with it. He gave a quick glance to the screen, hoped Marina saw the signal.
‘Oh God,’ said Marina in Mickey’s ear. ‘He must be some kind of… let me think… borderline personality? Psychopath? Certainly with psychopathic tendencies. Something like that. I don’t know enough about him. Ask him how they made it convincing.’
‘How did you convince him it was actually Rani talking to him? Could have been anyone pretending to be her.’
‘He did it because there’s not much left of him and he wanted to believe. She’s all he had left.’ He thought for a moment. ‘And she told him what he wanted to hear. That she was coming back to him. He just had to find her.’
‘Find her? How?’
‘She would be in different bodies. He’d be told where she was, what she looked like. And that Rani’s spirit would be inside some woman. He had to watch her until we told him otherwise.’
‘And then?’
Turner shrugged. ‘We didn’t want them any more. Got rid of them.’
Mickey sat back, letting the information sink in. He couldn’t believe it. Didn’t see how someone would fall for it, no matter how mentally damaged they must be.
‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘No one would fall for something as lame as that. No matter what condition they were in.’
Turner just laughed. ‘You haven’t seen the Creeper. You wouldn’t say that if you had.’
‘Messed up?’
‘Totally.’
And even more messed up by the time you two had finished with him, thought Mickey, but decided not to say it aloud.
‘So… help me here, Mark. I’m trying to understand. You’ve got this guy to… what? Kill for you?’
Turner shrugged.
‘What does he do? Talk me through it.’
‘We give him a target. He stalks them, we get him going, tell him things about them, what they feel for him. He gets obsessed, goes mental over them. Then we tell him the spirit’s gone, jumped to another body.’
‘And… what then? He kills them?’ A feeling of dread went through Mickey as he waited for the answer.
Turner shook his head. ‘We tell him they’re husks, the bodies. Just husks. No use any more. Then we get him to put them away somewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere safe.’
‘And leave them there?’
He nodded.
‘Why?’
‘Because we might need them again. That’s the next stage. Programming someone who’s not a nutter like him. Someone normal. See what we can do with them.’
‘And because they might tell.’
Turner shrugged. Casual. ‘Yeah. That too.’
Mickey sat back, his head spinning from all the information. He shook his head, tried to clear it. ‘But why? Why, Mark? Why do all this?’
Turner leaned forward, eyes alive with a sick, dark light. ‘Because we can, that’s why…’
‘Keep focused, Mickey.’ Marina in his ear again. ‘Ask him about the victims. Who chose them, how they were chosen. He’s not telling us the whole story. And I don’t know why. Either he doesn’t know it all or he’s holding something back. Find out which it is.’
‘Who chose the girls, Mark?’
‘Fiona.’
‘All Mark’s ex-girlfriends,’ said Marina. ‘Interesting.’
‘So you didn’t mind that they were all your ex-girlfriends, Mark? That Fiona was targeting them?’
Turner flinched, a sharp, quick stab of pain showed in his face. Then nothing. In control again. He forced a shrug. ‘Why? I’m above all that now. Doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘No he’s not, Mickey, he flinched. They’re his old girlfriends and it still hurts, no matter what he says.’
Mickey looked at him, listened to Marina.
‘It’s his weak spot. We’ve got him,’ she said in his ear. ‘Go in for the kill. Finish him off.’
99
Phil stared at Fiona Welch, tried to ignore the pain in his cheek, just concentrate. Talk to her.
‘So…’
A wave of pain ran through him. He tamped it down, breathed deeply. Fiona Welch’s head was cocked to one side as if she was an animal, listening. Or an anthropologist, observing. Her face was serene, sweet.
Phil tried again. ‘Fiona,’ he said, ‘what’s this going to prove? You can’t get away with it.’
She shrugged, smiled sweetly. Didn’t answer.
‘The rest of the team are going to be looking for me. I told them where I was going. When they get here, they’ll get you too.’
Another shrug. ‘So?’
‘So you’ll be caught. Prison.’
‘So?’
Phil shook his head. She was beyond reasoning with. ‘What d’you hope to get out of this?’
‘My Ph.D.’
Phil wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. ‘What?’
‘My Ph.D. It’s in Victimology and Coercion. It examines how a subservient personality can be totally controlled by a dominant one. It also examines the mindset of the victim, the methodology needed to create that particular mindset in the first instance.’ She smiled. ‘With examples.’
Phil couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘So, you mean… you did all this, the murders, the abductions, everything… just for your Ph.D.?’
She looked affronted. ‘Why not? I told you I had a point to prove. This was it.’
‘But…’ Phil didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. ‘You’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison for this.’
‘So?’
‘So? What’s the good of your Ph.D. if you’re going to be in prison?’
She shook her head slowly, grinned patronisingly, as if explaining a very obvious point to a very thick child. ‘The Ph.D. is still a Ph.D. In prison or anywhere.’ Her eyes glittered in the dark, like stabbing razor flashes. ‘And just think… I’d be famous.’
Phil couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Famous.’
‘Yes. Famous.’ She looked away, thinking, lost in her words, her mind. ‘No. I won’t just be famous, I’ll be notorious. No. That’s not right either. I’ll be… adored.’ She nodded. ‘Yes. That’s the right word. Adored. I’ll get letters. Visitors. They’ll write books about me. Serious, proper works, not just cheap lurid paperbacks. I’ll have my own acolytes. Disciples.’ She turned to Phil. ‘Do you know Charles Manson never killed anyone? He just made others do it for him. Yet he’s still locked up. And he’s just some stinking, addled old hippie. He’s nothing next to me…’
That’s when Phil realised she was completely insane. He had only suspected it before but now she had confirmed it. And in that moment another thought struck him.
He had thought up to now there was a chance. He could reason with her, keep her talking until his team arrived, carted her away. And, yes, she had said she expected to be caught. But she was insane. There was no
