsettled by what he was reading. Whatever it was, it was making him more reluctant to continue the more he read, the opposite to his normal response. He’d been so obsessively keen to get inside the head of the killer he’d dubbed Handy Andy, but now it was laid out before him, it was as if he didn’t want to know.
As he forced himself to read on, mentally chalking up the correct assumptions he’d made in his profile, it
