‘Not funny,’ Paula said.
‘Who said he was joking?’ Kevin said. ‘OK, I’m on it.’ He shrugged into his jacket and grabbed his keys.
‘He’s dead already, isn’t he?’ Paula said, turning back to her desk to do the same.
From the doorway, a new voice joined the conversation. ‘Almost certainly,’ Tony said. ‘But you still have to conduct yourselves as if you’re looking for a live boy.’
Carol rolled her eyes. ‘Dr Hill,’ she groaned. ‘Perfect timing, as usual.’
He advanced into the room. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him so well groomed and smartly dressed. It was as if he was trying to impress, something which never normally penetrated his consciousness. ‘As it happens, you’re absolutely right,’ he said. He passed Tim Parker and nodded. ‘Tim. It’s a bit different when you’re doing it for real, isn’t it?’
Kevin clapped him on the shoulder as he passed. The rest of them followed his example, touching Tony as if he were a talisman. Even Stacey brushed her fingers against his sleeve. ‘Welcome back, Dr Hill,’ she said, formal as ever.
‘Don’t get ahead of yourself, Stacey,’ Tony said. He carried on into Carol’s office, leaving her the choice of following or abandoning her office to him. And she knew only too well that he would have no respect for her professional privacy. The case would be at his mercy if she left him to it. So she went after him, slamming the door shut behind her.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, back to the door so Tim Parker couldn’t see her face, arms folded across her chest.
‘I’ve come to help,’ Tony said. ‘And before you repeat everything you said yesterday, please hear me out.’
Carol ran a hand through her hair and stepped away from the door. She pulled the blinds then crossed to her desk. ‘This better be good, Tony. I don’t know how much you overheard, but there’s another missing boy out there and I should be focusing on helping my team bring him home.’
Tony sighed. ‘That’s very laudable, Carol. But we both know there’s no rush here. This lad’s already dead.’
Carol felt the fight go out of her. Sometimes it was infuriating to be around Tony. He had the ability to articulate what you already knew in such a way that you felt let off the hook. And right now, she didn’t want to be let off the hook. She wanted to be cross with him for not listening to what she’d said yesterday. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Well, in an indirect kind of way, I sort of have jurisdiction. By virtue of the fact that I’m already working for the force that appears to have the first victim of this particular killer.’
‘What?’ Carol struggled to divine his meaning.
‘Daniel Morrison isn’t the first victim.’
Every SIO carried a fear in their heart. Because there was no joined-up reporting between the different police forces in the UK, every non-domestic murder threw up the possibility that it wasn’t the killer’s first outing. Some years before, a couple of dozen forces had put their heads together over their unsolved murders going back a decade or so. Working with Tony and other profilers, they’d examined them to see if they could draw common threads. The conclusion they’d come to was that there were at least three serial killers operating in the UK. Three previously unsuspected serial killers. It was a result that had chilled everyone working in homicide. As Tony had said to her at the time, ‘The first killing is potentially the most informative, because he’s trying out what works for him. By the next time, he’ll have refined his method. He’ll be better at it.’
And now he was telling her that she didn’t even have that advantage. She wanted to challenge him. And she might still. But for now, Carol needed some answers. ‘Who’s the first? Where is he? When did you work on it?’
‘I’m working on it now, Carol. It’s Jennifer Maidment.’
She stared at him in stunned silence for a long moment. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said at last. ‘Do you really need this so badly? Is this about Tim Parker? I never had you pegged as a man who needed constant professional validation.’
Tony covered his face with his hands and rubbed his eyes. ‘I was afraid you were going to be like this,’ he said. He thrust his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, drawing out a folded sheaf of paper. ‘This is not about me. If you still don’t want me involved, fine. I can live with that, believe me. But it’s important that you hear me out. Please?’
Carol felt torn between her respect and affection for him and her irritation at the way he was muscling in on her investigation. Whatever he said, she was sure it all came down to Tim Parker’s presence. God, how she wanted a drink. ‘Fine,’ she said, her voice clipped. ‘I’m listening.’
He unfolded his papers and laid out the three photographs he’d printed out earlier. ‘Let’s forget about gender for now. Because actually it’s completely irrelevant to this case. I don’t know why yet, but it is. Just look at the three of them. There’s a definite resemblance. He has a type. Would you agree?’
She couldn’t argue with the evidence of her eyes. ‘OK, they look a bit like each other. Coincidence covers Jennifer on that one.’
‘Fair enough. Though you do have to bear in mind that serial killers often have a very specific physical type. Remember Jacko Vance?’
Carol shuddered. As if she was likely to forget. ‘He went for girls who looked like his ex.’
‘Exactly. Killers who are fixated like that, they’ll pass over victims of opportunity because they don’t conform. And they’ll take time and trouble to cultivate the ones they’re truly drawn to. Now, remember I know nothing more about your cases than anybody who has read the papers and listened to the radio. You accept that?’
‘Unless you’ve been going behind my back with my team like you did with Paula on the Robbie Bishop case,’ she said drily.
‘I have not been quizzing your detectives, Carol. But I’m going to tell you some things about your two murders which I know only because they were committed by the same person who killed Jennifer Maidment. I know the signature behaviour, Carol. I know what this guy does.’ He enumerated the points on his fingers. ‘One: they went missing in the late afternoon without an explanation. They didn’t confide in anybody - not friends, not family, not
