DI Sean Corrigan Crime Series: 5-Book Collection: Cold Killing, Redemption of the Dead, The Keeper, The Network and The Toy Taker

He was the only person left in the offices. Tonight it was essential to be alone and to move fast. The police had seized many of his bank details and they knew where most of his money was, but not all of it.

They would be moving to block his accounts, but that would require court orders and the banks would take time to comply with the orders’ instructions. That would burn up a few days, and by then it would all be a wasted exercise.

Hellier was skilled on the computer. Able to cover his electronic tracks extremely well. He called up a website on the Internet. It was one he’d set up himself two years ago, but it was no more than an illusion, a front, just like a restaurant or bar could be, and like them there was a back door. But you had to know how to find it. Hellier knew. Of course he did. The illusion was his design.

The site was entitled Banks and the small investor. There was a hidden command icon on the screen. Hellier carefully placed the cursor on the tail of the site’s symbol, a prancing horse similar to the Ferrari emblem. Pin the tail on the donkey and win a prize. He smiled again, pleased with his private joke.

He clicked the cursor twice and waited a second. A type box suddenly appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, flashing, demanding a password.

Hellier typed: fuck them all.

When Sean arrived back at his Peckham office he found it deserted except for Sally. Ignoring the No Smoking signs, she was puffing heavily on a cigarette. She looked up from her paperwork and was relieved to see it was Sean. She held the cigarette up. ‘Do you mind?’

‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘What are you doing here this late?’

‘Trying to work a few things out.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as how did Korsakov’s fingerprints manage to get up and walk out of Scotland Yard all on their own?’

Sean didn’t understand and he wasn’t of a mind to ask for explanations. His thoughts were still with Heather Freeman.

‘And why are you back here so late?’ Sally asked.

‘I’ve been out east.’

‘Why?’ Sally sounded almost suspicious.

Sean hesitated before answering. ‘I believe I’ve identified another murder committed by our man.’

‘What?’ The surprise made Sally stand involuntarily. ‘Are you sure?’

‘As sure as I can be.’

‘Another gay man?’

‘No. A girl. A teenage runaway. He abducted her from King’s Cross and took her out to some waste ground in Dagenham. He made her strip before cutting her throat.’

‘I don’t see a connection,’ Sally confessed. ‘Did Hellier also know her?’

‘I doubt it. But he watched her before killing her. Once he’d selected her, he watched her. Learned her movements. Planned everything very carefully. Then he took her.’

‘So she was a stranger, yet Daniel Graydon was someone he knew.’

‘I’m not so sure any more.’

‘Not so sure of what?’

‘That he knew Graydon – or at least, not as well as he’d have us believe.’

‘I really don’t understand,’ Sally admitted.

‘I think he picked Graydon at random. A week or so before he killed him, he went to the nightclub and he selected him. He paid to have sex with him so that on the night he killed him he could approach Graydon without spooking him. Then they went back to the flat and he killed him, just like he was always going to do.’

‘Why didn’t he kill him the same night he first met him?’

‘Because he needed to kill him in his own flat. It was how he’d seen it – fantasized about it. But for that to happen he needed Graydon’s trust, he needed him to feel comfortable, so he approached him inside the club, surrounded by witnesses and people who knew the victim. If he’d killed him the same night, it would have been too easy for us to work out what must have happened: stranger arrives in gay nightclub and leaves with known prostitute, next morning prostitute is found murdered. Too easy – too simple. Hellier likes things complicated, layer upon layer of possibilities and misdirection, endless opportunities to bend the evidence away from proving he’s the killer. But above all, there was no way he was going to miss out on a week of fantasizing about how it would feel – killing Daniel Graydon. For him, that would have been every bit as important as the killing itself. Once he’d killed the girl in Dagenham he’d opened Pandora’s Box – there’s no going back for him now, even though he knows we’re watching him. He won’t stop, he can’t. Knowing we’re watching him merely heightens his excitement – makes him even more dangerous.’

‘Did he leave any evidence at the Dagenham scene?’ Sally asked.

‘No. Just a useless footprint.’

‘Then how are we going to convict him?’

Sean thought silently before answering. ‘If Hellier has a weakness, if he has one chink in his armour, it’s his desire for perfection.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Sally, frowning.

‘He can’t leave things half-done, untidy, incomplete. Look at his clothes, his hair, his office, his home. Everything immaculate. Not a thing out of place. He couldn’t have that. It’s the same when he kills. Everything has to be perfect. Exactly how he imagines it.’

Sally puffed on her cigarette. ‘How do you know all this?’ she asked. ‘I’ve watched you study crime-scene photographs in the past, and suddenly it’s like you’re there. Like you’re the …’ A look from Sean stopped her before she’d finished.

‘I see things differently, that’s all,’ he explained. ‘Most people investigate crimes two-dimensionally. They forget it’s a three-dimensional thing. They seek the motive, but not the reason for the motivation.

‘You have to question the killer’s every move, no matter how trivial. Why choose that victim? Why that weapon? That location? That time of day? Most people are happy just to recover a weapon, to identify the scene, but they’re missing the point. If you want to catch these poor bastards quickly, then you have to try and think like them. No matter how uncomfortable that may make you feel.’

‘You feel sorry for them?’ asked Sally.

Sean hadn’t realized he’d shown sympathy. ‘Sorry?’

‘You called them “poor bastards”. Like you felt sorry for them.’

‘Not sorry for what they are now,’ he told her. ‘Sorry for what made them that way. Sorry for the hell that was their childhood. Alone. Scared to death most of the time. Terrified of the very people they should have loved. Fearful of those they should have been able to turn to for protection. Sometimes, when I’m interviewing them, I don’t see a monster in front of me. I see a child. A scared little child.’

‘Is that what you see when you look at Hellier?’

‘No,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘Not yet. It’s too soon. I haven’t broken him down to make him face what he really is. When I do, I’ll know if he’s a product of his past or something else.’

‘Something else?’ Sally asked.

‘Born that way. Whether he was born bad. It’s rare, but it happens.’

‘And you already suspect that’s the case with Hellier.’ It wasn’t really a question.

‘Go home, Sally,’ he said quietly. ‘Get some rest. I’ll call Dave and set up an office meeting for the morning. We’ll talk then, but right now you need to go home, and so do I.’

Hellier typed the password fuck them all. The false screen began to break away by design. When it was gone it was replaced by a screen filled with twenty-four different banks’ insignia. Many of the major banks of the developed world were shown, as well as several more specialized ones. They all held accounts belonging to Hellier: some in that name, others in aliases he’d invented. He had excellent forged documents hidden across Europe, Northern America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and South East Asia.