‘Why didn’t you just tell me about your dad?’
Tony sighed. ‘He wasn’t my dad. That’s the problem, really.’ Explaining himself to Ambrose, that was the worst of it. He’d spent his life building walls against the world, keeping to himself the things he wanted no one else to know. And all it took to bring the walls crashing down was one act of madness. This must be how his patients felt.
It had been the stuff of comedy, though there had actually been nothing funny about it. The screams of the estate agent had galvanised Tony, sending him diving out of bed in his boxers to grab his clothes. Unfortunately, it had also galvanised the house viewers, who had had the presence of mind to call the police and report an intruder.
The police had arrived in an amazingly short time. Tony was barely dressed, the estate agent still freaked out, the viewers with her on the other side of the door, refusing to let him out. In vain he had tried to explain that he had every right to be in the house. The fact that he had keys cut no ice with the cops. What made sense to them was the estate agent’s story that he’d viewed the house as a prospective buyer the previous day and now he was claiming he lived there. He had to admit, he’d have believed her. He’d have thought the madman in the bedroom definitely needed to be taken down to the police station till either he could be sectioned or his story could be verified. Or not, as they were pretty sure would be the case.
Once they were at the nick, it had all been sorted out very quickly. A call to his solicitor and another to DS Ambrose had straightened things out. He’d been released, with a none too gentle warning that next time he wanted to sleep in a house for sale, he should tell the estate agent beforehand. When he’d emerged, chastened and embarrassed, Ambrose had been waiting for him, his expression a lot less friendly than it had been to date.
‘What do you mean, he wasn’t your dad?’ Ambrose demanded as they drove off.
‘I never knew him. I didn’t even know his name till he died and left me the house.’
Ambrose gave a long whistle. ‘That’d fuck with your head.’
‘So this job must have felt like you were getting a message from beyond the grave to come and check out his ground, right?’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that. More that it was a chance I couldn’t ignore. I’m sorry. I should have told you. I just didn’t expect the house to have such an effect on me.’
‘All the same, the DI’s not going to be thrilled when he hears about this. He already thinks you’re on the wrong side of normal.’
‘A perceptive man, your DI Patterson. However, he might be a bit happier when you tell him that I do have some suggestions about your killer.’
Ambrose took his eyes off the road and gave him a quick appraising glance. ‘Terrific. How do you normally go about this?’
Tony smiled with relief. The fact that Ambrose was interested in the process of profiling suggested that he’d decided to forgive him. And given that there was nothing more fascinating to Tony than what he did professionally and how he did it, there was plenty of scope for satisfying Ambrose’s curiosity. He was off and running. ‘There’s two parts to it, I suppose. The first part is a sort of reverse logic - instead of reasoning from cause to effect, I go the other way. I start with the victim. Getting a picture of who they are and what it is in their life that might make them attractive to a predator. Then I look at what’s been taken from them. Their lives, obviously. But also the other aspects. Their individuality. Their gender. Their power. That sort of thing. And finally, I look at what’s been done to them. The actuality of what the killer has done and the order he’s done it in. And when I’ve absorbed all that, I start going backwards. I ask myself questions. If I’m the killer, what’s in it for me? What do these actions mean to me? What am I getting from this? Why does it matter to me that I do these things in this particular order? Then I go further back. What is it that happened to me in the past that makes this meaningful? And by that stage, I’m hopefully well on the way to figuring out what’s going on in the killer’s head.’ His hands were making patterns in the air, a physical representation of the twists and turns going on inside his head.
‘And then I look at the probabilities. What sort of life is possible for a person with this sort of history? What impact has their damage had on their life? What kind of relationships are possible for them?’ He spread his hands and shrugged. ‘It’s not an exact science, obviously. And every case throws up different questions.’
Ambrose sighed. ‘Fascinating. But that wasn’t actually what I meant. What I was asking was how you present your profile. On paper or in person?’
‘Oh.’ Tony knew Ambrose’s response should have knocked the wind from his sails but he was unabashed. One thing he didn’t envy the normal world was what he saw as a depressing lack of curiosity. As far as he was concerned, Ambrose should have been pleased to be on the receiving end of his explanation. But if all he wanted was the prosaic, Tony could provide that too. ‘Usually I write it up on the laptop then fire it over to the SIO. If they want clarification, I’ll go through any points they’re not clear on. But I’m not quite ready to profile. I’ve not got enough of a sense of Jennifer yet. I really want to talk to the best friend, Claire thingie.’
‘Darsie. Claire Darsie.’
‘Yes, of course, sorry.’
‘That’s where we’re headed now,’ Ambrose said. ‘I cleared it with the school for her to get out of class to talk to you. You can take a walk through the school grounds, or find a quiet corner to sit down in.’
‘Perfect. Thanks.’
‘So, what can you tell me now? About what you think?’
‘Not much. Because at this point, I’m not thinking very much that’s concrete.’ There was one thing that he had to drive home, though, and it was so counter-intuitive, Tony knew he’d have to lay the ground for it. ‘I mean, I’m thinking this is not as straightforward as we first thought, and I’m wondering if that’s deliberate or incidental.’
‘What do you mean?’
Tony pulled a face. ‘I’m not convinced this is a sexual homicide. ‘
‘Not sexual?’ Ambrose was incredulous. ‘He virtually raped her with that knife. How can that not be
